NL VP of Scouting : " It’s embarrassing to the sport what they’re doing, or aren’t doing."

[Sports Guy]

19 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I think there are fewer players like that than you think.

We signed Galvis and Franco (and Sanchez until we reversed course on him).   We traded for Plutko who is in exactly the position you describe.   So we made a bunch of moves that sound like exactly what you are loudly and frequently bewailing we did not do.

I just don't think there are many players we could have that have any value at all worth giving up future value for.   I'd rather play Urias at 2B all year than give up even a probably-never-will-be like Ryan McKenna for someone who is probably at best a tiny improvement over Urias and is equally unlikely to have future value.   I just don't think you are being realistic in your expectations.   Any improvement to this year's team that doesn't come at the cost of the future would be very  minimal at best.   Yet you are making it seem like our offseason is a failure because we only did a little bit of improvement to this year's team (Galvis/Franco).

 

I disagree with a lot/most of this but no need to go into any more.

End of the day,  you are happy with things and I am happy for the most part but feel they Could and should have done more.

[BohKnowsBmore]

4 hours ago, Aglets said:

I wonder if he thought it was embarrassing when the Astros won 56, 55, and 51 games in 3 consecutive years.      Then made the playoffs 2 years later.

Elias has completed 1.5 (ish) MLB seasons since he was hired at the end of 2018.  

People need to chill the heck out.

Just my opinion.

I agree with those saying that this needs to be the last year of absolute tear down though.

It is kind of interesting when folks throw 2018 in as part of Elias "tanking." Not only was he not here yet, they were very much trying to win headed into that season, they were just unintentionally horrible.

[Sports Guy]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

We know with a pretty good degree of accuracy what they get from MASN, or at least what they were getting in 2012-16.    We used to have to guess, but the arbitration decisions and court proceedings pretty much laid it all out there.    

Yea but they choose to use it as a separate entity.  When they say what the Os made, they aren’t counting MASN.

[Jammer7]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

The thing is, the money being spent on that infrastructure should be spent anyway.  Most teams manage to do both.

The idea that it’s ok to not spend it on the team because it’s being spent there is wrong imo.

I mean, look at it a different way.  If/when this team starts to win and spend more on the ML product, we that mean they won’t be spending internationally anymore?  Does that mean they will give up on technology?

You are absolutely correct, but we are operating as if a small market, though I do not agree that we are. Maybe not that we are, but we should not be. And it depends on how much all of the initial capital outlay is. 

[Hank Scorpio]

26 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Whoa, Hank Scorpio sighting!

It lives.

I asked my kid the other day who his favorite Oriole was and he said AUSTIN HAYS!!!!!!!!!! But he has no idea who Austin Hays is, I just tell him the names of most of the 26 man roster every night before bed. Hopefully by the time he's old enough to actually care, they're done tanking.

And yes, I've evolved into a backwoods redneck. Y'all can keep those cities. 

 

[scOtt]

3 hours ago, LookinUp said:

Yeah, it's possible for sure. I definitely wanted it.

I do fall back on the notion that the aging sick owner (future sale), covid, MASN issues are actually catastrophic to short term finances and thus this frugality is reasonable and acceptable. 

It's certainly not desirable in a normal situation, but the O's really are going through a very abnormal period right now, rebuild aside.

Everyone knows what a homer I am, and I give them a pass because of all this.

Still, in the far back of my mind, I have the same fear as SteveA. That when it is time to spend they won't. So far they have spent money, tons of analytical electronics and cameras, DIVING into the International market, the Dominican facility. I just hope they keep it up when it come to the big league team.

[LookinUp]

Just now, scOtt said:

Everyone knows what a homer I am, and I give them a pass because of all this.

Still, in the far back of my mind, I have the same fear as SteveA. That when it is time to spend they won't. So far they have spent money, tons of analytical electronics and cameras, DIVING into the International market, the Dominican facility. I just hope they keep it up when it come to the big league team.

My concern isn't really that. I think it's plausible* that PA continues to live into a contending period and the brothers are still preparing for sale. In that circumstance, they may not want to spend even though the team is ready to spend from a competitive standpoint.

If PA passes away, the brothers don't sell and they still don't spend, then we have a real problem.

 

* I have zero insight into PA's health, so I have no idea what his prognosis for anything is.

[scOtt]

6 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

My concern isn't really that. I think it's plausible* that PA continues to live into a contending period and the brothers are still preparing for sale. In that circumstance, they may not want to spend even though the team is ready to spend from a competitive standpoint.

If PA passes away, the brothers don't sell and they still don't spend, then we have a real problem.

 

* I have zero insight into PA's health, so I have no idea what his prognosis for anything is.

I take it on faith that John A will, "never never never ever move the Orioles." That being said... selling to an ownership group that is committed up front to staying in B-more is a possibility I guess.

 

I personally don't think they will sell tho. Owning a ML franchise is like a license to print money. PA paid $173 million and it's now worth... $1.4 BILLION?

ROI

[LookinUp]

27 minutes ago, scOtt said:

I take it on faith that John A will, "never never never ever move the Orioles." That being said... selling to an ownership group that is committed up front to staying in B-more is a possibility I guess.

 

I personally don't think they will sell tho. Owning a ML franchise is like a license to print money. PA paid $173 million and it's now worth... $1.4 BILLION?

ROI

Somebody somewhere once detailed tax implications. I don't understand them, but am under the impression that they will get a massive tax bill when PA passes that will essentially force them to sell.

Like I said, I don't know the details, so I could be off by half.

[Scalious]

Baseball is a first and foremost an entertainment industry. The Orioles club get major benefits by being apart of MLB. They have obligations to the MLB as a brand and right now they are doing harm by tanking to such a level.  This idea the Orioles only have to serve themselves is false when they apart of the MLB.

MLB gives it teams high levels of autonomy to operate already and do their business, but the way the Orioles are doing this are so optically bad to the idea of competitiveness that exec's feel compelled to comment to dismiss them.

Now, functionally, this is totally a don't player hate the game situation. The MLB created and fostered a system that highly incentivizes what the Orioles are doing. So if they really cared, they would change the system.  This comment was purely for optics and PR to rely to the people who are unhappy about tankers/re-builders harming the intergry of the sport.  Which is entirely true, but this has been going on for years and his words are hollow.

[Frobby]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Yea but they choose to use it as a separate entity.  When they say what the Os made, they aren’t counting MASN.

Agreed.  They do include the rights fees but they don’t include the profits.   But we do know what they are, roughly.   

What I don’t know is whether Forbes is using the rights fees that MASN has actually paid the Orioles, or what they’ve been ordered to pay.   Ironically, the effect of the arbitration decision will be to make it appear on the Forbes accounting as if the O’s made more money than previously reported, when in actuality the decision is costing them tens of millions of dollars (because the MASN profits are greatly reduced). 
 

[Orioles0615]

9 hours ago, interloper said:

What's embarrassing is that the previous regime buried its head in the sand trying to compete 2 or 3 years beyond their window, completely ignoring the international market out of some phony PA principle, didn't invest in analytics, and created this situation where it requires a complete tank-fest teardown in order to build a farm system and international operation worthy of most other teams in the game. Elias has been straight about that. The Orioles over-extended themselves and they are paying the bill now. 

I keep saying that the entire organization was so barren after Buck, Dan, and Brady to a lesser extent left that the Orioles basically became an expansion team, and that is how you have to look at it. That being said I do agree with the notion that after this year I want to see improvements, and that included improvement to the payroll

[Can_of_corn]

5 minutes ago, andrewochs615 said:

I keep saying that the entire organization was so barren after Buck, Dan, and Brady to a lesser extent left that the Orioles basically became an expansion team, and that is how you have to look at it. That being said I do agree with the notion that after this year I want to see improvements, and that included improvement to the payroll

Three guys currently ranked in the top 100 prospect rankings were in the system.

[Frobby]

15 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Three guys currently ranked in the top 100 prospect rankings were in the system.

Yeah but it’s hard to deny that overall the system was very weak. Most of the pundits had our system ranked in the bottom five.  Frankly our system may have been a bit underrated though.   Even Elias has said the existing talent level when he came in was a little better than he thought when he took the job.   

[Moose Milligan]

3 hours ago, Scalious said:

Baseball is a first and foremost an entertainment industry. The Orioles club get major benefits by being apart of MLB. They have obligations to the MLB as a brand and right now they are doing harm by tanking to such a level.  This idea the Orioles only have to serve themselves is false when they apart of the MLB.

MLB gives it teams high levels of autonomy to operate already and do their business, but the way the Orioles are doing this are so optically bad to the idea of competitiveness that exec's feel compelled to comment to dismiss them.

Now, functionally, this is totally a don't player hate the game situation. The MLB created and fostered a system that highly incentivizes what the Orioles are doing. So if they really cared, they would change the system.  This comment was purely for optics and PR to rely to the people who are unhappy about tankers/re-builders harming the intergry of the sport.  Which is entirely true, but this has been going on for years and his words are hollow.

I don't agree that they're doing harm by tanking to such a level.  There's plenty of good reasons to watch the MLB right now.

Look, someone has to be last place, not every team can be the Rays or Dodgers or the Yankees or the Athletics.  Every year there's a few teams that win 55-65 games.  Are we really going to quibble over style points as to how they're doing it?  

You are correct that MLB created and fostered a system that incentivizes teams like the Orioles to do what they're doing...sports in general does.  But you can't allow a team like the Dodgers to have the first overall pick in the draft.  Or come close to getting it.  If you wanted to "change the system" you're upending the way the draft is conducted...I suppose you could make it like the NBA lottery where the teams that don't make the playoffs have a certain amount of ping pong balls and whoever lost the most has the most balls (no pun intended).  Yes, they stand a bigger chance to get the #1 pick but they're not guaranteed to do so.  I don't particularly like that for the MLB since the MLB draft is the biggest crap shoot of them all.