Should the Os look into Kris Bryant?

[Frobby]

20 hours ago, ThomasTomasz said:

For the Nationals, they signed Jayson Werth.  Werth gave them a veteran presence, and introduced to MLB that the Nationals were ready to compete.  For the Cubs, they went out and secured Jon Lester, a legitimate "top of the rotation" pitcher, since they invested heavily on the bats in their minor league system.  As a fan of this team, even though we have done much better with Chris Holt in developing our pitchers organizationally, we have only developed two legit TORP's over the past 30 years.  I would love to see us make a Lester-type signing when we are ready to begin our run.  

I think a Werth/Lester type signing might be justifiable next winter, depending on how much improvement the team shows in 2021.  

The 2008-09 Nats won under 60 games, allowing them to draft Strasburg and Harper.   In 2010, they improved to 69 wins and Strasburg made his debut.   Then after that season, they signed Werth.    They improved to 80-81 in 2011 (despite Strasburg missing the year with TJ surgery) and in 2012 they started their run of contending seasons.

In 2012-13, the Cubs won 61 and 66 games, allowing them to draft Bryant and (of lesser importance) Schwarber.   In 2014 they improved to 73 wins and important players such as Hendricks and Baez made their debut.    The following winter, they went out and got Lester.   The next year Bryant debuted and they won 97 games, and a year later they were world champs.   

I wasn’t a big fan of the Werth signing, and he underperformed his contract pretty significantly, but I do agree that the signing sent a certain signal to the team and its fan base and Werth brought a certain moxie to that team that goes beyond anything reflected in statistics.    Lester underperformed his deal just slightly but he was at his best in the period when the Cubs won 97 and then won the WS the next year, so I’m sure the Cubs aren’t complaining.   

If you wanted to be a crazy optimist you could say that the 2020 Orioles were analogous to the 2010 Nats and 2014 Cubs, because they played at a 67.5 win clip, substantially better than the last two years.   But I see them as a team that got off to a good start, cooled off and would have been closer to a 60-win team if they’d actually played 162 games.    So to me, they’re still at least one season away from picking out some FA cornerstone piece.