Goldstein on the Os

[Sports Guy]

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/amid-another-awful-season-do-the-orioles-have-a-path-forward/
 

Great article 

[Pickles]

Eh.

Lot of words and doesn't really say anything.

[HowAboutThat]

Yes indeed. It’s one thing to sow the wheat, and quite another distance to make the bread.

very sobering, his comment that even twenty additional wins would leave us comfortably under .500.

And his comment that we have lots of quantity but unknown quality.

so… CAN we win 30 more games next year?

We’ll see.

[Ruzious]

I don't disagree that we have more quantity than quality in the infield, but he left out a couple of important names - Mayo and Norby - maybe because they're more long-term?  

We definitely need to add more high-end pitching prospects.  This year's class of O's pitching rookies particularly showed that quantity is useless without quality.  

[Sports Guy]

16 minutes ago, Ruzious said:

I don't disagree that we have more quantity than quality in the infield, but he left out a couple of important names - Mayo and Norby - maybe because they're more long-term?  

We definitely need to add more high-end pitching prospects.  This year's class of O's pitching rookies particularly showed that quantity is useless without quality.  

I mean, those guys have barely played pro ball and weren't top picks(like Cowser), so I wouldn't expect them to really be mentioned.  Its not his job to mention every single guy.

This was a very well done and well balanced article.  

[Moose Milligan]

I thought it was a pretty good article.  If anyone out there gives a **** to learn about what the Orioles are up to, this would give anyone who would bother to look a rundown as to what's going on.  

It was fair in regards to pitching prospects, recapping what we've discussed about G-Rod, Hall having issues and setbacks and practically everyone else.  It was also nice to see Acevedo get a mention.

The summary, IMO, was well done:

Quote

In terms of meeting their goals of building something that creates sustainable success, Elias and company have done a good job, but their starting point for translating that into results in the standings is a self-dug hole that gets pretty deep. That’s the risk of tanking; a team can build a fantastic system through adept scouting and player development, but a 20-game improvement would still have Baltimore well below .500. There’s a path here to a better team, like this season’s Tigers, who have gone from dreadful to merely below-average with a young, entertaining roster filled with possibilities. Like Detroit, the Orioles will need to make free-agent signings and trades to turn that improved big league roster into one that can compete for a postseason spot — an aspect of front office work that the current regime is, quite frankly, unproven in.

Orioles fans have been remarkably patient with the new administration, trusting the process, as it were, and their team should be ready to climb out of the 100-loss category as early as 2022. But becoming a team that can sit at the grown-ups table in the ultra-competitive American League East is still a gargantuan task that will take much more in terms of both wise decisions and a willingness to write big checks, as opposed to a laser-tight focus on simply accumulating prospects.

It's not wrong. 

[Pickles]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I thought it was a pretty good article.  If anyone out there gives a **** to learn about what the Orioles are up to, this would give anyone who would bother to look a rundown as to what's going on.  

It was fair in regards to pitching prospects, recapping what we've discussed about G-Rod, Hall having issues and setbacks and practically everyone else.  It was also nice to see Acevedo get a mention.

The summary, IMO, was well done:

It's not wrong. 

I mean I guess I have a higher standard.  I'll grant that it isn't the lazy, kneejerk reactions to "tanking" we've gotten the last couple weeks, but I find the conclusions to extremely thin and obvious.

The basic premise of the article is the O's are historically bad; the farm system is good and help is on the way; the team should soon be "respectable" and no longer historically bad; but to really compete at a championship level they'll need more than they have in house, particularly on the mound, and will have to go to trades and the FA market to get it.

I mean, is any of that news to anybody on this board?  Could not a couple hundred people have written that?  And are the conclusions particularly insightful?

[NCRaven]

Orioles are bad.  They'll have to do a lot right to get good.  Thanks for the insight Kevin.

[Moose Milligan]

4 minutes ago, Pickles said:

I mean I guess I have a higher standard.  I'll grant that it isn't the lazy, kneejerk reactions to "tanking" we've gotten the last couple weeks, but I find the conclusions to extremely thin and obvious.

The basic premise of the article is the O's are historically bad; the farm system is good and help is on the way; the team should soon be "respectable" and no longer historically bad; but to really compete at a championship level they'll need more than they have in house, particularly on the mound, and will have to go to trades and the FA market to get it.

I mean, is any of that news to anybody on this board?  Could not a couple hundred people have written that?  And are the conclusions particularly insightful?

You've gotta consider who they're writing for.  No, it's not news to anyone on this board and any one of us could have written it.

But again, it's being written for baseball fans who love the game, love advanced metrics but aren't cued into what the Orioles are doing on a daily basis like we are here.  

The conclusions are obvious, of course they are.  They're obvious because that's what needs to happen here, there's no other option.  

What other article would you expect from a national outlet?

[Ruzious]

8 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I mean, those guys have barely played pro ball and weren't top picks(like Cowser), so I wouldn't expect them to really be mentioned.  Its not his job to mention every single guy.

This was a very well done and well balanced article.  

Your reactions are so bizarrely confrontational sometimes.  I was hardly being critical, and I also mentioned where I agreed with him.  I think Mayo and Norby are more important prospects than guys like Servideo - who he did mention and who has also barely played pro ball.  That's all.        

[SteveA]

Seems like there is a built in assumption that there is some sort of cap on how much a team can improve season to season.   They talk about the Orioles improving by 20 games, and still being well under .500.

Yeah, so?

This year's win total is artificially low due to slow rolling prospects, and not spending money on stopgaps.   I don't think there is some sort of artificial limit on how much we could jump in one season if we brought up a bunch of good players and started spending money on free agents and made trades.   We improved by 35 games from 1988 to 1989, and the 1988 team actually had some big money (for the time) players on its payroll.   Imagine if that 1988 team had been stripped bare of Eddie, Lynn, and others in exchange for some good minor league talent.  It might have won even fewer games, and if any of the guys they got for Eddie or Lynn did well in 1989 that team might have won more.   Even a 40 game improvement wouldn't have been out of the question.

That being said, the basic premise that there isn't enough pitching in our system is certainly true, and compounded by the fact that the pitching we brought up this year was a complete failure which makes you have to worry about this regime's ability to get the most out of pitchers.   Anyone who isn't concerned about that is wearing orange colored glasses.

[Sports Guy]

10 minutes ago, Ruzious said:

Your reactions are so bizarrely confrontational sometimes.  I was hardly being critical, and I also mentioned where I agreed with him.  I think Mayo and Norby are more important prospects than guys like Servideo - who he did mention and who has also barely played pro ball.  That's all.        

I wasn't being confrontational at all.  

[Redskins Rick]

Why do we need so many threads on the same subject?

We get it, they suck and it sucks to lose.

 

[Ruzious]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

I wasn't being confrontational at all.  

Wow.    

[Pickles]

17 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

You've gotta consider who they're writing for.  No, it's not news to anyone on this board and any one of us could have written it.

But again, it's being written for baseball fans who love the game, love advanced metrics but aren't cued into what the Orioles are doing on a daily basis like we are here.  

The conclusions are obvious, of course they are.  They're obvious because that's what needs to happen here, there's no other option.  

What other article would you expect from a national outlet?

Honestly, national pubs like Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, and the Athletic regularly do better than this, imo.

I mean again, the thesis is just so thin as to be basically meaningless: The O's are bad; they'll get better; but they have work to get real good.

I mean, no crap.  You could literally say that about any bad team.

The only real analysis in the article was on the pitching and it went no deeper than "It's terrible.  In a historical way."  And it is the weakness of a good farm system.

Again, tell me something I don't know?

How about an analysis of Why.  Why is the pitching historically terrible?

But that would require thinking.  And that quality left journalism long ago.