The deadline is looming...Is Elias done?

[Frobby]

10 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

If Elias' biggest sin was overtly stating what most everyone had kind of suspected ("we might non-tender Villar") then that's pretty inconsequential in the greater scheme. 

The difference between Griffin Conine and Easton Lucas is that Conine has a 10-20% chance of being a decent major leaguer, while Lucas is less.  But there's limitless demand for lefties who can pitch a partial inning...

They reportedly put him on waivers right before the deadline.   Though there was some confusion about that.   https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/11/orioles-jonathan-villar-waivers.html

[lovetoaster]

8 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

You can’t say that Villar would’ve performed the same here as he did in Miami.

But you can assume that he would have repeated his performance from last year that statistically looks like an outlier? 

[Roll Tide]

3 hours ago, lovetoaster said:

But you can assume that he would have repeated his performance from last year that statistically looks like an outlier? 

I don’t think you can assume it either way. But, I think it’s fair and reasonable to assume he’d be somewhere around the 2 WAR player he’s been over the last 5 years. I understand that last year was his best season. But he also had a 3.2 WAR season in 16. Really the .1 season in 2017 is really the outlier.

Really, My problem with the whole situation isn’t that he was traded. It was that we received so little and certain guys here are willing to give a Elias a free pass on it. I think Elias tipped his hand and it hurt Villar’s value. If it was done to avoid paying Villar when the payroll had already been slashed by 80 million it was just plain unnecessary. It wasn’t as if he was going to command a $20 million per deal for multiple years.

As I’ve stated, my bias on the situation is that I enjoyed watching him play last year. As a fan of this team there weren’t many reason to buy a ticket or justify paying for MASN. The way they handled Villar tells me that they don’t care about the fans and have no pride in the product that they are putting on the field. It’s bad enough that historically this team has been mostly bad since the last time we won the World Series. And the Davis situation cements my feeling about how much they care. Davis has been lost money for more than a couple seasons now. He probably wouldn’t do well at AA and yet the organization strung it along with spreading the idea that they were going to get him straightened out. Anybody who watches the Orioles regularly knew he had lost it and most of his issue is reaction time. 
 

So we were forced to watch them keep around Davis and his beer league skill level and trade Villar for pennies on the dollar when he was a very productive player. And why to save $8 million dollars which history has told us they won’t spend later. It’s just more money for the Angelos family inheritance fund. 
 

If people don’t understand my position there is not much more I can say. But as a customer who has sunk a ton of money, time, and emotional investment  in this organization, I think I have the right to be disgusted. Will the rebuild finally work this time around? Your guess is as good as mine. Obviously there are reasons to be optimistic but there is a long way to go between the train wreck that it was with Peter making the decisions and where it will need to be to win another division and the World Series. Unnecessary penny pinching when they still want us to buy tickets and watch games is comical to me.

I have been unimpressed with most of the players brought in so far by Elias.They are mostly all scrap heap types and I’ve been not been impressed with any of the trades. Givens is probably the only deal that I would’ve made so far where we know most the players involved. So IMO we dealt Cashner, Bundy, and Villar for very little. I know we weren’t going to get much for Cashner and probably won’t get much for Milone and Velasquez. 
 

The Orioles are starting to have some young players reach the show but how many were brought here by Elias? Alberto obviously cones to mind. Plus we still have almost no starting pitching which is still the major concern.  Means has came back to earth after his solid campaign last year. Wojciechowski, Eshelman, and López with his 8 ERA ( talk about bringing in a worthless player). Cobb is the only reliable starter we have and you have to be worried about another injury. Obviously we can be hopeful about Akin .... but I’ve seen Tony and a couple of other people say that he’s destined for the pen.

[Frobby]

4 hours ago, lovetoaster said:

But you can assume that he would have repeated his performance from last year that statistically looks like an outlier? 

 

1 hour ago, Roll Tide said:

I don’t think you can assume it either way. But, I think it’s fair and reasonable to assume he’d be somewhere around the 2 WAR player he’s been over the last 5 years. I understand that last year was his best season. But he also had a 3.2 WAR season in 16. Really the .1 season in 2017 is really the outlier.

I think what you can say is Villar hasn’t established a consistent level of performance.    But yes, it was reasonable to peg him as a 2 WAR player, on average.   And the fact that he’s had a slow start this year doesn’t change that.    The short season is really skewing people’s view of how significant one month of data is.   

[CarrRun49]

We're still talking about trading Jonathan Villar?  It's Jonathan Villar, not Manny Machado.  If you want to complain about a dog sh** return for a player worth a lot more, see Machado.  Complain about why he wasn't dealt a full year prior. That's something to complain about.  A player whose return could have changed the minor league system as a whole and perhaps fast forwarded the rebuild by a year or so. Again, it's Jonathan Villar and 2 minor league players that more than likely will never reach the big leagues. 

[Sports Guy]

12 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

Yes Mancini was better by about 100 OPS....but Villar had 40 swipes and I like the gritty style of play.

 

We can agree to disagree on your last statement 

Again, you are confusing what you personally like from actual facts.

[DrungoHazewood]

15 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

So the correct move would’ve been to tender him.the payroll was already absurdly low at 62 million or the adjusted number of 66. 
 

I don’t understand why so many of you buy the argument that Villar was a worthless pile of shite! 

I don't understand why you need strawman arguments to make your point.  Villar was expected to be a 2 win player or so in 2020 in a normal year.  He was expected to get $8-10M in arbitration.  So he had some surplus value, but it was pretty apparent that other teams were not willing to part with much to take on his expected salary and production.  So they traded him for a low level prospect with salary relief.  That's my position.  I don't know anyone who's saying he's a worthless expletive.  We're saying that he's a pretty decent player being compensated at nearly free agent rates, and there were apparently better things Elias thought he could do with the money.

I don't know why this has to be a 20-page table-pounder.  You think he was worth a bit more, and the O's should have taken on his salary.  Okay.  That's not a crazy take, it's just not the O's GM's take.  I'm kind of guessing Elias isn't completely nuts or incompetent, either.  He did what he could given the circumstances.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

So we were forced to watch them keep around Davis and his beer league skill level and trade Villar for pennies on the dollar when he was a very productive player. And why to save $8 million dollars which history has told us they won’t spend later. It’s just more money for the Angelos family inheritance fund.

In 1998 the Orioles had the highest payroll in baseball.  In 2016 the Orioles' payroll was over $150M on revenues of about $250M, one of the higher ratios (if not the highest) in the league

I know you don't like the approach, but your opinion that all savings go into the Angelos yacht fund and will never get spent is just an opinion. 

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

In 1998 the Orioles had the highest payroll in baseball.  In 2016 the Orioles' payroll was over $150M on revenues of about $250M, one of the higher ratios (if not the highest) in the league

I know you don't like the approach, but your opinion that all savings go into the Angelos yacht fund and will never get spent is just an opinion. 

We know the father was willing to spend, even if he was uneven in his spending.

We don't know that about the sons.

[DrungoHazewood]

35 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

We know the father was willing to spend, even if he was uneven in his spending.

We don't know that about the sons.

Yes.  So stating unequivocally that any money saved this year is gone forever and will not be reinvested in the franchise is just speculation.

[Sports Guy]

38 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

We know the father was willing to spend, even if he was uneven in his spending.

We don't know that about the sons.

Well, for the most part, we know the father was willing to spend on guys who were already Os.  There is some but not a ton of evidence he will spend on outsiders.

The balance was terrible.

[Roll Tide]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Again, you are confusing what you personally like from actual facts.

Noted 

You have a right to your opinion

[DrungoHazewood]

48 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Well, for the most part, we know the father was willing to spend on guys who were already Os.  There is some but not a ton of evidence he will spend on outsiders.

The balance was terrible.

He was always willing to keep up appearances with an average-ish payroll.  Occasionally more. And he sometimes got attached to his guys.  But he'd never do what it took to have a good farm system.  For a small-to-mid-market team not having a farm system and getting overly attached to your guys is a death sentence.

[Sports Guy]

6 minutes ago, Roll Tide said:

Noted 

You have a right to your opinion

Thank you but what you quoted isn’t an opinion.  It is a fact.

You said you liked the steals and that he’s a gritty player.  That is what you personally like, which is true.

But neither of things means he’s a better offensive player than Mancini was last year.  That’s also true.

He ranked in the top 30 or so in many of the major categories like wOBA, wRC+, OPS, ISO, slugging, etc...

Thats not to say Villar wasn’t good and you could argue that was more valuable all around because of his base running and playing a more important position.  
 

But there isn’t really much of an argument that Villar was the better offensive player.

[Roll Tide]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't understand why you need strawman arguments to make your point.  Villar was expected to be a 2 win player or so in 2020 in a normal year.  He was expected to get $8-10M in arbitration.  So he had some surplus value, but it was pretty apparent that other teams were not willing to part with much to take on his expected salary and production.  So they traded him for a low level prospect with salary relief.  That's my position.  I don't know anyone who's saying he's a worthless expletive.  We're saying that he's a pretty decent player being compensated at nearly free agent rates, and there were apparently better things Elias thought he could do with the money.

I don't know why this has to be a 20-page table-pounder.  You think he was worth a bit more, and the O's should have taken on his salary.  Okay.  That's not a crazy take, it's just not the O's GM's take.  I'm kind of guessing Elias isn't completely nuts or incompetent, either.  He did what he could given the circumstances.

Look back at posts from last year’s deadline and offseason 

 

My opinion is still the same. I’m not sold on Elias trade ability or not overwhelmed by what’s coming off the scrap heap.

We agree ... he got all he could get once he overplayed his hand.

He could be the greatest statistical analyses guy out there and not really good at trading. And I wasn’t crazy about the draft plan so dat outside of AR and you would’ve drafted him with the first pick. Do that selection is not a special accomplishment.

Its certainly possible... it’s not like he came here as a GM.

So far the plan is fine as far as add international scouting and similar stuff.

But, if the trade plan is to stuff as much crap as you can into the system and hope to occasionally get a hit. I’m not sure I like the plan. 
 

Ive given you reasonS why I don’t like plan