Rebuild mode or Sell mode?

[wildcard]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Yes and they failed to sign one of those picks and the players they chose ended up sucking.  
 

Which goes back to the question I asked.  What did they do, in terms of rebuilding, that caused them to win a title that they couldn’t have accomplished otherwise?

How were the Astros going to get Correa at 1:1 and Bergman at 1:2 if there did not tank?  Certainly both players are core to their rebuild.

[Sports Guy]

8 minutes ago, wildcard said:

How were the Astros going to get Correa at 1:1 and Bergman at 1:2 if there did not tank?  Certainly both players are core to their rebuild.

Great..that’s 2 players, one of which was a function of failing the first time around.

How about the rest?  They were a terrible team for 4 years.  What else did they accomplish during their rebuild that they couldn’t have done if they were a better team?

[wildcard]

8 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Great..that’s 2 players, one of which was a function of failing the first time around.

How about the rest?  They were a terrible team for 4 years.  What else did they accomplish during their rebuild that they couldn’t have done if they were a better team?

They kept their payroll lower so they could spend on scouting, player development,  analytics, signing draft choice and international signings.

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, wildcard said:

They kept their payroll lower so they could spend on scouting, player development,  analytics, signing draft choice and international signings.

Nah..that doesn’t fly.  You don’t need to keep your payroll down to do those things.  There is zero truth to that.

[Sports Guy]

Btw, they have gotten next to nothing out of their recent Intl FA signings:

https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2020/3/10/21174422/value-generated-by-astros-international-signings

 

 

[wildcard]

22 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Nah..that doesn’t fly.  You don’t need to keep your payroll down to do those things.  There is zero truth to that.

How do you know?  Jim Crane bought the Astros for 680m in 2011.   His net worth in 2011 was estimated at 600m.   He had two other companies to run.  A freight company and a venture capital company.  Needless to say he debt service on the purchase of the Astros was probably pretty high.    Maybe he needed to lower payroll.

Since baseball finances are private there is no way to know what pressures Crane was under at the time.

[hoosiers]

22 hours ago, Philip said:

The luck I mentioned was that one of those guys didn’t sign at all, and the Astros got a compensatory pick that they used to choose Correa, and I think they traded the other guy to Pittsburg, where he was a hopeless disaster.

Preston Tucker and John Singleton were huge flops, But by and large, the Astros had enough luck to cover up the problems.

Plus, they cheated, and that accomplishes a lot.

 

edit: I just looked up both of those guys, and yes, each is an example of supreme good luck on the part of the Astros. 

Committing to a rebuild through tanking is multi-layered - in my opinion.

 - it means putting out a weaker team to generate losses to draft higher. 

 - Often, those weaker teams include overpriced and mediocre performance on veteran contracts that can be difficult to move.

 - It also means not investing in better free agents because the incremental wins are not worth the cost.  The free agent investments that are made can be for lower $ veterans to provide some semblance of decency to a major league team or reclamation projects for previously injured players who are coming back.  The main goal of this spend is often to move the signed free agent to another team if that player performs.

 - generally hoarding a team's prospects and giving them a legit chance to perform as a major leaguer if there careers make it so far.  This is an important step IMO and speaks Elias biggest mistake in letting Yastremski go for peanuts.  Really no excuse for a rebuilding team to deal away its prospects.

 - cutting payroll so that a team can buy free agents at the right point in the competitive cycle when a team is on the upswing.

 - imo, this is also a period of time when an owner is likely to make nice profits due to the low payroll.

As this relates to the Astros, I am surprised to see the word luck bandied about simply because a few draft picks didn't pan out.  I don't think there was much luck at all in how the Astros conducted their business and became an elite team for multiple years.  

As it relates to the Orioles, we are currently in the latter stages of a rebuild, but we have been hampered by some legacy contracts with Cobb and Davis costing over $35M in Year 3 or 4 (depending on your viewpoint) that have prevented additional investments in free agents or lowered owner profits.

[hoosiers]

The Astros are being sued by their former owner for tanking - Beyond the Box Score

Interesting article on tanking that is a bit old, but specifically relates to the Astros and the owner's issues - including suing the prior owner - who counter-sued.  

[Redskins Rick]

must be a slow news days in the MLB world.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Philip said:

Of course. I never said otherwise. And that’s two major crises the Astros dodged, that saved them a year or so. So all things being equal it’s not unreasonable to expect us to take a year longer.

To me the big question is who was already in our organization when Elias got here who could become the equivalent of Jose Altuve, George Springer, Marwin Gonzalez and Dallas Keuchel?   Those four players contributed 20.3 rWAR to the Astros’ WS winner.  

[hoosiers]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

To me the big question is who was already in our organization when Elias got here who could become the equivalent of Jose Altuve, George Springer, Marwin Gonzalez and Dallas Keuchel?   Those four players contributed 20.3 rWAR to the Astros’ WS winner.  

Yastremski is already on his way to being the equivalent of one of those guys.  The reason rebuilding teams should hoard their prospects is that they don't know which ones will pan out.

[Frobby]

15 minutes ago, hoosiers said:

- generally hoarding a team's prospects and giving them a legit chance to perform as a major leaguer if there careers make it so far.  This is an important step IMO and speaks Elias biggest mistake in letting Yastremski go for peanuts.  Really no excuse for a rebuilding team to deal away its prospects.

I’m singling out the one sentence out of your excellent long post that I disagree with.     You can fault Elias (if you want) for failing to recognize Yastrzemski’s talent.   But the 28-year old Yastrzemski wasn’t really a “prospect” any more than the player he acquired, 27-year old Tyler Herb.    Nothing wrong with the strategy here, just an error in player evaluation (and perhaps the prior regime’s development of that player).

[hoosiers]

Yes, a clear error in player evaluation, but again one should hoard prospects until a better prospect is offered or until they have lost their prospect status.  

It is difficult to fathom that a rebuilding Orioles franchise would both make such a massive player evaluation error and deal away a good prospect.

[Redskins Rick]

31 minutes ago, hoosiers said:

Yastremski is already on his way to being the equivalent of one of those guys.  The reason rebuilding teams should hoard their prospects is that they don't know which ones will pan out.

Very easy to play Monday morning QB on this decision.

Just about every scout in the org and around baseball has doubts that Little Yaz's game would play at the big league level at anything more than a backup COF.

I was as big as Yaz fan as they come on this board, seen him several times in Bowie live. Loved him.

But, even I thought the pro scouts and experts knew more than I did and I didnt expect him to do anything with the Giants, it was just one of those low risk deals that rarely work.

 

[hoosiers]

I appreciate the opinions of RR and Frobby regarding Yastrzemski.  Not sure how dealing him represents anything other than a massive internal error in player evaluation and/or development.  Yas was good almost immediately after being dealt.

MY needed less than 175 minor league plate appearances after leaving the Orioles before producing 5.5 WAR in under 600 ABs at the major league level and top 10 NL MVP status.

Call it hindsight or MMQB, but I can only look at a rebuilding team dealing away a prospect with that production and call it a massive fail.