Olney on O’s losing

[sportsfan8703]

23 hours ago, GuidoSarducci said:

Its also wrong the Dodgers can spend like $300m on payroll, $100m more than even the second place Yanks.  

The Orioles are following a strategy that will allow them to (hopefully) ultimately compete with teams like the Red Sox and Yankees who can afford FA mistakes and not be crippled.

This strategy includes cutting payroll includes during years in which they can't be competitive due to lack of cheap in-house talent, so they can sign FAs which will make them competive when their cheap in-house talent matriculates to the majors. 

Hate the game not the players.

The Dodgers, Yankees, and Res Sox, can just laugh off $20mm annual FA flops. Meanwhile, Chris Davis crippled our franchise. 
 

Plus those teams were spending crazy money in the international market before the new slot system. The slot system started what 5 years ago tops?  It takes a long time to develop 16 yo. Not to mention, their year’s of head starts on every team gave them a huge amount of currency to trade for players at the MLB level.  So it’s really not just the salaries at the MLB level, it’s also the 10’s of million they were handing out annually to int’l signings.

[Frobby]

8 hours ago, Mr. Chewbacca Jr. said:

Where are you getting the information about money being put into escrow every year? I searched online, on Twitter - and the highest results are actually your posts on the Hangout. I know you know your stuff - so legit curious to learn more. 

Either way, we're talking about less than $6m in both 2021 and 2022, $3.5m from 2023-2032, or a combination of the two. That's relatively little for a major league team and quite frankly, should be a non-factor in free agency. We don't factor the $500k they pay to Bobby Bonilla every year, either.

To my original point, the Orioles can certainly pay free agents this offseason. The contract terms for Davis, Cobb, and all the other deferred contracts are already set in stone. The O's can structure free agent contracts accordingly. They don't need to wait for Davis' contract to expire to suddenly be freed of some financial restraints that are holding them back from spending money.

I am getting it straight from the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Article XVI, Deferred Compensation:

"Deferred compensation obligations incurred in a Contract executed on or after September 30, 2002 must be fully funded by the Club, in an amount equal to the present value of the total deferred compensation obligation, on or before the second July 1 following the championship season in which the deferred compensation is earned. For purposes of this Article XVI, full funding of the present value of deferred compensation obligations shall mean that the Club must have funded, for the duration of and without interruption in each year, the current present value of the then outstanding deferred payments, discounted by 5% annually. If the prime interest rate in effect at The J.P. Morgan Chase Bank on the immediately preceding November 1 is 7% or higher, the Parties shall meet and confer regarding this Article XVI discount rate and may, with due notice to the Clubs, amend such discount rate effective the next succeeding July 1."

71505 MLB CBA TOC.qxd (filesusr.com)     The clause goes on to say that "(a) the funding method used by the Club must be such that the amount(s) funded are exclusively for the uses and purposes of satisfying the deferred compensation obligation(s) being funded; [and] (b) the amount(s) funded are maintained in the form of unencumbered assets comprising cash or cash equivalents and/or registered and unrestricted readily marketable securities, unless a Club obtains the Parties’ prior written authorization of an alternative form..."    That is what I am referring to shorthand as an "escrow."    

So, just to be completely clear, the $6 mm for Davis' 2016 season had to be "fully funded" by July 1, 2018, the 2017 comp had to be "fully funded" by July 1, 2019, etc.   This year, the O's are paying Davis $17 mm plus they had to "fully fund" his $6 mm in deferred comp from 2019 on July 1, 2021.   The final "fully funded" payment of $6 mm, relating to 2022, is due to be paid into escrow on July 1, 2024.   The deferred comp begins flowing to Davis in 2023 and continues through 2037.   The payments are $3.5 mm/yr for the first 10 years, $1.4 mm/yr for the next 5 years.   (These figures need to be adjusted slightly due to the fact that only 60 games were played in 2020, knocking the deferred comp due to Davis for that year down by $3.78 mm.)

As to your point that the O's should have cash available to pay free agents despite their obligations to Davis (and others), I don't disagree.    They just have less cash available than they would if they didn't have those obligations.   That's why I said the Davis contract "hampers" them, but doesn't "cripple" them.

Then there is the other question of whether signing expensive free agents at this stage of the rebuild makes sense, or whether it is better to wait until the young core of the team is a little closer to gelling.   To me, that is the bigger issue, and I do not think there has to be an all or none answer.   It depends on the opportunity.

[Moose Milligan]

Oh look at Frobby putting his lawyering pants on.  

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

The Dodgers, Yankees, and Res Sox, can just laugh off $20mm annual FA flops. Meanwhile, Chris Davis crippled our franchise. 
 

Plus those teams were spending crazy money in the international market before the new slot system. The slot system started what 5 years ago tops?  It takes a long time to develop 16 yo. Not to mention, their year’s of head starts on every team gave them a huge amount of currency to trade for players at the MLB level.  So it’s really not just the salaries at the MLB level, it’s also the 10’s of million they were handing out annually to int’l signings.

How?

If you take the Davis contract away how much changes?

Imagine a parallel dimension in which the O's don't bring back Davis, are the O's suddenly good?  Probably not.

While it was an obvious poor deal it isn't the root of all that ails the O's.

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

How?

If you take the Davis contract away how much changes?

Imagine a parallel dimension in which the O's don't bring back Davis, are the O's suddenly good?  Probably not.

While it was an obvious poor deal it isn't the root of all that ails the O's.

I agree.  

I'm not so much interested in the dollars coming off the books as I'm interested in him just finally, hopefully being gone and not having to watch him play and not having to see how he clogs the roster.  

If he's on the roster somehow next year and it's affecting RMC/Mancini...I will be irate.  

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

The Dodgers, Yankees, and Res Sox, can just laugh off $20mm annual FA flops. Meanwhile, Chris Davis crippled our franchise. 
 

Plus those teams were spending crazy money in the international market before the new slot system. The slot system started what 5 years ago tops?  It takes a long time to develop 16 yo. Not to mention, their year’s of head starts on every team gave them a huge amount of currency to trade for players at the MLB level.  So it’s really not just the salaries at the MLB level, it’s also the 10’s of million they were handing out annually to int’l signings.

Davis didn’t cripple anything.  His contract is a blip.  

[Moose Milligan]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

Davis didn’t cripple anything.  His contract is a blip.  

It was money they could have given Manny.  I'm not sure if they would have given it to Manny as I'm not sure if they were smart enough to do that.  But it is a possibility.  

[sportsfan8703]

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

How?

If you take the Davis contract away how much changes?

Imagine a parallel dimension in which the O's don't bring back Davis, are the O's suddenly good?  Probably not.

While it was an obvious poor deal it isn't the root of all that ails the O's.

Nope wouldn’t have changed the inevitable, but I do think it completely closed the window on Machado and/or Schoop being resigned. Again that doesn’t change much, but we could’ve decided to do a mini retool instead of a complete 5 year+ blowup. 

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, sportsfan8703 said:

Nope wouldn’t have changed the inevitable, but I do think it completely closed the window on Machado and/or Schoop being resigned. Again that doesn’t change much, but we could’ve decided to do a mini retool instead of a complete 5 year+ blowup. 

That wasn't going to happen anyway.

Well Schoop might have been but if he had he still would have been traded off once 2018 happened.

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, Moose Milligan said:

It was money they could have given Manny.  I'm not sure if they would have given it to Manny as I'm not sure if they were smart enough to do that.  But it is a possibility.  

It is money they could have given to anybody else with a pulse.   There are tons of really good players making less than what we pay Davis each year.

As to Manny, I said the day that the Davis contract was signed that my biggest fear is that it would keep us from extending Manny.   But it could be the case that the team already had decided they wouldn't be able to extend Manny, so they signed Davis as a kind of consolation prize.    If so -- some consolation!

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Oh look at Frobby putting his lawyering pants on.  

Well, he asked....

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

It was money they could have given Manny.  I'm not sure if they would have given it to Manny as I'm not sure if they were smart enough to do that.  But it is a possibility.  

We heard they were 10M apart on Manny.  I don’t think Davis had anything to do with it and they may have tried to sign Manny before the Davis deal even happened.  
 

Either way, I don’t see the impact there.

It was just a stupid contract from the beginning.

There is a very good argument that the worst thing to ever happen to this franchise was making the playoffs in 1996…when PA nixed trading guys and  instead they were buyers.  He ended up being right and from then on, he thought he knew everything.  It was his idea to keep Davis and bid an insanely stupid number.  

[Frobby]

13 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

We heard they were 10M apart on Manny.  I don’t think Davis had anything to do with it and they may have tried to sign Manny before the Davis deal even happened.  

I think the referenced negotiation with Manny took place long before the Davis contract.   But of course that wasn’t the last chance they had to try to negotiate with Manny.   We don’t really know if they ever tried again, though.   

[SteveA]

12 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

It’s a lot easier to become a contender sooner if you win 75 games as opposed to 55.

Simple question to those who think the Os are doing the right thing.  Are you ok if they field a similar team next year?  Yes I know we will see Adley and some others but basically this team plus those guys.  Are you good with that?  Are you good with another nothing offseason and another offseason of “we are still trying to build a pipeline”?

After 14 straight losing seasons where every single year, the team made moves that were designed to improve the current seasons team, but rarely did, I was very willing to go with a different approach and build from the foundation up, even if it meant some bad years.

And so as we started doing that, I was patient.  The 2019 team was full of filler guys who weren't part of the future.  A little less so in 2020 as we introduced Mountcastle, Hays, and by the end of the year Akin, Kremer, Zimmerman.  Our winning % did increase two years in a row.

Obviously this year has been disappointing.  But to me the reason it has disappointed is not because we didn't bring on a few ok major Leaguers so we could shoot for 70.  It is disappointing because of the complete failure of our latest wave of mid level prospect pitchers.  If just one or two of them had even done all season what Spenser Watkins has done for a month, I think we'd be fine at the major league level.

I had a long post earlier where, using hindsight, I pointed out a few things that could have been done to improve this team.  So I am not in love with tanking or opposed to the idea of improving the product on the field.  But the fact that we didnt doesn't bother me the way it does you, because I think the huge failure of the 2021 Orioles is not that we didn't make a few cosmetic moves to improve the team. It's the failure of those pitchers to develop into major leaguers.  THAT is the big failing.  I signed into this tank because I suffered through 14 years of picking up Jay Payton's and Danys Baezes to incrementally try to make a 68 win team into a winner, year after year.  And I am willing to accept that as long as we are continuing to build the foundation and have fewer garbage never was never will be guys in the majors each year.  And that DID happen this year as we no longer had Hess, Leblanc, Wojo, etc.  It is obscured by the fact that guys we had hope for like Kremer may be working their way to that level.  That is my big concern.  But I believe giving those guys lots of innings this year to show what they can do was absolutely the right thing to do.

Your obsession withe the lack of a few moves that might have helped us try to win 70% is silly to me.  While I don't disagree that a few such moves could and maybe should have been made, the development failures we have seen are 1000 times a bigger concern to me than that.  I'm worried about the iceberg ahead and you are hopping mad about the inferior brand of caviar that was served in the Titanic Captain's Dinner Room.

To your question about next year: I want to see more talent from the system at the major league level.  A few years ago we had Keon Brozton, Dwight Smith, and Mason Williams in the outfield.  Now our entire OF/DH/1B is filled with legitimate guys, not guys who were dumped from other teams.  I want that to be the case with the middle infield and with more of the pitching staff.  Whether we bring up those legitimate guys like Rutschman, GRod, Baumann, or whether we acquire them as free agents.

And I expect it will happen, as it has happened in the outfield.  As it would have happened in the rotation this year if 2 of our rookie pitchers had been able to be adequate major leaguers and stay healthy.  Once again it comes back to that: the improvement of the team wasn't stalled as much by failure to acquire talent as it was by failure to develop talent.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  I had a long post acknowledging a few things that could have done but not doing them is really not a big deal to me.

[Frobby]

Very good post, @SteveA.   I didn’t quote it because it’s long, but I agree with pretty much all of it.