Olney on O’s losing

[LTO's]

6 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I'm not really trying to.

I'm just saying it's really hard to define.

Voth and Scott were just two easy examples.

Not as if Scott had been traded for Bautista, they could have had both or ended up with neither. 

But your examples are missing context. Voth was acquired for nothing to be a swingman type. Scott was acquired for multiple assets including a valuable draft pick to be a closer or set up man in the bullpen of a contending team. He failed at that last year and has succeeded at that this year. Voth succeeded at his role in 2022 and failed to in 2023. The players acquired for Scott haven't debuted yet but the FO was able to replace Scott in the meantime with Perez and Coulombe for nothing. It's just not a good example. 

[LTO's]

9 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I don’t believe they would have the #1 prospect in the sport right now.  That’s it.

That's extremely significant. 

[Can_of_corn]

10 minutes ago, Osornot said:

I don't believe that if the "tank" was 1-2 years we would have the level of young talent now in the Majors nor lining up behind them.

I agree with you.

But the question is, does a team owe it to fans, players and the other teams to at least make an attempt to field a competitive team?

MLB and the the PU seem to think so since rules have been put into place to curb the sort of behavior the O's engaged in.

[Osornot]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

See then you don’t believe in Elias’ eye for talent and the program they have in place to develop it?

I don’t believe they would have the #1 prospect in the sport right now.  That’s it.

No, I most certainly believe in the eye for talent and development and it is obvious.  However, having a quantity of lower-risk high reward options can provide a longer window of success - I could be wrong but it sure feels that this 100+win team is just getting started.  Regardless of eye for talent, having a #1 pick is better than middle-of-the-road ones. generally speaking.  

[RZNJ]

38 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

A few somewhat random thoughts that were spurred by the last couple of pages.

1. I'm not sold on Cowser. I'm hopeful that another offseason will be really helpful for him, but if pressed today I'd probably take Beavers over him.

2. I'm also not sold on Koby Perez. I'm not down on him, but with all of the work that's been done, I'd hope the pipeline was looking more robust by now. I could easily be convinced that it's about to really start bearing fruit next year (beyond Basallo), but I'm impatient. There's a particular pitcher that could change my mind pretty quickly though, so we'll see.

3. Someone made a post about the priority being to build a better organization as a whole. Well, I find it interesting that the championship series in the International League was between the O's and Rays affiliates, and the PCL was between the Dodgers and Rangers. That's a small sample, but it sure seems like org strength up and down contributes significantly to the ML team.

Isn’t Basallo from Koby Perez first signing class?   I think 3 or 4 of his second J2 class just made the FCL top 20 prospects.   That seems pretty good to me.  You expected better?

[Osornot]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I agree with you.

But the question is, does a team owe it to fans, players and the other teams to at least make an attempt to field a competitive team?

MLB and the the PU seem to think so since rules have been put into place to curb the sort of behavior the O's engaged in.

Now that's a whole different story.  I completely agree with the effort to be competitive for the fans and league overall. Players? heck, it does give some AAA-level talent a chance to get some MLB $$$.  The other teams?  a W is a W.  

There are obvious "tanks" but there have been not-so-obvious-they-just-s**k teams

 

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, Osornot said:

Now that's a whole different story.  I completely agree with the effort to be competitive for the fans and league overall. Players? heck, it does give some AAA-level talent a chance to get some MLB $$$.  The other teams?  a W is a W.  

There are obvious "tanks" but there have been not-so-obvious-they-just-s**k teams

 

I'd rather the players get paid than the owners keep the money.

I think the labor agreement between the two sides falls apart if ownership flatly refuses to spend money on players.

 

[jerios55]

13 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I agree with you.

But the question is, does a team owe it to fans, players and the other teams to at least make an attempt to field a competitive team?

MLB and the the PU seem to think so since rules have been put into place to curb the sort of behavior the O's engaged in.

Ultimately, the O's weren't intentionally tanking for good chucks of the 2000s on and still did poorly.  Someone is going to lose.  It's just been more teams in the truly terrible range that makes it harder to watch.  As a result, the MLB/PU at a minimum need to evaluate change to avoid.

MLB should evaluate anything that makes the games more fun to watch.  Teams should evaluate the best way to develop and establish winning teams.  In a sport that has countless stories around gaining advantages (and/or cheating), it's not a surprise.  The push and pull of what is right, will continue to evolve.

I think most fans don't really enjoy the process (even though I still watched a lot of baseball during the tank).  Knowing in the past (again most of the 2000s) how often the O's had no plan, spent more money and still stunk, I was behind the process.  It's working out now and I'm glad I did.  I also get why a lot of people would be annoyed/pissed at how unwatchable the team was at times.  What they really owe us is a plan that leads to at least cycles of success.  There were times this board would talk about if we would EVER be .500 again, and the arguments against felt pretty realistic.  At least for me, having the plan was enough in the bad years, that I didn't feel I was owed a competitive team in an individual year.  That is a mind set from a fan that has seen a LOT of losing, so I won't argue a bit of battered fan syndrome.

[Winter]

On 8/10/2021 at 5:55 PM, Sports Guy said:

The reaction From Os fans about a Olney saying this is hysterical.

Baltimore fans have such an inferiority complex.

Btw, more from Buster:

 

well well well how dem White Sox doing bruh 

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, LTO's said:

That's extremely significant. 

No question and I didn’t mean to imply it isn’t. The question is, is it worth having the #1 pick over potential winning or playoff seasons?

Holliday isnt a guarantee. He could get hurt. He could be only a 2-3 WAR second baseman. 
 

[Hallas]

39 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

No question and I didn’t mean to imply it isn’t. The question is, is it worth having the #1 pick over potential winning or playoff seasons?

Holliday isnt a guarantee. He could get hurt. He could be only a 2-3 WAR second baseman. 
 

Are you speaking in generalities here or specific to the O's situation?  The O's had zero path to even a winning season following 2018 and it would have taken Padres level spending just to get us to an 82 win season. I think the moral of the story for the Orioles is that it's ok to tank/sell MLB assets for a rebuild, but don't be so bad that you're a 115 loss team.  When you're that bad it gives you no realistic options other than continuing to tank until you hit on prospects.  And going forward rebuilding from a 115-loss team is going to be harder because the O's can't get a lottery ticket more than 2 years in a row.  Your point about Holliday is pretty significant; the average 70-FV prospect produces around 3 WAR per year during their 6 year control period, with a very wide variance, and a 5% bust rate. (1 std better than average would be 5 WAR/year.)

 

The other thing here is that the increased number of playoff teams gives teams another avenue to rebuild/reload.  If you're starting at july 31 and your team is 40-55, you can buy prospects for MLB players by eating portions of the contract.  Are you going to be worse off with a 21 year old A+ prospect on the top-100 list and a #4 overall next year, versus no prospect because your MLB team is too awful to get you anyone in trade, and a #1 overall?  I think the former is vastly superior, especially considering that prospect outcomes have super wide error bars.  Even a middling 50 FV prospect has like a 1-in-10 chance of being an all-star level player.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Hallas

[Uli2001]

This is the only way that a mid-market team can win a division in which Boston, Toronto, and New York teams play. The Orioles are a compelling story this year because they have the second lowest payroll in MLB and the best record in the AL. This is good for baseball. I have been surprised reading the social networks and seeing almost universal praising of the Orioles organization by fans of other teams.

And in other news, tell Buster Olney to go pound some sand.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Uli2001 said:

This is the only way that a mid-market team can win a division in which Boston, Toronto, and New York teams play. The Orioles are a compelling story this year because they have the second lowest payroll in MLB and the best record in the AL. This is good for baseball. I have been surprised reading the social networks and seeing almost universal praising of the Orioles organization by fans of other teams.

And in other news, tell Buster Olney to go pound some sand.

Yea, once again, Rays are in this division.

Your point still doesn't make sense.