Olney on O’s losing

[Black_and_Orange]

14 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

So?  Why does that matter?  The 32nd pick and 45th pick are random.  The Orioles could have picked 12th in this years draft and could have had the exact same draft.  

Picking higher also means you have a greater pool in which to sign Creed Williams, John Rhodes, Trenton Craig, etc.

[interloper]

Could not shrug harder.

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

He ignores how they got here. It was dysfunctional with no chance at long term success He references the union. This is all about whining that bad teams don’t overpay for the mid and low level Fa’s like in the old days. That accomplishes nothing. 

Fundamentally, were fans happier when we were winning 63-74 games a year (2001-2011, except for 2004 when we won 78) than they are now?   It’s not a rhetorical question.   People’s opinion on that may vary.   

I think it’s fair to question whether Elias has done a good job of finding cheap talent from other teams.  Even during the period I mentioned we’d occasionally find a Rodrigo Lopez or Jeremy Guthrie.   And you need to find guys like that.   Demonstrating the ability to find/develop some of those is important.

I’m a little less concerned with whether we are bringing in mid-priced free agents.   This might be the winter to do some of that, but I’m not at all concerned that we haven’t done that already.   
 

[Sports Guy]

16 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

What foundation at the MLB level do they have now? It’s still on the way. 

Merrifield, Lynch, Perez, Mondesi…have a few young starters that could be part of the future rotation.

 

[wildcard]

The O's have not been the World Series since 1983 some 38 years ago. They have watched the Astros, Rays and Cubs tank and then go to the World Series.    It seems like a strategy that has a chance to work.   

And the disparity of spending that larger market teams have over smaller market team makes trying to compete on a yearly basis  much less likely than if tanking is involved.  MLB has tried to address this with the luxury tax but its pretty obvious that they have not gone far enough to reign in the spending for the large market teams.  Or by boosting the revenue of the small market teams so  they don't need to tank to compete.

[Moose Milligan]

 

The better article was the one on The Athletic yesterday comparing/contrasting what Zaidi has done with the Giants vs. Elias and the Orioles.  

I guess this franchise can try to start winning when they bring up AR.  

[Sports Guy]

6 minutes ago, Black_and_Orange said:

Picking higher also means you have a greater pool in which to sign Creed Williams, John Rhodes, Trenton Craig, etc.

Yes but most of that pool is tied up into your higher pick.  Now, you can choose to spread it around but by doing that, you may be passing on a better, higher ceiling talent early in hopes to strike gold at a point in the draft where you rarely strike gold.

So yes, that’s an advantage but not to the level people make it out to be.  

[Sports Guy]

19 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

He ignores how they got here. It was dysfunctional with no chance at long term success He references the union. This is all about whining that bad teams don’t overpay for the mid and low level Fa’s like in the old days. That accomplishes nothing. 

Well, he’s right.  The union isn’t happy when teams are tanking on purpose.  That’s why a salary floor is better than a salary cap.

That being said, he is still right.  In fact, he’s right on 2 separate points.  It’s absurd that the team is this bad for this long and the union isn’t happy about these teams doing this, especially for this period of time.

[BohKnowsBmore]

25 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

He ignores how they got here. It was dysfunctional with no chance at long term success He references the union. This is all about whining that bad teams don’t overpay for the mid and low level Fa’s like in the old days. That accomplishes nothing. 

There was absolutely an article on Fangraphs prior to the season making the case that the Orioles should sign someone like Albert Almora or a similar mid/low level FA because they only had Cedric Mullins. Not saying they removed the post, but I can't find it. Anyway, my point was going to be that myopically focusing on "teams need to spend money on players" as the sole factor of analysis potentially leads to some poor baseball decisions, both in the long- AND short-term.

[wildcard]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Fundamentally, were fans happier when we were winning 63-74 games a year (2001-2011, except for 2004 when we won 78) than they are now?   It’s not a rhetorical question.   People’s opinion on that may vary.   

I think it’s fair to question whether Elias has done a good job of finding cheap talent from other teams.  Even during the period I mentioned we’d occasionally find a Rodrigo Lopez or Jeremy Guthrie.   And you need to find guys like that.   Demonstrating the ability to find/develop some of those is important.

I’m a little less concerned with whether we are bringing in mid-priced free agents.   This might be the winter to do some of that, but I’m not at all concerned that we haven’t done that already.   
 

I think he answered your own question here.  If Elias is trying to tank to get high draft choices he does not want to raise the possibility of winning by adding a Guthrie or Rodrigo while tanking.    Hopefully he flips the switch this off season with the arrival of Adley and trying to supplement the team with players to try to win.

[Jammer7]

When Mike Elias took over, the Orioles were a mess throughout the organization. Administratively, personnel-wise, technologically, infrastructure…complete disarray. Whatever people think, there is only just so much money for a team on the lower end of mid-market. The contracts of Chris Davis, and even Alex Cobb, really hamstrung the payroll flexibility. 

That said, these teams were not designed to win. Absolutely true. It was by design, based on the fact that they could not afford to spend at a level to make them compete for a playoff run. So spending any money that takes away from your long range goals seems a bad idea to me. 

I think it is an important distinction to say that these teams were designed to lose, rather than to say they were not designed to win. Hyde had these guys competitive the first two years. They lost a lot of games, but they competed on most nights. This year, very polar performance. Some decent, but mostly just bad. When Holt left the team, for whatever reason, this team played awful baseball. The pitching really suffered, and it has not come back, especially the pen. And the sticky stuff probably has had a big effect on the few decent options in our pen. Anything that has an effect on the grip, and the spin rates of moderate arm talent, is going to affect the pen on this team. Holt put a lot of emphasis on high spin rates and pitching up in the zone. So, now what? 

Going forward, despite the recent hit pieces by Olney and Rosenthal, it should be time for Mike Elias to get his GM on. Haters are always there. It is time to put together a team built to compete for a playoff run. And I think that has been the plan all along. It’s the last year of Davis’ contract, I believe. He held on to the main players at the deadline, though I still think Trey may be dealt in the off-season. They certainly could sign him to an extension, but I do not think it is an obvious need. 

Elias needs to move some of his depth for pitching help that makes sense for this team. A few veteran pitchers to help the rotation and pen would go a long way. There will be many young players in need of R5 protection, so it is time. We cannot rely on Means and four rookies or second year pitchers in the rotation. Make Akin, Kremer, Baumann, Bradish, Zimmerman, Wells, and all of the rest actually earn their way. Hold them accountable and stop holding their hands when they come up. No more mass player development at the ML level would be a welcome change. 

[Sports Guy]

Let’s not forget that the Os have gotten rid of a ton of payroll and saved a lot of money on payroll in 2020.

The whole, there isn’t enough money to do everything is ridiculously wrong.

The team spent 160M on payroll a few years ago and still spent on the draft.  So yes, they ignored other important things but the point is that they still spent all that money.  
 

The money is there to do everything.  You don’t need to decide what you want to focus on.  Even if you want to say, they can only spend 140M max on payroll because they are spending on other things, that is still enough payroll to do whatever you want.

[eddie83]

30 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Merrifield, Lynch, Perez, Mondesi…have a few young starters that could be part of the future rotation.

 

And where did those young starters come from?  The bargain bin at KMart? 
 

The veteran players you mention a couple are over 30. Even those players are internal  I would take Mullins, Hays, Mountcastle over that group if you are looking at 23/24 seasons. 

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

And where did those young starters come from?  The bargain bin at KMart? 
 

The veteran players you mention a couple are over 30. Even those players are internal  I would take Mullins, Hays, Mountcastle over that group if you are looking at 23/24 seasons. 

I would trade Hays and Mountcastle for Lynch in a heartbeat.

Mullins?  We will see.

The bottom line is that the Royals decided that they should try to put a better product on the field.  In addition to adding guys, they also didn’t trade guys like Merrifield and Duffy(he has been traded since)

Now, you can argue that they should have but when discussing the point Olney is making, it is fair to bring up KC.

Now, you can disagree that KC did the right thing.  That’s fine.  But to me, that’s a separate point to what Olney is making.  In other words, this is a multi layered discussion.

 

[crowmst3k!]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

No, I think the point is that being a completely non competitive team for this long is absurd and not necessary and not the way things should be done.

And he’s right.

Based.