Britt joining in on the bash fest

[Dipper9]

Here's my take.  The Orioles are cheap, they no longer care about winning, and they certainly don't care about the fans.

I am a 13 game season ticket holder.  Prices have not gone down during this rebuild, even though the Orioles organization openly admits its a rebuild and we are not trying to be competitive.  Not only have prices of tickets not gone down, but concession costs have risen, parking cost has risen by nearly 50% on some nights, and they don't let you bring your own food into the stadium anymore.   They will tell you that is COVID related, but I would trust my own food I am bringing in then the grub they serve at those concession stands.

After every game, the Orioles send me a survey.  And every time, I say I am okay with a rebuild if they treated their fans with a little respect.  Instead they are price gouging people while putting an inferior product on the field.  

And finally, we are "rebuilding" in a division with 4 teams who constantly are developing their farm system and spending money on the major league team.  Even IF this rebuild if a roaring success, we might have a couple year window to compete with the other four teams in the division, and hopefully we'll get lucky enough to make the playoffs.  

There is a reason no one goes to games...we stink, and the prices are high.  So yeah, I think these reporters have every right to bash the Orioles, not based on one rebuild, but based on nearly 40 years of inferior baseball being played in the city of Baltimore. 

[Sports Guy]

I don’t see how maximizing draft spending has anything to do with spending money on the ML team??

[interloper]

3 minutes ago, Dipper9 said:

Here's my take.  The Orioles are cheap, they no longer care about winning, and they certainly don't care about the fans.

I don't know how anyone can actually have this viewpoint and think it's legitimately true. I think at best you can argue they are knowingly risking losing fans with the rebuild, but that's about as far as I'd go. 

[Hallas]

Mike has to be on a clock right now.  We're 4 years in and there's been zero improvement to the major league team.  We have a huge prospect pipeline, which is good, but if Mike expects to keep his job that prospect pipeline has to deliver.

 

One of the downsides of doing a full teardown/rebuild is that you get exactly 1 chance to execute it, and any number of things outside your control can derail it.  I hope for the Orioles sake that the prospects are able to deliver.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

5 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Mike has to be on a clock right now.  We're 4 years in and there's been zero improvement to the major league team.  We have a huge prospect pipeline, which is good, but if Mike expects to keep his job that prospect pipeline has to deliver.

 

One of the downsides of doing a full teardown/rebuild is that you get exactly 1 chance to execute it, and any number of things outside your control can derail it.  I hope for the Orioles sake that the prospects are able to deliver.

Elias hasn't even been an Orioles employee for three years yet, plus he had to deal with the weird 2020 Covid season. That said Elias' seat will start to get hot in 2022 if the Orioles are headed towards another 90+ loss season. 

The not having enough talent excuse is going to start wearing thin in 2022 when Adley Rutschman, Grayson Rodriguez and others start getting promoted to MLB. The Orioles can still be a losing team in 2022, but there will need to be some signs of progress being made. 

[tntoriole]

So these writers want us to lose to the top division teams in a way that looks more competitive without really being competitive. 
As a fan I see little difference between losing 88-95 games and losing 105-115 games.  

i trust Elias. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

16 minutes ago, tntoriole said:

So these writers want us to lose to the top division teams in a way that looks more competitive without really being competitive. 
As a fan I see little difference between losing 88-95 games and losing 105-115 games.  

i trust Elias. 

Or will the writers acknowledge the Orioles have limited funds to build their team. Pouring money into free agents and perhaps winning 78 games does nothing to build a winning team. At best the Orioles are continuously treading water with no plans for the future. 

Or instead of making a futile attempt to win now, why not build a sustainable player development model that will consistently develop players over the long term. The problem the 2012-16 Orioles had was once they burned through that core of players there were no reinforcements ready to step up. 

If the Orioles want to compete in the AL East they need to be more like the Rays to have a chance. Because outspending the Evil Empire and Pink Hat nation isn't viable. 

Elias could very well fail, but at least there is a long term plan now unlike most of the 1998 to 2011 run. 

[Ohfan67]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

I don’t see how maximizing draft spending has anything to do with spending money on the ML team??

The suckier the team, the more money you can spend on the draft. The draft allotments decrease in size pretty quickly as you move from horrible to mediocre previous year results. 

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

The suckier the team, the more money you can spend on the draft. The draft allotments decrease in size pretty quickly as you move from horrible to mediocre previous year results. 

Yea but so what?  Most of that money is tied up in one pick and you rarely hit on the later rounds anyway.

At this point, fielding a better team should take precedent.

 

[Can_of_corn]

5 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

The suckier the team, the more money you can spend on the draft. The draft allotments decrease in size pretty quickly as you move from horrible to mediocre previous year results. 

That really only applies to the first round.  You get to the third round and the difference between the 72 and 101 picks is under 300K.

[Ohfan67]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

Yea but so what?  Most of that money is tied up in one pick and you rarely hit on the later rounds anyway.

At this point, fielding a better team should take precedent.

 

I’m not advocating for keeping the team cheap and relatively pathetic so that Elias has a few more million to spend in the draft, but I think that is what he is going to do. A few extra million facilitates the over slot strategy. The terrible teams have significantly more money to invest overall than the mediocre and especially the good teams. I think Elias will value that for another year. 

[Mr. Chewbacca Jr.]

1 hour ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Or will the writers acknowledge the Orioles have limited funds to build their team. Pouring money into free agents and perhaps winning 78 games does nothing to build a winning team. At best the Orioles are continuously treading water with no plans for the future. 

Or instead of making a futile attempt to win now, why not build a sustainable player development model that will consistently develop players over the long term. The problem the 2012-16 Orioles had was once they burned through that core of players there were no reinforcements ready to step up. 

If the Orioles want to compete in the AL East they need to be more like the Rays to have a chance. Because outspending the Evil Empire and Pink Hat nation isn't viable. 

Elias could very well fail, but at least there is a long term plan now unlike most of the 1998 to 2011 run. 

I don't really understand this take. There is a middle ground between trying to "win" and being a historically awful team. Building a player development pipeline or having a decent MLB team don't need to be exclusive. Nobody is suggesting they sign Jay Paytons and Kevin Millars in hopes of putting together a few extra wins. They should be trying to find young, affordable MLB-capable talent that helps them win now and later. There's no reason to keep rolling Cesar Valdez, Maikel Franco, and the like every night.

[Ohfan67]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

That really only applies to the first round.  You get to the third round and the difference between the 72 and 101 picks is under 300K.

It increases the probability that Elias will have the cash to overpay for an over slot pick. If you think of purchasing total WAR in the draft then having say 12 million is a lot better than having eight or nine million. 

[Can_of_corn]

8 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

It increases the probability that Elias will have the cash to overpay for an over slot pick. If you think of purchasing total WAR in the draft then having say 12 million is a lot better than having eight or nine million. 

Sure, but I don't think the overslot strategy is a very good one most of the time. 

It's mostly about having money to pay your first round pick near slot.

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Sure, but I don't think the overslot strategy is a very good one most of the time. 

It's mostly about having money to pay your first round pick near slot.

And I bet every single team goes overslot at least once in the draft, especially in the first 10 Rounds.

The Os did it even when the team was terrible and seemingly didn’t care about the minors.