O's Dilemma with Villar

[interloper]

There's no dilemma. Tender, accept a trade if there's a good offer, play him if there's not. 

[Moose Milligan]

1 hour ago, mdbdotcom said:

I think Villar will be traded before the tender deadline for one major league ready relief pitcher and one 17-year old Dominican.

Dude, get it together.  16 year old Dominicans only.  

[LookinUp]

1 hour ago, wildcard said:

I will add that if the AA/AAA pitchers progress faster than expected next year and Villar is still on the team they could try to extend him in July.  This is because the O's offense will probably be good enough to compete with the addition of Hays and Mountcastle but the pitching is what is holding the O's back.

I'm not sure how much better you expect our AA/AAA pitchers to make us or how much better hitting you're expecting, but in terms of run differential, we were 365 runs worse than Tampa Bay, who is the AL playoff team with the worst run differential. 

A couple of hitters aren't getting us there. A couple of pitchers aren't getting us there. 2020 should be better, but not good enough to really want to hold onto Villar, IMO, assuming we get a decent return.

[Aristotelian]

8 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Cost could be a factor.

If the O's really non-tender a 4 WAR guy over $9M, they really could justly be accused of tanking. Jim Johnson is not a good comparison as he was coming off 1.3 WAR and career high of 2.6 WAR.

I think the most likely outcome is trading him before the arb deadline. Tender and hope to trade later is risky but with some potential upside if he continues to build value. I don't see any way we let him walk with nothing back.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

If the O's really non-tender a 4 WAR guy over $9M, they really could justly be accused of tanking. Jim Johnson is not a good comparison as he was coming off 1.3 WAR and career high of 2.6 WAR.

I think the most likely outcome is trading him before the arb deadline. Tender and hope to trade later is risky but with some potential upside if he continues to build value. I don't see any way we let him walk with nothing back.

I was speaking more of a trade.

[wildcard]

25 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

I'm not sure how much better you expect our AA/AAA pitchers to make us or how much better hitting you're expecting, but in terms of run differential, we were 365 runs worse than Tampa Bay, who is the AL playoff team with the worst run differential. 

A couple of hitters aren't getting us there. A couple of pitchers aren't getting us there. 2020 should be better, but not good enough to really want to hold onto Villar, IMO, assuming we get a decent return.

Hopefully it not one or two AA/AAA pitchers.  Between now and next July the O's have a chance to add any of Akin, Baumann, Lowther, Kremer, Zimmerman, Wells, Sedlock,  Harvey and Alvarado.   Plus any pitchers Elias picks up this off season from outside the O's organization.  Who knows how that will improve the pitching.   I said that Elias will have to see  in July.  

If Elias can see the pitching improving plus Hays and Mountcastle hopefilly  improve the offense then Elias may have a decision in July to make on whether trading,  keeping or extending Villar is the right move.

But as I said, I think the odds are that Villar is traded over the winter for a deal that Elias likes that he believes will help the O's in 2022.

Note: In 2012, Dan Duquette's 1st season with the O's, he signed a 27 year old minor league pitcher who had been released by the Red Sox.  He had never pitched in the majors.  He was mainly signed because of what an O's scout saw him do in the winter league.       Miguel Gonzalez went 9-4, 3.25 ERA in 15 starts with the O's in 2012.  Stuff Happens.

[mdbdotcom]

29 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Dude, get it together.  16 year old Dominicans only.  

We can make any Dominican player any age you need him to be. Trust me.

[Hallas]

38 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It doesn't really matter, because Villar will likely be in need of replacement in 2022 or 2023. A 2-3 win (four on the outside) player at 28 is probably a 1-2 win player at 31 or 32.  That doesn't push you into contention, you still need to find others to do that.

Is there any evidence that modern aging curves are accelerated to the point where a player is starting their decline at 28 instead of 30-31?  I always thought that the -0.5 wins a year aging applied more to players that are 31+, not 28 year olds.

[LookinUp]

23 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Hopefully it not one or two AA/AAA pitchers.  

How highly rated was Hader when we traded him? How about Davies? That's two smart teams who traded for two valuable pitchers who weren't all that highly ranked on prospect boards. Hopefully Elias can pull something like that off.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

How highly rated was Hader when we traded him? How about Davies? That's two smart teams who traded for two valuable pitchers who weren't all that highly ranked on prospect boards. Hopefully Elias can pull something like that off.

Not sure how smart the Astros were, they flipped Hader to the Brewers in the Mike Fiers deal.

[weams]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

Dude, get it together.  16 year old Dominicans only.  

The 16 year old Dominicans might still be 23.  

[weams]

38 minutes ago, mdbdotcom said:

We can make any Dominican player any age you need him to be. Trust me.

Seriously. That got corrected when the US got serious about identities getting visas. 

[Philip]

27 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Is there any evidence that modern aging curves are accelerated to the point where a player is starting their decline at 28 instead of 30-31?  I always thought that the -0.5 wins a year aging applied more to players that are 31+, not 28 year olds.

When Toney made that comment, I think he was emphasizing that Villar does well( ie Speed) declines first. He’s not going to get 40 stolen bases next year, although he probably will have a few additional tootblans.

Villar is 29 in May, and the only other season he had more than 2.0 WAR(And he only had that once) the next season he collapsed to a -.4 WAR. This was his career year and you don’t extend a guy on one year, a sad lesson of which Chris Davis is the exemplar.

I just checked his defense, too, and he is a negative defender everywhere, Although I was surprised that he’s best at short, and worst at second, where he was worth -11 DRS. whew...

So no, Don’t extend him, and based on what I just read, I’m not sure you can count on trading him either. But that’s OK, he’s a perfect player for a bad team.

[Luke-OH]

13 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

How highly rated was Hader when we traded him? How about Davies? That's two smart teams who traded for two valuable pitchers who weren't all that highly ranked on prospect boards. Hopefully Elias can pull something like that off.

Hader wasn't a top 20 org prospect coming into 2013, but he was having a slightly lessor version of Drew Rom's 2019 performance. 

Davies was the 7th ranked prospect in what was a very weak system coming into 2015 and was performing well in AAA at the time of the trade. 

Hader wasn't even the main piece of the deal and like COC said, the Astros proceeded to deal him away.

The Davies trade was just a really forced, poor trade. Parra was riding an obviously unsustainable BABIP to a strong first half that anyone could see didn't reflect true talent. Very different deals.  

[sportsfan8703]

Tender contract. Look for best trade package of assets that don’t need to be on the 40 man, and can contribute in 2023 ->. A package of high ceiling/high risk players in A/R/DSL ball sounds about right. Thanks to Villar for killing it in August/September and putting the franchise in a position to acquire assets.