New Rosenthal column

[eddie83]

Haven’t read it yet. I’m glad somebody is finally talking about this. 

[eddie83]

Well after reading it he offers no solution for the problem. 
 

On a general level it was a pretty fair analysis but has no substance. Oh well.

[Aglets]

Interesting to see all the history from 1988 which i was too young to 'enjoy.'

[tntoriole]

How does this guy actually get paid for this?  

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

That was mostly just a rehash of the 1988 Orioles and a recycle of Rosenthal's comments last week on tanking. One thing Rosenthal could acknowledge is how Orioles ownership made this turnaround into a monumental task for Elias.

The Orioles had little in the way of MLB ready talent from their minor league system in 2018 and Elias had to build the international player development from ground zero. Starting to understand better why people refer to him as "Ken Knows-It-All". 

[Sports Guy]

The quote from the unnamed player was interesting to me.

[foxfield]

I don't disagree with anything he has written.  I mean it is all true.  I just don't really get the point if it is not a piece designed for the players to get more money.  

Yes the Orioles are terrible.  Linking the rebuild conveniently to a 115 loss 47 win season which caused the rebuild just seems dishonest even if factually true.

But I ask this question.  IF you were handed the Orioles, in the winter of 2018...would you not have driven the rebuild bus to the edge right at the point where the Dec 1 collective bargaining agreement expires? With a plan to climb from that day on?

Don't get me wrong, It's not going to rain pennants on Dec 2 because the curtain opens and reveals a dynasty.  But this entire article and many like it are beating the Orioles to make a different point.  And it really doesn't have anything to do with Baltimore.

To wit:  Hidden in the "Orioles show the MLB needs ANTI TANKING Measures is this paragraph:

The roster of the 2021 Orioles is not as good. By design, it is not as good. The current collective bargaining agreement, which expires on Dec. 1, incentivizes clubs to lose by rewarding them with higher draft positions and larger bonus pools for amateur players.

It's not THAT they are losing.  The Orioles lost 115 games in 2018 and because they had a payroll of $148,574,615 they were just a bad team trying to stretch out a window that closed 2 years earlier.  In 2020 a season wrecked by Covid the Orioles had the same strategy they had in 2019 and the same strategy they have in 2021, but the over performed in the short season.  Of course in 2021, the pitching, which was never supposed to be good has seriously cratered.  That really explains most of the season.  The difference between say 90-95 losses and 100-115.  So why such hostility now?

Well because payroll is $90 Million dollars lower than 2018 and THAT is why the attention is so focused on tanking.  Well that and the fact that DECEMBER 1 is about 90 days away.

The Orioles suck, I personally would be fine if rules were changed.  But there is an awful lot of bitching at the Orioles during this losing streak and I gotta be honest.  If you were here, the Orioles sucked in April.  They sucked in 2018.  They sucked in 17...they sucked...you get the point.  If the Orioles use the available rules and come out of this 4 years later and win a WS, like the Cubs or the Astros, or if they build a reliably successful franchise like the Rays.  I'll take it.  

It's not Mike Elias' job to save baseball.  It's his job to fix Baltimore.  Ken Rosenthal can kiss it.  He isn't interested in what is best for Baltimore....

[sevastras]

13 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

The quote from the unnamed player was interesting to me.

“It sucks, man,” one Oriole said. “We’re totally overmatched with the schedule we play.”
 

For those without a subscription. 

[ThomasTomasz]

13 minutes ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

That was mostly just a rehash of the 1988 Orioles and a recycle of Rosenthal's comments last week on tanking. One thing Rosenthal could acknowledge is how Orioles ownership made this turnaround into a monumental task for Elias.

The Orioles had little in the way of MLB ready talent from their minor league system in 2018 and Elias had to build the international player development from ground zero. Starting to understand better why people refer to him as "Ken Knows-It-All". 

The second portion is something many are in denial about.  No J2 presence.  They had to build an international program from the ground up, an analytics department from the ground up, and they had a lot of turnover in the player development pipeline.  Remember, this was an organization that, despite a lot of investment in pitching via the draft, only developed one frontline starter (Erik Bedard) since Mike Messina.  Many guys in the front office and development pipeline only held onto their jobs because they were “former Orioles.”  

It was time a lot of those guys hit the door.  It was time for all of these changes to happen, and we are truly in denial about how bad the system was.  

I also think the communication about a floor is laughable.  Do they really think the teams who are employing tanking, whether us or the Astros/Cubs from years past, are going to spend the floor money on free agents, or are they going to trade for bad contracts like Eric Hosmer from teams up against the luxury tax and buy prospects in return?  

In any event, I am in favor of everything we’ve done up to this point.  It was time a lot of the changes that happened, happened, and I knew it would be a monumental task to reshape the organization into what it needed to be in order to sustain a winner.  The next two off-seasons should be the time we start looking to supplement the upcoming MLB core, however.  

[sevastras]

1 minute ago, foxfield said:

It's not Mike Elias' job to save baseball.  It's his job to fix Baltimore.  Ken Rosenthal can kiss it.  He isn't interested in what is best for Baltimore....

He praised the Astros, Cubs and Phillies for tanking(Phillies didn’t end up as well as the other two), but now that the Os are doing it it is the worst thing ever and things have to change. I have always liked Kurkjian better than these other “baseball guys”. 

[LookinUp]

I'm all for the rebuild, but I still think we're 3 years away from really getting to the point where doing it the right way on a low budget (e.g., in house) can produce a winner. 

The new CBA will likely change the incentives, but even with a very similar CBA Elias will be forced to at least pretend to compete. He will also have to look in the mirror to see if the managers/coaches we have in house deserve to be here. 

[Moose Milligan]

Ken is a good writer.  By that I mean his use of the English language is good.  It's easy enough to read, the language is clear and concise.

But as far as the actual column goes, I'm not sure what the point of it was.  He rehashes the 1988 team's troubles and does a poor job of comparing/contrasting.  And, as noted above by @eddie83, he doesn't offer any solutions to the problem.

He also doesn't mention that the 1988 team was 5 years removed from a World Series title and a run from the mid 60s to the mid 80s where the Orioles might have been the most well run organization in the game.  IIRC from '65 to '85, no team won more games.  So in 1988, fans still had a lot of recent good memories.  

2021 doesn't have that.  We had a nice little run in the mid 2010s but that doesn't erase everything that's happened since Angelos purchased the team.  

[sevastras]

7 minutes ago, ThomasTomasz said:

The second portion is something many are in denial about.  No J2 presence.  They had to build an international program from the ground up, an analytics department from the ground up, and they had a lot of turnover in the player development pipeline.  

I counted the J2 prospects on BA top 100 the other day, I actually went all the way down to 200. Top 100 was 32 and top 200 is 62, so the Os basically took themselves out of 1/3rd of the prospect market. 

[Aglets]

26 minutes ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

That was mostly just a rehash of the 1988 Orioles and a recycle of Rosenthal's comments last week on tanking. One thing Rosenthal could acknowledge is how Orioles ownership made this turnaround into a monumental task for Elias.

The Orioles had little in the way of MLB ready talent from their minor league system in 2018 and Elias had to build the international player development from ground zero. Starting to understand better why people refer to him as "Ken Knows-It-All". 

Ken talks about this in the article.  He says Elias was basically starting from scratch and that the O's were waaay behind other teams when he came in in 2018.

[Moose Milligan]

Also, he seems to think that the 1988 team was trying because it had Murray, Ripken and a washed up Fred Lynn.  

By that measure, I guess the 2018 was trying hard because we had Manny Machado and some other names.  

The 2021 team isn't trying because we don't have any names that people would recognize outside of the diehard fanbase.

And yet if the 2021 team matches the 2018 team in wins, one team was trying and the other one wasn't.