Do these comments on the Tigers’ rebuild attempt apply to the Orioles?

[Frobby]

Fangraphs has a long piece up talking about the fact that the Tigers still haven’t turned the corner after multiple years of rebuilding.    The whole article can be read with an eye towards whether the Orioles are in a parallel situation, but I quote this part for consideration:

What brought the Tigers to this point seems to be that they have attempted to build a new house with only one type of material: prospects. Their free agent acquisitions over the past several years have all been single-season stopgaps, with the running joke among Tigers fans being that any free agent pick-up who does better than anticipated will be traded by mid-season (

Mike Fiers is probably the best example of this, along with the aforementioned Alex Avila trade). The team’s reliance on prospects may still pan out, as we’re only beginning to see players slowly make their debuts, and hotly anticipated prospects like Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene are still shy of major league readiness. It would be nice to see the Tigers make bolder, long-term offseason moves on the free agent market, though, rather than approaching free agency with a single-season mentality.

The Tigers have definitely spent money internationally, but at present most of their international prospects have yet to debut. Outfielder Roberto Campos was signed to a $2.85 million deal. Then last year the Tigers signed shortstop Christian Santana with a $2.95 million bonus, the biggest international bonus ever spent under Al Avila’s tenure. Since it’s generally a much longer wait to see how international signings pan out, the Tigers will be waiting a few more years to see if these larger investments pay off.

The one thing we can say with certainty right now is that the Tigers are approaching a point where something’s gotta give. Whether you view the rebuild as starting in 2015 or ’17, we’re far enough in that we should be seeing glimmers of hope for the future, but instead the Tigers seem to be on track for another historically bad season, in a line of dismal, disheartening seasons. Were the franchise still under Mike Ilitch, it would be a good bet that there would be a midseason leadership change. In 2017, Dave Dombrowski was fired in early August as the team struggled through the latter part of summer. Al Avila has been given ample opportunity to prove himself at this juncture, and his job seems the likeliest to be in jeopardy.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-detroit-tigers-should-be-better-than-this-by-now/

[Sports Guy]

Yes

[Ripken]

Sounds like it.  I am willing to let this mess go through this year since covid really screwed everything up.  However, I'm done watching the junk rentals at this point.  They need to get AR, and whomever else can help, in Baltimore in 2022.  I hope that's Gunnar and GrayRod or something like that.  And they need to add at least one real FA.  This should be a .500 team next year.

[LTO's]

No. The Orioles “rebuild” has not been as long and they have more talent at the ML level.

[UMDTerrapins]

I feel like my understanding of what comes next is minimal. Are the Orioles for sale at some point soon? And depending on that answer, what kind of payroll will we be working with when we’re maxing out what the organization can produce talent-wise? All the cost cutting makes sense if we’re positioning to sell. If not, is it a warning sign that we’ll never have the payroll competitiveness again that we’ve had since the move to Camden Yards. Without knowing that macro info, I’m pretty clueless about how much we can do in terms of free agency. And how to approach Means/Mancini. And more. 

[tntoriole]

Avila was hired in summer 2015 ...Elias was hired in Mid Nov 2018

Elias had essentially no ability to impact in the initial 2018 offseason compared to someone coming on in summer like Avila did so basically Avila has had 6 offseasons and Elias has had two with one of them being COVID

 

No comparison imho.   If we get to end of 2023 season still in last place then yes. 

[wildcard]

Reading the whole article I imagine it does not tell the whole story but the Tiger's rebuild sound very different from the O's.   They went with Ron Gardenhire as manager  and Rick Anderson as pitching coach.  There is no talk of analytics early in their rebuild.  They hired Chris Fetter as their major league pitching coach last off season under AJ Hinch.   That is the move toward analytics.   Its late in the process.

Elias began building with analytics from the day he was hired with Sig and Holt.  The analytics started in the minors with hiring coaches that knew how to use them and teach them.   Holt has only moved to the majors in the third year after building the analytic structure in the minors.  That does not sound like the way the Tigers built their rebuild.

[Sports Guy]

6 hours ago, tntoriole said:

Avila was hired in summer 2015 ...Elias was hired in Mid Nov 2018

Elias had essentially no ability to impact in the initial 2018 offseason compared to someone coming on in summer like Avila did so basically Avila has had 6 offseasons and Elias has had two with one of them being COVID

 

No comparison imho.   If we get to end of 2023 season still in last place then yes. 

And the Tigers won 86 games in 2016.  They have been terrible ever since. The  2017 team had a lot of talent but they pitched so poorly.  The Jordan Zimmerman and Anibel Sanchez signings really hurt them. 

 

They had some FA contracts that really hurt them. The  2017 team, that had 64 wins, had a payroll of almost 200 million.  The 2018 team was about 126 million and 2019 was about 115M.

They had several immovable contracts that really hurt them.  People are saying they started sooner than the Os and that's true.  The difference is the Os were able to get out of their contracts/higher salaried guys far easier and it allowed them to get more depth and talent back.  Also,  Elias came into the organization with far more young talent than Avila had. Avila had far more ML talent.  

So, their paths were different.  Elias came into a team that was always going to rebuild and Avila came to a team expecting to win.

The Tigers also had a few assets, JD Martinez, Verlander and Wilson that they turned into basically nothing (Cameron never amounted to anything; Candelario still may provide some value).  Avila failing on those trades really hurt the organization.

They currently have the second best farm system according to MLB.com.  

The ML team has a lot of intriguing guys in the rotation, led by Casey Mize, who is one of the best prospects in baseball.  I would rather have their rotation than ours.  I would much rather have our positional talent.

I don't see them as overall that much different....and then there is the idea that the Tigers play in an easier division, so they could be closer to contention than us.

Both teams needs to start adding real talent to their team and get up their young talent.

[HowAboutThat]

It is beyond doubt that Elias has either a timeline, or a list of specific goals to be met before he switches from acquiring future assets to present assets.

When this year’s trade season starts it will be interesting to see what he acquires. I’m tired of signing useless players. Cheap but useless. Iglesias was quite good and we traded him. Milone wasn’t very good but we traded him. And a bunch of guys who are useless.

I don’t want extensions or long term contracts but I don’t want the Yolmer Sanchez of the world either.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Philip

[Aristotelian]

17 minutes ago, Philip said:

It is beyond doubt that Elias has either a timeline, or a list of specific goals to be met before he switches from acquiring future assets to present assets.

When this year’s trade season starts it will be interesting to see what he acquires. I’m tired of signing useless players. Cheap but useless. Iglesias was quite good and we traded him. Milone wasn’t very good but we traded him. And a bunch of guys who are useless.

I don’t want extensions or long term contracts but I don’t want the Yolmer Sanchez of the world either.

Galvis is close to 1 WAR already with career high OPS and solid defense. I would call that useful. Harvey has been useful. I'm not sure who you are expecting as long as the team is under .500.

[HowAboutThat]

3 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Galvis is close to 1 WAR already with career high OPS and solid defense. I would call that useful. Harvey has been useful. I'm not sure who you are expecting as long as the team is under .500.

Main goal of Mike’s acquisitions so far has been “inexpensive” I.e. “Cheap” so he’s looking for cheap serviceable players. Sanchez was apparently so bad he was released, But the main goal of the FA acquisitions has been “cheap.” If they produce, that’s literally just a bonus. 

But Cheap is the main focus

I would like to see him focus less on inexpensive players and instead look for well-rounded players who have recent consistent success and who can be counted on to help the team on the field and not to be flipped.

I strongly feel there are easily available players who are better than the guys we are currently putting on the field, not because they are plentiful, but because the guys we have on the field are really that bad.

[Aristotelian]

53 minutes ago, Philip said:

Main goal of Mike’s acquisitions so far has been “inexpensive” I.e. “Cheap” so he’s looking for cheap serviceable players. Sanchez was apparently so bad he was released, But the main goal of the FA acquisitions has been “cheap.” If they produce, that’s literally just a bonus. 

But Cheap is the main focus

I would like to see him focus less on inexpensive players and instead look for well-rounded players who have recent consistent success and who can be counted on to help the team on the field and not to be flipped.

I strongly feel there are easily available players who are better than the guys we are currently putting on the field, not because they are plentiful, but because the guys we have on the field are really that bad.

Such as? As you suggested yourself we are interested in placeholder contracts. Anyone better than Harvey/Galvis/Sanchez will be wanting more years as well as dollars. I think Elias is thinking about value and flipping potential, not exactly the same as cheap.

[Camden_yardbird]

God.  I have been screaming this in my criticism of Elias and people have just told me I am crazy.

Not just prospects, but Elias assumed nothing was here sold what he had for pennies on the dollar for single A prospects who are mile away.

Not to mention they are trying to do this in the single worst time to do it for the development of prospects in the history of baseball history, if unforeseen.

You are never going to rebuild solely from prospects.  You have to spend money, you have to sign guys to short deals and see if they can be pieces.  This is a lot easier for big market teams, and that sucks, Manfred is doing his best to ruin this game.  But there's no reason you can't take chances on $10 million / 1 year deals or even $15/ 2 year deals (unless ownership is a problem)  The Yankees got an MVP candidate out of it.

[HowAboutThat]

26 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Such as? As you suggested yourself we are interested in placeholder contracts. Anyone better than Harvey/Galvis/Sanchez will be wanting more years as well as dollars. I think Elias is thinking about value and flipping potential, not exactly the same as cheap.

My point is that Mike’s goal at the moment is cheap rather than good. If he signs somebody cheap and they turn out to be good, well that’s great, but it’s not great because it means the team is better, but because it means he can flip the guy for a future prospect. But “cheap” is the main thing. Valaika is awful but cheap, Sisco is awful but apparently cheaper than the guys we have or could easily get( I disagree with that, but that seems to be the party line.) same for Severino, for Ruiz, for Urias. Galvis isn’t worth anything in trade but is worth his cost right now.

So the disappointment in Franco, for instance, is not that he’s terrible on the field, but that he has no trade value.

I am getting a little impatient with the rebuild, and I want him to switch priorities. I don’t want to blast a lot of money on flops such as we’ve already seen in hideous plenty, but I want legitimate good guys who are reasonably priced and can be expected to give value over the full contract length. 
That is not impossible, it’s not even difficult if you move quickly, something that Dan never did.

Also, Mike’s virtue is supposedly high tech analytics, so he should be able to see opportunity in guys that might be missed by other organizations.

I do not think he is actively trying to lose, if he is I will be very angry. But I do think that he is not trying to win, and he is deliberately avoiding things that would improve the on field product, and it’s time for that to stop.

[Aristotelian]

21 minutes ago, Philip said:

My point is that Mike’s goal at the moment is cheap rather than good. If he signs somebody cheap and they turn out to be good, well that’s great, but it’s not great because it means the team is better, but because it means he can flip the guy for a future prospect. But “cheap” is the main thing. Valaika is awful but cheap, Sisco is awful but apparently cheaper than the guys we have or could easily get( I disagree with that, but that seems to be the party line.) same for Severino, for Ruiz, for Urias. Galvis isn’t worth anything in trade but is worth his cost right now.

So the disappointment in Franco, for instance, is not that he’s terrible on the field, but that he has no trade value.

I am getting a little impatient with the rebuild, and I want him to switch priorities. I don’t want to blast a lot of money on flops such as we’ve already seen in hideous plenty, but I want legitimate good guys who are reasonably priced and can be expected to give value over the full contract length. 
That is not impossible, it’s not even difficult if you move quickly, something that Dan never did.

Also, Mike’s virtue is supposedly high tech analytics, so he should be able to see opportunity in guys that might be missed by other organizations.

I do not think he is actively trying to lose, if he is I will be very angry. But I do think that he is not trying to win, and he is deliberately avoiding things that would improve the on field product, and it’s time for that to stop.

I think you are expecting too much. If we aren't signing anyone long term we need to find value. My expectation is some of these guys will over perform and turn into something but the majority will not. Anything we get is bonus as far as I am concerned. I'm pretty happy with Iglesias, Harvey, Milone, Valdez, Galvis. Sure, Franco has been terrible but who was a better player out there that could hold down 3B on a one year deal? You're not going to win them all when you are talking about replacement level guys.