Olney on O’s losing

[Frobby]

19 minutes ago, wildcard said:

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.

I don’t think Elias’ thinking Is that short term.   A guy like Lopez or Guthrie can be a valuable resource for 5-6 years.   You don’t pass those guys up intentionally IMO.

I don’t think Elias or any other tanking GM is purposely choosing worse players over equally cheap better players in order to maximize losing.   It’s one thing to say, “I’m not going to pay Aubrey Huff $20 mm so we can win an extra 5 wins total over 3 years.”   It’s another thing to say “I’m not going to pick up this minimum salary player who I think could be good because I don’t want our team to improve next year.”    

[crowmst3k!]

17 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

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. 

I agree with all three points. Relating to your Wei-Yin Chen thread, the Orioles do need to begin supplementing their roster with external talent sooner if they realistically view 2023 as a competitive year.  

Davis has a stupid contract, dead money, etc...but the majority of that liability will be off the books in 2023. 2022 should not be a tank year. It should be an improvement year, and whether the Orioles decide to bring in the right players in this offseason to help it along will tell me whether or not they're serious about building this thing. 

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I don’t think Elias’ thinking Is that short term.   A guy like Lopez or Guthrie can be a valuable resource for 5-6 years.   You don’t pass those guys up intentionally IMO.

I don’t think Elias or any other tanking GM is purposely choosing worse players over equally cheap better players in order to maximize losing.   It’s one thing to say, “I’m not going to pay Aubrey Huff $20 mm so we can win an extra 5 wins total over 3 years.”   It’s another thing to say “I’m not going to pick up this minimum salary player who I think could be good because I don’t want our team to improve next year.”    

Right..he is just choosing the wrong guys.

Maybe Urias is a good one though?

[eddie83]

34 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.   
 

Like most of us on here we lived through those times. Moves like the Royals did this past year don’t excite me. I’m not against them but I’m not dumb enough to think it has any impact on being a contender down the road unless you can flip those players. 
 

Without question Mike has not found those types of players. 

[wildcard]

As far as the union is concerned, the union should be trying to design a system that allows all 30 teams to compete.   The more teams that compete, the more teams that compete for FAs.    And the less teams that try to tank.   If the system is fair to all teams it also helps the FA players get higher salaries and better contracts.

The rich teams are always going to try to compete for the 300M players no matter the system.

[eddie83]

41 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

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.

I don’t give a damn about the whining of the union. The union wants the Orioles to get into bidding wars for low to mid level talent who don’t want to play here to begin with. Let’s jack their value up. Why play that game? Any floor should be over a period of time, not any individual year. 
 

Diagnose how we got here 

-No International presence 

-Lost multiple #1 picks due to FA signing 

-Lost 2 other Comp picks to save money 

-traded away MiL in attempt to win

-drafted lower for 5 years. Yes I know about the Dodgers. 

- waited too long to blow team up 

-play in AL East 

 

[eddie83]

3 minutes ago, wildcard said:

As far as the union is concerned, the union should be trying to design a system that allows all 30 teams to compete.   The more teams that compete, the more teams that compete for FAs.    And the less teams that try to tank.   If the system is fair to all teams it also helps the FA players get higher salaries and better contracts.

The rich teams are always going to try to compete for the 300M players no matter the system.

The best players in the game are young and more times than not with their original team or were traded for. The FA market is not deep or productive enough to win with. You add talent in a high risk market when you are ready to win. 
 

The Orioles don’t suck right now because they are cheap. 

[eddie83]

43 minutes ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

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.

And that is what most of this belly aching is all about. Money. 
 

Like most things it’s a bit more nuanced of a conversation. I’m sorry but I’m not jealous of the Tigers and Royals record this year. I’m smart enough to know if they played in our division they would be worse and most of their position player talent isn’t going to move the needle down the road. They both may be better than us for years but it’s not because they have a better record now. 

[eddie83]

26 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

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.

 

I was referring to position players. I should have been more clear. Once again where did Lynch come from? Internal. That’s my point. 

Benintendi hasn’t done much. Santana is a league avg player and old. Minor hasn’t been good  

The Royals lost over 100 games in 18 and 19. It’s not like they didn’t suck for a couple of years. 

[Sports Guy]

14 minutes ago, wildcard said:

As far as the union is concerned, the union should be trying to design a system that allows all 30 teams to compete.   The more teams that compete, the more teams that compete for FAs.    And the less teams that try to tank.   If the system is fair to all teams it also helps the FA players get higher salaries and better contracts.

The rich teams are always going to try to compete for the 300M players no matter the system.

The system for all teams to compete is obvious in place, as evidenced by the fact that Tampa and Oak are good almost every year, the Royals winning a WS not long ago, Milwaukee beating out the Cubs on a relatively regular basis, etc…

[Sports Guy]

Just now, eddie83 said:

I was referring to position players. I should have been more clear. Once again where did Lynch come from? Internal. That’s my point. 

Benintendi hasn’t done much. Santana is a league avg player and old. Minor hasn’t been good  

The Royals lost over 100 games in 18 and 19. It’s not like they didn’t suck for a couple of years. 

I think tanking for 1-2 years is perfectly fine.  Anything beyond that is a money grab and an excuse for ownership to be cheap.

[wildcard]

22 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I don’t think Elias’ thinking Is that short term.   A guy like Lopez or Guthrie can be a valuable resource for 5-6 years.   You don’t pass those guys up intentionally IMO.

I don’t think Elias or any other tanking GM is purposely choosing worse players over equally cheap better players in order to maximize losing.   It’s one thing to say, “I’m not going to pay Aubrey Huff $20 mm so we can win an extra 5 wins total over 3 years.”   It’s another thing to say “I’m not going to pick up this minimum salary player who I think could be good because I don’t want our team to improve next year.”    

Guthrie would have been fine for his first three seasons but a tanking Elias would have traded a  31 year old, arbitration  eligible Guthrie the same way he traded Bundy.   Same go for Rodrigo.

[Ohfan67]

1 hour 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.  

The disparity in how much teams can spend in the draft is not random. The worst teams can spend significantly more money in the draft than middling teams. The over slot strategy Elias is pursuing to maximize the value of the draft doesn’t work nearly as well if the team is mediocre versus brutally bad. The worst teams in this years draft got to spend 1.75x as much as the median teams. I think this is what is really driving the race to the bottom. 

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

The disparity in how much teams can spend in the draft is not random. The worst teams can spend significantly more money in the draft than middling teams. The over slot strategy Elias is pursuing to maximize the value of the draft doesn’t work nearly as well if the team is mediocre versus brutally bad. The worst teams in this years draft got to spend 1.75x as much as the median teams. I think this is what is really driving the race to the bottom. 

This point has already been addressed.

[eddie83]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I think tanking for 1-2 years is perfectly fine.  Anything beyond that is a money grab and an excuse for ownership to be cheap.

That’s the thing. We tanked ourselves. Of course your hole is going to be deeper if you operate the way they did. They basically invested it all in the major league team at the expense of the future. 
 

This isn’t directed at you but I am sick and tired of hearing about 2018. F’ing tired of it.  They tried to win that year. The media and even some on here bring that up. Using 2018 as an example is pure laziness and inaccurate.