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

[Moose Milligan]

21 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Our terrible returns for Machado, Britton, Gausman, Bundy, etc..., is what is really delaying us. So far all we have to show for it is Dillon Tate and Bruce Zimmerman. Very disappointing. 

Yeah, I was pissed that we didn't get anything better, especially for Machado.  You forgot Kremer there, too (which is easily understood).  

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Our terrible returns for Machado, Britton, Gausman, Bundy, etc..., is what is really delaying us. So far all we have to show for it is Dillon Tate and Bruce Zimmerman. Very disappointing. 

This is partially right...it’s not the returns..it’s the timing of the trades, especially Britton and Machado, that hurt us.

[Moose Milligan]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

This is partially right...it’s not the returns..it’s the timing of the trades, especially Britton and Machado, that hurt us.

You're saying had they been traded a year earlier we'd have gotten better returns?  I'd agree with that.  

[Sports Guy]

7 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

You're saying had they been traded a year earlier we'd have gotten better returns?  I'd agree with that.  

They both should have been dealt after 2016.

What they got for them really wasn’t that bad.

Britton wasn’t pitching that great and had some injury issues in 2018.  To get someone with even decent upside like Tate wasn’t a bad trade.

Same With Manny.  Diaz was a top 50 guy (and is still good but can’t stay healthy) and guys like Bannon, Kremer and Pop all had/have upside to be valuable players.

If they don’t work out, that doesn’t change the process of the trade.

The only question I have, w/r/t Manny is could they have gotten more talent if they accepted less quantity.  I wanted Lux and May for him.  Both were in A ball and neither was a top 100 guy.  That doesn’t mean LA would have dealt either but just saying, if they had, quality over quantity would have been warranted imo.

Otherwise, I don’t see that they got bad returns for them.

As for the other trades, the Angelos family screwed up the 2018 trades, especially Gausman and we still have to wait and see on the Bundy return.  Those guys have barely played since we got them.

[SteveA]

3 hours ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Our terrible returns for Machado, Britton, Gausman, Bundy, etc..., is what is really delaying us. So far all we have to show for it is Dillon Tate and Bruce Zimmerman. Very disappointing. 

We traded 3 months of Manny Machado and we got Kremer, who may wind up in our rotation for a few years, and Diaz who still has potential.  For 3 months of Manny, I think that's a pretty good return.

The Gausman/O'Day deal was pretty much a salary dump, yet we may have gotten a pretty decent pitcher in Zimmermann.  Given the nature of that deal, if we get a major league contributor, that's a plus to me.

Britton deal might be a failure, that damn offseason injury hurt his value. 

Bundy too soon to tell but given that he is having multiple years in the Angels rotation it looks likely we won't have gotten enough value back in that one.

But on the whole, I wouldn't say those deals are quite as bad as you characterize them.

All the usual disclaimers apply: we could have done better by dealing Manny and Britton earlier.  Gausman deal was about money and not rebuilding.  But given those constraints, I don't think we did that badly.

 

[LTO's]

3 hours ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Our terrible returns for Machado, Britton, Gausman, Bundy, etc..., is what is really delaying us. So far all we have to show for it is Dillon Tate and Bruce Zimmerman. Very disappointing. 

How can you say the return for Bundy is “terrible” right now? Just curious. The DD trades look absolutely awful, yes. 

[spiritof66]

On 5/15/2021 at 5:31 PM, owknows said:

I suspect you may ask 10 different people and get 10 different opinions.

There is no consensus "we".

I'm a fan of the Tampa Bay sustainability model. I think we've spent enough time in the desert, to enjoy a few sips from the canteen. Chugging down a bunch of free agents is what led us into the desert to begin with.

If it were mine to do, I'd look for a middle tier 3B... and stick Valaika at 2B for the duration. Otherwise, I'm standing pat and waiting for the finer wines in the basement to mature.

One of the key ingredients of Tampa Bay's strategy is that when a young (that is, with a couple of years or more of team control left) player establishes substantial trade value, he's gone. Are you a fan of that? I'm not, although I recognize that it's a direction the Orioles may need to go in -- and it's a whole lot better than the Angelos Plan of recent years, in which you hold onto those guys for no good reason while their time with team control and trade value dwindle. 

In a weird way, Tampa Bay has an advantage, for now, in following that plan. Before trading talented players early in their careers, most teams would consider the effect on their fanbase and attendance of not having long-term star players, but Tampa Bay's current fanbase and attendance put it in more of a "when you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose" posture. 

 

 

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

One of the key ingredients of Tampa Bay's strategy is that when a young (that is, with a couple of years or more of team control left) player establishes substantial trade value, he's gone. Are you a fan of that? I'm not, although I recognize that it's a direction the Orioles may need to go in -- and it's a whole lot better than the Angelos Plan of recent years, in which you hold onto those guys for no good reason while their time with team control and trade value dwindle. 

In a weird way, Tampa Bay has an advantage, for now, in following that plan. Before trading talented players early in their careers, most teams would consider the effect on their fanbase and attendance of not having long-term star players, but Tampa Bay's current fanbase and attendance put it in more of a "when you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose" posture. 

 

 

If you can get the fanbase behind the idea of intentionally tanking for three plus years I don't see why you couldn't get them behind the idea of actually winning games by flipping players.

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

One of the key ingredients of Tampa Bay's strategy is that when a young (that is, with a couple of years or more of team control left) player establishes substantial trade value, he's gone. Are you a fan of that? I'm not, although I recognize that it's a direction the Orioles may need to go in -- and it's a whole lot better than the Angelos Plan of recent years, in which you hold onto those guys for no good reason while their time with team control and trade value dwindle. 

In a weird way, Tampa Bay has an advantage, for now, in following that plan. Before trading talented players early in their careers, most teams would consider the effect on their fanbase and attendance of not having long-term star players, but Tampa Bay's current fanbase and attendance put it in more of a "when you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose" posture. 

 

 

There will be rare exceptions (what they mean to the city, organization, generational type guy) but for the most part, I think getting rid of basically any player before they hit 30 is the way to go.  
 

Sometimes, that means trading them at 27, sometimes it means 29.  Situations and who the player is dictate all of those things but my basic rule of thumb would be to get rid of them by the time they hit 30.

[Moose Milligan]

Fun OH fact:  SG's great grand pappy is Bill DeWitt, the General Manager of the Reds who thought Frank Robinson was "an old 30" and traded him to the Orioles!

[glenn__davis]

7 hours ago, SteveA said:

We traded 3 months of Manny Machado and we got Kremer, who may wind up in our rotation for a few years, and Diaz who still has potential.  For 3 months of Manny, I think that's a pretty good return.

The Gausman/O'Day deal was pretty much a salary dump, yet we may have gotten a pretty decent pitcher in Zimmermann.  Given the nature of that deal, if we get a major league contributor, that's a plus to me.

Britton deal might be a failure, that damn offseason injury hurt his value. 

Bundy too soon to tell but given that he is having multiple years in the Angels rotation it looks likely we won't have gotten enough value back in that one.

But on the whole, I wouldn't say those deals are quite as bad as you characterize them.

All the usual disclaimers apply: we could have done better by dealing Manny and Britton earlier.  Gausman deal was about money and not rebuilding.  But given those constraints, I don't think we did that badly.

 

I agree on the Machado and Britton deals, though I'm pretty bearish on Diaz.

The Gausman deal was a salary dump that didn't need to be.  They were more worried about saving salary than they were making the team better.  That was probably the deal that irritated me the most.

People forget the Schoop deal, which in the grand scheme of things was a big fat zero as well.  We got a nice season out of Villar, but Luis Ortiz I believe is gone and Jean Carmona is nowhere to be found in the minors.  

As for the Bundy deal, he had a nice short season last year but has been awful so far this year.  Meanwhile a few of the young pitchers we got for him are doing nicely in the minors.  I don't really count Bundy as part of the firesale anyway.

In the end I think I gave the 2018 firesale a "D" at the time and I stand by that.  Machado and Britton were what they were but we should have gotten more for Gausman and Schoop.  Ultimately when you do something like that you hope to start to see the core of your next contending team, and that just wasn't the case.  As many others have mentioned though, waiting too long no doubt hurt the value they got back.

[Pickles]

I don't know enough about the day to day machinations of the Tigers' organization to speak too intelligently about what is going on there, and I doubt anyone else here does either.  So making direct comparisons there seems a bit silly.

However, as a general meditation on a rebuild, specific to the Orioles' situation, this conversation has some merit.

First, many have rightfully focused on the most noticeable and prominent aspect of such a rebuild: Player acquisition.  

I think the O's record is mixed, or neutral, in this regard under Elias.  He hasn't had the opportunities to trade away ML talent for prospects, not significant ones anyway, so there isn't much to talk about here.  He's only overseen two amateur drafts.  There's not a lot of information to go on there.  Some will rightfully point out drafting Adley where he did wasn't much of an accomplishment.  Some will criticize the Kjerstad pick.  Well, we don't know enough about that yet either.  That's not to mention that with the lower picks we have even less to evaluate.  It's going to take time to fairly grade the recent drafts.  The same is largely true of their international efforts.  It's great to see the change there- but that's far more attributable to change in ownership than anything else.  And it remains to be seen if Elias and Co. are going to capitalize on the opportunity.

So while player acquisition is the more obvious aspect of a rebuild, and the one that draws the strongest of fan opinions, 2+ years into a rebuild how valid those opinions are or aren't isn't clear yet.  (Except process decisions.  Opinions on process are quite valid almost immediately.  What I find though is we have less insight into those processes than we think, and it often devolves into people attributing motive to processes which they can't possibly know, and then attacking their own attributions.)

Second, what few have touched on, is the less obvious, and perhaps even more important aspect of a rebuild: Player development.  Acquiring talent is important.  However, if you don't create an environment for that talent to thrive, then you aren't going to succeed.  Sure, there are the Mannys and the Mussinas- guys that Showalter said you "can't screw up."  But there aren't enough of them to build an organization around.  You're going to have to develop late bloomers, cast offs, late round picks, etc. into useable ML players.

And on this front, I have been very happy with the O's progress so far.  There's development that's going on at the MiL level, but in a rebuild it will extend to the ML level as well.  Again, these processes are largely unseen and I doubt too many of us are that informed to have strong opinions about them.  I mean, does anyone want to actually posit they should be telling the O's how to conduct batting practice, or soft toss, or throwing programs?  So we're going to have to judge results, and imo the results have been encouraging.  Things I am most encouraged about:

1) Veteran players are performing here.  Guys like Iguelias and Galvis and Harvey (Franco so far is an exception) are joining our program and showing improvements.  This isn't likely to change a lot about the rebuild, but it is encouraging nonetheless.

2) The development of the young major leaguers.  This is likely to change a lot about the rebuild and there is a lot to like so far.  The development of Means, and the specific attribution of it to his work with the staff, has been a minor miracle.  We've seen Mullins taking big strides this year, likewise after a developmental decision.  These are the two "star" examples so far, but guys like Hays, Santander, Stewart, Mountcastle are establishing themselves as major league contributors.  It hasn't been a perfect record of course- calling Cisco- but it seems leap years ahead of where we had been for so long.

3) The development of the minor league players.  The cancellation of last year, and how little we've seen so far, leave this incomplete, but there are some encouraging signs.  The MiL teams played winning ball in 2019, and seem to be well on the way to repeating that in 2021.  Now, winning % at the MiL level isn't what it is all about, but I'd rather win than lose, always, and we've seen concrete improvement.  Of course, more important to the rebuild is the development of the individual players.  The early returns on Hall and Rodriguez are fantastic.  Despite some of the unreasonable agnst in the Adley thread, there has been absolutely nothing wrong with his performance and development so far.  There's guys like Henderson and Hall who have exceeded expectations.  I mean, other than Kjerstad, and that seems to be an act of God, has any of our prospects seriously disappointed of late?  I can't recall.

4) This is kind of a composite point as it entails both development and acquisition.  The bullpen.  In today's day and age, there is little excuse for not having a solid bullpen.  If you are proactive and aggressive you can compile a solid bullpen for virtually nothing.  Duquette did it.  It was the backbone of his success.  We've seen yearly improvments in our pen since Elias got here, and we have a cheap, solid, flexible bullpen situation right now.  If they were still trotting out Mike Wright to pitch 70 innings of a 7.00 ERA, I'd be far more critical.  This shows a FO that is doing their diligence.  Hopefully, we can turn some of these RP arms into future pieces.

 

So, I don't have anything to say about the Tigers.  I think trying to make a comparison to their situation is pretty futile, and not particularly illuminating.  But as far as the O's rebuild goes, I'm pretty encouraged.

[survivedc]

Everyone would have liked to see stars come back in those trades, but if we got a few bullpen arms (Zimmerman, kremer, Tate) a utility infielder (bannon) and a part time corner outfielder (Diaz) back and a couple of those guys contribute to a winning team I’d call them a success. Just maybe not as much as we wanted them to be.

[Philip]

4 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

There will be rare exceptions (what they mean to the city, organization, generational type guy) but for the most part, I think getting rid of basically any player before they hit 30 is the way to go.  
 

Sometimes, that means trading them at 27, sometimes it means 29.  Situations and who the player is dictate all of those things but my basic rule of thumb would be to get rid of them by the time they hit 30.

I think “peak value” is a better guide than “before 30,” but I do agree with you.

[Philip]

2 hours ago, Pickles said:

I don't know enough about the day to day machinations of the Tigers' organization to speak too intelligently about what is going on there, and I doubt anyone else here does either.  So making direct comparisons there seems a bit silly.

However, as a general meditation on a rebuild, specific to the Orioles' situation, this conversation has some merit.

First, many have rightfully focused on the most noticeable and prominent aspect of such a rebuild: Player acquisition.  

I think the O's record is mixed, or neutral, in this regard under Elias.  He hasn't had the opportunities to trade away ML talent for prospects, not significant ones anyway, so there isn't much to talk about here.  He's only overseen two amateur drafts.  There's not a lot of information to go on there.  Some will rightfully point out drafting Adley where he did wasn't much of an accomplishment.  Some will criticize the Kjerstad pick.  Well, we don't know enough about that yet either.  That's not to mention that with the lower picks we have even less to evaluate.  It's going to take time to fairly grade the recent drafts.  The same is largely true of their international efforts.  It's great to see the change there- but that's far more attributable to change in ownership than anything else.  And it remains to be seen if Elias and Co. are going to capitalize on the opportunity.

So while player acquisition is the more obvious aspect of a rebuild, and the one that draws the strongest of fan opinions, 2+ years into a rebuild how valid those opinions are or aren't isn't clear yet.  (Except process decisions.  Opinions on process are quite valid almost immediately.  What I find though is we have less insight into those processes than we think, and it often devolves into people attributing motive to processes which they can't possibly know, and then attacking their own attributions.)

Second, what few have touched on, is the less obvious, and perhaps even more important aspect of a rebuild: Player development.  Acquiring talent is important.  However, if you don't create an environment for that talent to thrive, then you aren't going to succeed.  Sure, there are the Mannys and the Mussinas- guys that Showalter said you "can't screw up."  But there aren't enough of them to build an organization around.  You're going to have to develop late bloomers, cast offs, late round picks, etc. into useable ML players.

And on this front, I have been very happy with the O's progress so far.  There's development that's going on at the MiL level, but in a rebuild it will extend to the ML level as well.  Again, these processes are largely unseen and I doubt too many of us are that informed to have strong opinions about them.  I mean, does anyone want to actually posit they should be telling the O's how to conduct batting practice, or soft toss, or throwing programs?  So we're going to have to judge results, and imo the results have been encouraging.  Things I am most encouraged about:

1) Veteran players are performing here.  Guys like Iguelias and Galvis and Harvey (Franco so far is an exception) are joining our program and showing improvements.  This isn't likely to change a lot about the rebuild, but it is encouraging nonetheless.

2) The development of the young major leaguers.  This is likely to change a lot about the rebuild and there is a lot to like so far.  The development of Means, and the specific attribution of it to his work with the staff, has been a minor miracle.  We've seen Mullins taking big strides this year, likewise after a developmental decision.  These are the two "star" examples so far, but guys like Hays, Santander, Stewart, Mountcastle are establishing themselves as major league contributors.  It hasn't been a perfect record of course- calling Cisco- but it seems leap years ahead of where we had been for so long.

3) The development of the minor league players.  The cancellation of last year, and how little we've seen so far, leave this incomplete, but there are some encouraging signs.  The MiL teams played winning ball in 2019, and seem to be well on the way to repeating that in 2021.  Now, winning % at the MiL level isn't what it is all about, but I'd rather win than lose, always, and we've seen concrete improvement.  Of course, more important to the rebuild is the development of the individual players.  The early returns on Hall and Rodriguez are fantastic.  Despite some of the unreasonable agnst in the Adley thread, there has been absolutely nothing wrong with his performance and development so far.  There's guys like Henderson and Hall who have exceeded expectations.  I mean, other than Kjerstad, and that seems to be an act of God, has any of our prospects seriously disappointed of late?  I can't recall.

4) This is kind of a composite point as it entails both development and acquisition.  The bullpen.  In today's day and age, there is little excuse for not having a solid bullpen.  If you are proactive and aggressive you can compile a solid bullpen for virtually nothing.  Duquette did it.  It was the backbone of his success.  We've seen yearly improvments in our pen since Elias got here, and we have a cheap, solid, flexible bullpen situation right now.  If they were still trotting out Mike Wright to pitch 70 innings of a 7.00 ERA, I'd be far more critical.  This shows a FO that is doing their diligence.  Hopefully, we can turn some of these RP arms into future pieces.

 

So, I don't have anything to say about the Tigers.  I think trying to make a comparison to their situation is pretty futile, and not particularly illuminating.  But as far as the O's rebuild goes, I'm pretty encouraged.

 Excellent comment. Nothing to argue with, although I would suggest that Stewart and Mountcastle are not doing very well, But they were drafted by the previous regime.

The most important thing is making guys BETTER. Mullins and Means are BETTER, So much so that one may be a star and the other one might very well be a daily regular, we’re beforehand one was a fourth outfielder and the other one wasn’t even on the radar. Whoever gets credit for those guys, that’s who should get an extension.