Elias: emulating the Rays?

[makoman]

23 minutes ago, Philip said:

If Mike is really going to avoid drafting pitchers, that’s a problem. 
I don’t know whether the Astros count as mid-market or not, but they definitely have more money than the Orioles, and spending a pile of money on almost any FA pitching would be foolish, when you can draft a bunch of guys, keep them for 3-4 inexpensive years and then trade them.

the Rays are right. “Trade early and often”

Look at Houston’s top pitchers last year. Verlander, Cole, and Greinke were acquired by trade, Miley a FA who made less than 5M (far less than he made with us the previous few years btw).

You don’t need to pay FA prices for pitchers if you can trade for them. You just have to trust that your GM is better than the other guy. When you give away a pitcher you want the Bedard deal, when you get a pitcher you want the Verlander deal. The point is you draft and develop a ton of talent and you can use it as needed. 

[Lucky_13]

3 hours ago, ORIOLE33 said:

I know i’m bearing a dead horse and It probably will never happen because the union won’t allow it, but baseball really need some kind of system (not necessarily a salary cap) where small market teams can hold players that they develop. Nothing is more frustrating than being a glorified farm system for big market teams. 

That's why it's really important that they like up the core guys early, like within their first season if possible. It's risky but thats the only way middle market teams and lower keep their guys

 

[Il BuonO]

1 hour ago, makoman said:

Look at Houston’s top pitchers last year. Verlander, Cole, and Greinke were acquired by trade, Miley a FA who made less than 5M (far less than he made with us the previous few years btw).

You don’t need to pay FA prices for pitchers if you can trade for them. You just have to trust that your GM is better than the other guy. When you give away a pitcher you want the Bedard deal, when you get a pitcher you want the Verlander deal. The point is you draft and develop a ton of talent and you can use it as needed. 

Yep, it’s not like “grow the arms and buy the bats“ was a proven system. 

[HowAboutThat]

1 hour ago, makoman said:

Look at Houston’s top pitchers last year. Verlander, Cole, and Greinke were acquired by trade, Miley a FA who made less than 5M (far less than he made with us the previous few years btw).

You don’t need to pay FA prices for pitchers if you can trade for them. You just have to trust that your GM is better than the other guy. When you give away a pitcher you want the Bedard deal, when you get a pitcher you want the Verlander deal. The point is you draft and develop a ton of talent and you can use it as needed. 

Those three pitchers had already signed historically huge contracts. I don’t think those examples refute what I said. We could not afford even one of those contracts, much less all three of them, plus each of them was expensive in terms of prospects.

The biggest pitching contract we gave out( I think) was Jimenez And Cobb. Whether they were wise decisions I leave up to you, but that money was Just a fraction of the contracts that those guys signed.

Trades are not necessarily bad, but the best thing to do is to draft a whole lot of guys. They will be free while they are in the minors, And if they don’t pan out you release them, and if they do, you’ve got up to six years before you lose them. Trade them in year four, Restock the farm start over again.

Instead Of getting a guy who’s already into a historically large contract, paying huge prospect price for him, running the risk that age will rear its ugly head, and doing all that while realizing that at the end of his contract he’s going to be too old to trade, and you’re not going to want to re-sign him again anyway.

 

[hoosiers]

It is very difficult to imitate the Rays (and the As) because those two franchises move good players pre-free agent because they (mostly) have to.  To a lesser extent, these teams do the Bedard trade over and over and make that trade with popular players.  One can say, as I probably have, that we should have a hybrid model where we imitate the Rays, but also keep and sign a few more players to LTCs than the Rays would.  That would be great in theory, but over time it seems the Rays success has been related to a single-minded focus to deal players a year too early than a year too late.   

This board has shown little stomach to deal our star players pre-FA over the last 10 years.  There are many examples of guys we should have traded around the beginning of their arbitration years when their trade value was highest, but our FO kept the players too long from Johnson (reliever), Wieters, Machado, Mora, Hardy, Davis and others.  Some of these guys we signed to LTCs instead of dealing at the right moment.  The Rays would have dealt each of these guys instead of waiting as long as the Os FO did.

Before we start worrying about that, however, we need to build the scouting and development infrastructure of the Rays.  

[Roll Tide]

9 hours ago, makoman said:

Look at Houston’s top pitchers last year. Verlander, Cole, and Greinke were acquired by trade, Miley a FA who made less than 5M (far less than he made with us the previous few years btw).

You don’t need to pay FA prices for pitchers if you can trade for them. You just have to trust that your GM is better than the other guy. When you give away a pitcher you want the Bedard deal, when you get a pitcher you want the Verlander deal. The point is you draft and develop a ton of talent and you can use it as needed. 

So far I’ve seen nothing to indicate the Elias is good at trading.

[Sports Guy]

You always want to trade a player a year early as opposed to a year too late.

I don’t care if you are big, medium or small market..that’s just smart baseball.

[Can_of_corn]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You always want to trade a player a year early as opposed to a year too late.

I don’t care if you are big, medium or small market..that’s just smart baseball.

Always is such a loaded term.

If you are an honest to goodness contender I can see holding onto someone like Britton since they can be such a weapon in the playoffs.  If the timing is right you have to play for today and not three years down the line.

[Sports Guy]

31 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Always is such a loaded term.

If you are an honest to goodness contender I can see holding onto someone like Britton since they can be such a weapon in the playoffs.  If the timing is right you have to play for today and not three years down the line.

True...stand by what I said but agree that can’t say always because there are legit contenders that can win.  However, that does assume the trade happens during the season.  In the offseason, I believe what I said is true.  I don’t care how good the team is.

The Os after 2016 is a perfect example of a team that absolutely should have seen the writing on the wall and dealt their stars but they didn’t need to deal them during the season

[backwardsk]

49 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Always is such a loaded term.

If you are an honest to goodness contender I can see holding onto someone like Britton since they can be such a weapon in the playoffs.  If the timing is right you have to play for today and not three years down the line.

Case in point, last year’s WS champion.  Most were saying they should have traded off Rendon, Scherzer, and others before the deadline.  That team has let their soon to be FAs play to the end of their contracts (Rendon, Zimmermann, Desmond, Harper, etc) and have been very successful.

[weams]

15 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

The could call it the Reserve Clause.

It’s never happening. What might happen is that players are free sooner. But this next CBA gonna be might tough. 

[weams]

10 hours ago, Philip said:

Those three pitchers had already signed historically huge contracts. I don’t think those examples refute what I said. We could not afford even one of those contracts, much less all three of them, plus each of them was expensive in terms of prospects.

The biggest pitching contract we gave out( I think) was Jimenez And Cobb. Whether they were wise decisions I leave up to you, but that money was Just a fraction of the contracts that those guys signed.

Trades are not necessarily bad, but the best thing to do is to draft a whole lot of guys. They will be free while they are in the minors, And if they don’t pan out you release them, and if they do, you’ve got up to six years before you lose them. Trade them in year four, Restock the farm start over again.

Instead Of getting a guy who’s already into a historically large contract, paying huge prospect price for him, running the risk that age will rear its ugly head, and doing all that while realizing that at the end of his contract he’s going to be too old to trade, and you’re not going to want to re-sign him again anyway.

 

Houston is a gargantuan sized market. 

[Can_of_corn]

16 minutes ago, weams said:

It’s never happening. What might happen is that players are free sooner. But this next CBA gonna be might tough. 

I think that in most cases small market teams could hold onto their star players if they wanted to.

[HowAboutThat]

53 minutes ago, weams said:

Houston is a gargantuan sized market. 

Well that just reinforces that Houston does that which we can not do, and therefore is a poor example to follow.

Don’t trade draft picks, do get active in the international market, draft big, sign kids, and trade in year four.

[HowAboutThat]

4 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

So far I’ve seen nothing to indicate the Elias is good at trading.

He hasn’t made that many trades, but remember, his goal is to make the future team better. His goal might very well be to deliberately make the current team worse because the third draft pick is more valuable than the 15th, so if he can trade a good reliever now for a guy who might be good in 5 years, he will do it.