How far are the O's away from being a winning team?

[wildcard]

The problem with with trading Mancini is you have to replace his offense.

DL Hall should be in the majors to start the 2022 season depending on service time.  He could be two weeks later than that.  He spends half a season at AA, half a season in AAA and he is a major leaguer in 2022.

So you have Means and DL Hall in the rotation next season.    I would argue that Grayson is not more than 3 months behind DL Hall.  Maybe less.  I don't think  Grayson is going to spend more than a month with the Ironbirds this year.    So by middle season 2022 the O's have Means, DL Hall,  Grayson, Kremer and one of Akin, Lowther, Bradish, Lopez, Baumann  or Tyler Wells in the rotation.   That is a pretty good rotation to go with a good pen.

So the O's need offense in 2022.  They have Mullins, Hays and Santander in the outfield.   Mountcastle at 1B.   Adley coming hopefully in 2022 sometime.   As it is now SS/2B/3B are spots Elias needs to fill over the winter if Jones and Bannon are not the answers.   ]

Where is the replacement for Mancini?  Stewart will be lucky to be in the majors at the rate he is going.  He has one option left that may be used this year.  Then he is out of options and has to be on the 26 man roster.  And he has not earned it to date.  The audition is on going but does not look good.

You have Diaz but he can't stay healthy and he joins Hays, Santander  and Stewart who have a history of needing to send time of the IL.   So you can't count on Diaz for regular offense from what we have seen so far.

So trading Mancini leaves an offense hole.  What you get for him is probably prospects that move the talent needed to contend out to 2023/2024.   That is not what I think Elias is trying to accomplish.

Once Adley, DL Hall and Grayson are in the majors its time to WIN.  The six year window of contention has begun.   Its time to do what Dan Duquette did when he took over after the 2011 season.   Put a contending team on the field.  Trading Mancini does help achieve that goal.

[foxfield]

21 minutes ago, wildcard said:

The problem with with trading Mancini is you have to replace his offense.

DL Hall should be in the majors to start the 2022 season depending on service time.  He could be two weeks later than that.  He spends half a season at AA, half a season in AAA and he is a major leaguer in 2022.

So you have Means and DL Hall in the rotation next season.    I would argue that Grayson is not more than 3 months behind DL Hall.  Maybe less.  I don't think  Grayson is going to spend more than a month with the Ironbirds this year.    So by middle season 2022 the O's have Means, DL Hall,  Grayson, Kremer and one of Akin, Lowther, Bradish or Lopez in the rotation.   That is a pretty good rotation to go with a good pen.

So the O's need offense in 2022.  They have Mullins, Hays and Santander in the outfield.   Mountcastle at 1B.   Adley coming hopefully in 2022 sometime.   As it is now SS/2B/3B are spots Elias needs to fill over the winter if Jones and Bannon are not the answers.   ]

Where is the replacement for Mancini?  Stewart will be lucky to be in the majors at the rate he is going.  He has one option left that may be used this year.  Then he is out of options and has to be on the 26 man roster.  And he has not earned it to date.  The audition is on going but does not look good.

You have Diaz but he can't stay healthy and he joins Hays, Santander  and Stewart who have a history of needing to send time of the IL.   So you can't count on Diaz for regular offense from what we have seen so far.

So trading Mancini leaves an offense hole.  What you get for him is probably prospects that move the talent needed to contend out to 2023/2024.   That is not what I think Elias is trying to accomplish.

Once Adley, DL Hall and Grayson are in the majors its time to WIN.  The six year window of contention has begun.   Its time to do what Dan Duquette did when he took over after the 2011 season.   Put a contending team on the field.  Trading Mancini does help achieve that goal.

Put Mancini back in the pool above.  Now, the issue isn't removing him means you have to replace his offense.  The issue is we have created a roadblock with OF/DH/1B types who all have good points and yet many have health issues.  But you don't have room to play em all.

Any of these guys could be part of the next core.  All of them will not.  It's less important that we "get" something for anyone traded, than it is imperative that we choose wisely who to keep.   It's a good problem to have, but it's not simple.  Winning rarely is.

[Frobby]

34 minutes ago, wildcard said:

The problem with with trading Mancini is you have to replace his offense.

DL Hall should be in the majors to start the 2022 season depending on service time.  He could be two weeks later than that.  He spends half a season at AA, half a season in AAA and he is a major leaguer in 2022.

So you have Means and DL Hall in the rotation next season.    I would argue that Grayson is not more than 3 months behind DL Hall.  Maybe less.  I don't think  Grayson is going to spend more than a month with the Ironbirds this year.    So by middle season 2022 the O's have Means, DL Hall,  Grayson, Kremer and one of Akin, Lowther, Bradish or Lopez in the rotation.

I think your projections for Hall and Rodriguez are optimistic.    More of a best case scenario than a certainty.  I hope you are right, but I wouldn’t put my money on that timetable.    I’m encouraged by the two short starts each has made this year, but that’s all they are - two short starts.  

[wildcard]

6 minutes ago, foxfield said:

Put Mancini back in the pool above.  Now, the issue isn't removing him means you have to replace his offense.  The issue is we have created a roadblock with OF/DH/1B types who all have good points and yet many have health issues.  But you don't have room to play em all.

Any of these guys could be part of the next core.  All of them will not.  It's less important that we "get" something for anyone traded, than it is imperative that we choose wisely who to keep.   It's a good problem to have, but it's not simple.  Winning rarely is.

I don't see Stewart of the 2022 O's 40 man roster.   McKenna is an up and down guy between Norfolk and the O's when injuries hit.  He has options.  Hay in LF,  Mullins in CF, Santander in RF.  Mountcastle at 1B/DH, Mancini at DH/1B.   Diaz is the 4th OF that gets rotated in for matchups and for injuries.  He also has options. If Stewart  goes I don't see a surplus.

[wildcard]

13 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I think your projections for Hall and Rodriguez are optimistic.    More of a best case scenario than a certainty.  I hope you are right, but I wouldn’t put my money on that timetable.    I’m encouraged by the two short starts each has made this year, but that’s all they are - two short starts.  

These guys made progress at the Alternate Site last year.  We are seeing the improvement now.

[Frobby]

13 minutes ago, wildcard said:

These guys made progress at the Alternate Site last year.  We are seeing the improvement now.

I’ll wait another month and a half before drawing any conclusions.   To this point, Hall has surprised me more than Rodriguez has.  His command was not good at the alt site last year from all reports.   But so far this year he hasn’t walked a batter.    

[wildcard]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I’ll wait another month and a half before drawing any conclusions.   To this point, Hall has surprised me more than Rodriguez has.  His command was not good at the alt site last year from all reports.   But so far this year he hasn’t walked a batter.    

Maybe he is related to Samson.  Its because of the long hair.

[spiritof66]

Back to the question raised in the opening post:

Maybe I'm just impatient, either by nature or as a fan who doesn't expect to have many years left to see a turn-around and a World Series at Camden Yards, but I'm disappointed by the limited amount of progress that's been made. I had hoped that this spring the young position players would become strong contributors who looked capable of settling into full-time roles, with one or more of them hitting like future offensive stars (at the level of consistent All-Star selectees or MVP vote-getters, or better), that either Severino or Sisco would emerge as worthy of the #2 catching role, that Means would have some company as an established part of a future rotation, and that a young infielder off the scrap heap or from obscurity in the farm system would surprise us with competent defense and enough offense to look like a keeper.  

While the season is pretty young and some of that still may happen that's not what I see so far. There are only five Orioles -- the veterans Galvis and Mancini, plus Mullins, Hays, and Stewart (who just got there last night) -- with an OPS over .625. The team is 14th in the AL in runs scored, 12th in homers and 14th in walks. The only young player who has performed well offensively is Mullins, and there are reasons to be skeptical about his maintaining that level of production. None of the young guys other than Mullins has hit with power. Mountcastle, Stewart, Severino and Sisco have all shown an inability to play the kind of defense a contending team would want, unless you count Mountcastle at his stop of last resort,1B. Mullins has confirmed the doubts about his throwing. Nobody has looked to me like a future star, and only Mullins and Hays have looked to me like long-term major leaguers. It's been fun to watch Means, Fry, Matt Harvey when he's on, Lopez for 4 or 5 innings, and Valdez and Plutko most of the time, but other than Means their success doesn't have anything to do with building a winning team. And despite talk about the Orioles' gaping holes enabling them to provide unheralded players opportunities, most of the infield opportunities have gone to veterans and guys with no conceivable role on a future winning team in Baltimore. The whole team plays pretty sloppy, careless, fundamentally unsound and occasionally stupid baseball in the field, on the bases and at the plate. In particular, it rarely looks like an Orioles batter goes to the plate with a plan other than to try to hit the ball as hard as he can as soon as he can, even in situations that cry out for a different approach. That's tolerable, I guess, for a team that's hitting a lot of home runs and scoring a lot of home runs.

There's still plenty of room for long-term optimism. Maybe we'll soon have a slugging catcher who can catch the ball when it's thrown to him. Maybe the outfield of Hays, Mullins, Santander and Diaz will hit as well as they defend. Maybe Richie Martin or someone else will look like a solid performer in the infield. I'm finding it hard to have much hope for Stewart or the catchers, but who knows? I'd rather not think about Mountcastle, whose ABs I used to look forward to but have started to try to miss -- in the words of Katie (Karen Allen) in Animal House, it's too depressing to think about. Maybe Kremer or Akin or Wells or somebody will step forward. Maybe Tanner Scott or that other Harvey will show closer potential. But none of this feels like it's getting any closer, and as the days and weeks roll and depressing losses roll by I worry that it's getting further away.

My reaction to the "cheapskate" discussion that was buzzing around earlier in this thread. One of the problems in assessing teams' spending is that we know everything about teams' payrolls but very little, in most instances, about other investments in building a team. Looking at his last decade at the controls, I wouldn't call Peter Angelos a cheapskate; he spent plenty on payroll, including some big contracts on which he made the call. I would call his financial decisions, and I have done so, foolish, selfish, stubborn and highly destructive to the franchise. Angelos turned 81 in 2010, and I believe that sometime around there he saw the approach of his last chance to get to a World Series and repair his terrible reputation as a baseball team owner. So Angelos poured whatever he was willing and able to spend into trying to build a winner in the short-term, and after some partial successes through 2016, hewed to that plan after it made no sense, spending heavily on some veterans and holding on to imminent free agents in a last-ditch effort to compete. He underspent on investments in the team's future -- scouting, international development, executive and analytic talent. So you can say he was a cheapskate in certain respects, but to me that's the wrong, and much too nice, a word.

The Angelos sons have, in large part, turned things on their head. They absolutely have been cheapskates in terms of the immediate success of the team, including of course the major league payroll and, anecdotally, other items like MASN and broadcasters. They have, on the other hand, made investments in the longer-term future of the team, in amounts we don't know, of the kind their father eschewed. I believe they have gone too far in cutting payrolls, and that doing so has hurt, and will continue to hurt, the team by eroding its fan base. And some of their economies seem, to an outsider, either short-sighted or just weird. But to me every one of the team's decisions that I'm aware of since John (and Lou? By the way, Louis Angelos is listed first among the 29 lawyers on the website of the dwindling Peter Angelos, P.C. law firm) Angelos took over is consistent with either (a) their decision to sell the team, or a large chunk of it, after Peter Angelos dies or (b) a decision to take a long, hard look at selling the team or some of it after that event. The team won't be sold while Peter Angelos is alive, because that would lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in additional income tax. I can explain that if anyone's interested, but this post is more than long enough. I believe it's likely that the Angeloses have concluded that, after the taxes on Peter's estate are paid, they will lack the funds or the income to field a competitive team, or they just aren't interested in the strain and frustration of operating the team on a hand-to-mouth basis. It may even be the case that they expect the other MLB owners to insist on financially stronger ownership of the Orioles. 

 

[Aristotelian]

One thing I will say on behalf of DJ. He has a solid OBP with > 10% walk rate. He is one of the few O's to put together good ABs on a regular basis. We saw a glimpse of that last night. I don't think he will replace all of Mancini but with his power and OBP he is not far off. That may be more a reflection of Mancini's flaws than DJs value but I think people are looking at the batting average and dismissing DJ. To be honest I wouldn't mind Mountcastle getting demoted for a while to get a longer look at DJ.

[Bahama O's Fan]

1 hour ago, Aristotelian said:

One thing I will say on behalf of DJ. He has a solid OBP with > 10% walk rate. He is one of the few O's to put together good ABs on a regular basis. We saw a glimpse of that last night. I don't think he will replace all of Mancini but with his power and OBP he is not far off. That may be more a reflection of Mancini's flaws than DJs value but I think people are looking at the batting average and dismissing DJ. To be honest I wouldn't mind Mountcastle getting demoted for a while to get a longer look at DJ.

Yes, I find his at bats better than alot of other players 

[spiritof66]

1 hour ago, Aristotelian said:

One thing I will say on behalf of DJ. He has a solid OBP with > 10% walk rate. He is one of the few O's to put together good ABs on a regular basis. We saw a glimpse of that last night. I don't think he will replace all of Mancini but with his power and OBP he is not far off. That may be more a reflection of Mancini's flaws than DJs value but I think people are looking at the batting average and dismissing DJ. To be honest I wouldn't mind Mountcastle getting demoted for a while to get a longer look at DJ.

True about his taking pitches, but he still strikes out a lot.  We haven't seen the power this year -- just 2 HRs and a .329 SLG. It will be harder to find him ABs once Santander comes back, unless Mountcastle gets benched or demoted, both of which seem pretty unlikely to me, or there's an injury.

 

[wildcard]

DJ's offense has not been very consistent.  Sometimes hot.  Sometimes cold.   Maybe that is just him getting adjusted to the league.   But its hard for me to see DJ stay healthy and productive enough to be a 30 homer/100 RBI guy.   Mancini can do that with the right support around him.

Mountcastle is 24.  DJ is 27.  By the time Mountcastle is 27 he should be putting up numbers like Mancini does.  Probably before that.

[Aristotelian]

18 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

True about his taking pitches, but he still strikes out a lot.  We haven't seen the power this year -- just 2 HRs and a .329 SLG. It will be harder to find him ABs once Santander comes back, unless Mountcastle gets benched or demoted, both of which seem pretty unlikely to me, or there's an injury.

 

There is nothing pretty about DJ's game but I can live with the K's with high OBP. In fact he has the second highest OBP on the team only to Mullins and it feels like his hitting could pick up.  If Mountcastle still has a .250 OBP in June I might be ready for him to work on things with less pressure.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, wildcard said:

DJ's offense has not been very consistent.  Sometimes hot.  Sometimes cold.   Maybe that is just him getting adjusted to the league.   But its hard for me to see DJ stay healthy and productive enough to be a 30 homer/100 RBI guy.   Mancini can do that with the right support around him.

Yea he's probably not a 30 HR guy, as for RBI, well he would need guys like DJ Stewart hitting in front of him getting on base.

Which is why citing RBIs is dumb.

[wildcard]

10 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Yea he's probably not a 30 HR guy, as for RBI, well he would need guys like DJ Stewart hitting in front of him getting on base.

Which is why citing RBIs is dumb.

Hitting with runners in scoring position is a skill that causes RBIs. Its called situational hitting these days.  If you can't recognize that.................