19 Game Streak Post-Mortem

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

And Chris Davis on the roster made 0 difference in this season.  All he did was use up a 40 man roster spot, of which the O's had plenty.

Zach Pop.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Frobby said:

Zach Pop.

I thought of him.  Davis wasn't the reason he was left unprotected.  The O's had other folks they could have left off.

For whatever reason Elias didn't care to protect him.

[Tony-OH]

14 minutes ago, LTO's said:

Another thread of DD apologia. Definitely not his fault for signing Ubaldo despite clear warning signs that he was over the hill. Or forfeiting draft picks for Yovani Gallardo. Or signing Andrew Cashner. If only there were two guys in the upper minors who could've been cheap, controllable vast improvements over those guys. I guess Angelos forced him to trade those guys away for Gerado Parra and a rental reliever. Sure there was meddling from ownership but not all of it was bad. It's been widely reported Angelos vetoed a 2017 Britton deal to the Astros. DD wanted Francis Martes/Colin Moran. Would've netted the O's a whopping -0.3 WAR between the two of them. Dillon Tate is currently at 1.1 career WAR and will probably be the best player from the awful 2018 sell off. These are the types of moves that result in a 47 win season and a 30th ranked farm system. 

Let's not turn this into a DD bashfest. We have discussed him ad nauseum and people's thoughts on him have been well noted. 

[SteveA]

Hate to beat a dead horse, but once again, it all comes down to the failure of Akin/Zimmerman/Lowther/Kremer.

I think it was the RIGHT THING to do to go into the season expecting at least two of those guys to be in the rotation and one to be in the bullpen.   None of them are super young, it was time to find out what they could do.    And, unfortunately, we found out.

I think if:

• One of those guys had been a complete bust
• One of them had been an adequate 4th or even 3rd starter
• One of them ate some innings at 5th starter but wound up not being very good
• One of them had been an adequate bullpen piece

We would probably be on pace for a 60+ win season instead of the 51 win pace we are on (and which we will probably exceed; we have weathered what is likely our worst two stretches of the year and starting Labor Day more than half our remaining games are vs non contenders).

Would we be good?   No.  But we wouldn't be the embarrassment we have been.

As I have said before, in hindsight, there ARE a few things I would have liked to have done:

• Bring in ONE major league caliber pitcher (i.e. not a dice roll like Harvey and King Felix)
• Non tender Pedro and sign a veteran MLB backup who plays half decent defense
• Handle the 2B situation much better than they did 

But honestly, that's about it.   None of those are earthshaking or huge difference makers.   I have no problem with signing Galvis and Franco.   I have no problem with rolling the dice on Harvey and Hernandez.   I honestly believe it was the correct thing to do to throw most of Kremer/Akin/Lowther/Zimmerman into the deep end of the pool and see if they can swim.   So while I would have made a few tweaks here and there, I am not of the school of thought of many in this thread that Elias just completely gutted the team and set them up to be awful.

I am FAR FAR more concerned about the developmental failures than I am about the team that has been put on the field this year.   While everyone here is giving the organization heat for the product on this field, hopping mad about it, I am much more concerned about what this year says about our ability to coach, instruct, and develop pitchers.   That's what has me upset.  Seeing people so made at the product on the field, to me, is missing the forest for the trees.  (Or is it the trees for the forest?   I'm never sure how that works).

[SteveA]

10 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Zach Pop.

While I regret losing Pop and think it was a bad move not to protect him because he could have been a long term piece, this particular thread is about this 2021 team being so bad.   Pop has 0.0 WAR for Miami.  At best he might have replaced a -0.7 guy WAR guy who has given us some innings, so he would not have done anything significant to prevent the embarrassment that is the 2021 team.

[Tony-OH]

I'll be honest, I thought 2019 would be awful, 2020 would be bad, and in 2021 we'd start seeing some bright lights due to players like Mountcastle, Hays, Santander, Mullins, Sisco, Harvey, Akin, Kremer, Lowther, Baumann, and Diaz making a difference at the major league level.

That has partially been the problem this year is that the guys we could have reasonably expected to be performing well at the major league level by now in large have not. 

Obviously Mountcastle and Mullins have played well, but Hays and Santander have been hurt once again and have not performed to their capabilities for most of the year when "healthy." As for the others, they have all failed to provide any positive impact though COVID and an injury has kept Baumann in the minors. 

Basically the upper level prospects have mostly failed and the guys that Elias used as "depth" were the cheap guys that ended up being DFA fodder more than actual quality depth. 

 

 

[HowAboutThat]

59 minutes ago, Pickles said:

I can't answer that.  I'm not sure it matters other than maybe assigning blame.

Regardless, it still stemmed from delusion- be it ownership's or management's.

Ownership has money, and nothing else. Management supposedly has the baseball skills, the baseball knowledge, and the power of personality required to go to ownership and say, “look you idiot this is what we need to do.“ That was the responsibility of management. Even if it was attempted, it was unsuccessful and no one hires a guy to be unsuccessful. There’s been a lot of debate over whether Buck was in charge or Brady, Or Dan, I will long remember Tony’s marvelous article, “Orioles game of thrones,” (and if you haven’t read it, it it worthwhile to do so even now.)

The only reason that is Germane is because Mike should have gone to management and said, “look I’m only going to take this job if you’re gonna let me do what I think is best. I’m not gonna be your bitch. I’m going to do what needs to be done to make this team win again, and if you’re not gonna let me do that hire somebody else.”

I cannot fathom that someone with his qualifications would’ve taken a job under any other parameters. Mike doesn’t need to be a sycophant. At the end of the day the blame for the previous regime can go wherever you wish, it no longer matters. Today matters, and Mike is responsible for everything. The buck stops with him. What is happening is the result of his conscious choices, and he only cares about the long term results.

One thing the beats need to ask Mike is what needs to be in place before he flips the switch. That’s what I would like to know.

[spiritof66]

50 minutes ago, Pickles said:

Eh.  It just takes delusion.  The prior regime was delusional about the reality of their situation.

We see it all the time.  Much of the world is not in touch with reality.  And most of the terrible things happening on your television screen every day, happen because people aren't in touch with reality and are delusional.  They're often the very "smartest" and "brightest" and "accomplished" among us.

It's been years since I sifted through this in an effort to figure out who was responsible for the "delusion" that the Orioles could continue to compete well after that ship had sailed, so I'm going from memory. What I do recall is that Duquette wanted to trade veterans who weren't going to be extended but was thwarted (in typical inconsistent, indecisive, what-the-hell-is-going-on Angelos fashion), and didn't want to sign Davis to a lucrative long-term contract. Buck and Brady played some role in those decisions, especially the ones to add free-agent pitching, but their role was and is hazy to me, other than to say that in no well-run organization would they have the authority they appeared to have. 

I concluded then that, while the details remained murky, Peter Anglos was behind the disastrous overall strategy of 2017-18, and I don't view those decisions as delusional. In 2017, Angelos had owned the team for almost a quarter century without ever getting to the World Series, in the process gaining a reputation as one of the worst (if not he worst) owners in major U.S. professional sports. Desperate to make it the Fall Classic, he brought in Showalter and then Duquette, and the core of players they assembled got close. As long as he could hold on to some key plyers from those teams, Angelos was not willing to give up on what he knew would be his last shot to get to the Series -- whether his "baseball people" or the oddsmakers thought the likelihood of doing that was 20 percent or 5 percent or 2 percent. Trading  veterans who weren't going to be signed in free agency for prospects who might improve the team in the future, had no more appeal to him than spending on bonuses to international teenagers who'd be years away from the Orioles. Maybe Duquette could have done better in some of those trades, but I was and remain confident that he was trading depreciated assets because of decisions by Peter Angelos. 

Call Angelos's decisions delusional if you want, and maybe they were a little bit. But I think it's more accurate to say that were stubborn, short-sighted, stupid, selfish and made without regard for the future health of the franchise. The real difference between us and Peter Angelos in 2017-18 is that we cared about what would happen to the team going forward. 

[Sports Guy]

26 minutes ago, SteveA said:

Hate to beat a dead horse, but once again, it all comes down to the failure of Akin/Zimmerman/Lowther/Kremer.

I think it was the RIGHT THING to do to go into the season expecting at least two of those guys to be in the rotation and one to be in the bullpen.   None of them are super young, it was time to find out what they could do.    And, unfortunately, we found out.

I think if:

• One of those guys had been a complete bust
• One of them had been an adequate 4th or even 3rd starter
• One of them ate some innings at 5th starter but wound up not being very good
• One of them had been an adequate bullpen piece

We would probably be on pace for a 60+ win season instead of the 51 win pace we are on (and which we will probably exceed; we have weathered what is likely our worst two stretches of the year and starting Labor Day more than half our remaining games are vs non contenders).

Would we be good?   No.  But we wouldn't be the embarrassment we have been.

As I have said before, in hindsight, there ARE a few things I would have liked to have done:

• Bring in ONE major league caliber pitcher (i.e. not a dice roll like Harvey and King Felix)
• Non tender Pedro and sign a veteran MLB backup who plays half decent defense
• Handle the 2B situation much better than they did 

But honestly, that's about it.   None of those are earthshaking or huge difference makers.   I have no problem with signing Galvis and Franco.   I have no problem with rolling the dice on Harvey and Hernandez.   I honestly believe it was the correct thing to do to throw most of Kremer/Akin/Lowther/Zimmerman into the deep end of the pool and see if they can swim.   So while I would have made a few tweaks here and there, I am not of the school of thought of many in this thread that Elias just completely gutted the team and set them up to be awful.

I am FAR FAR more concerned about the developmental failures than I am about the team that has been put on the field this year.   While everyone here is giving the organization heat for the product on this field, hopping mad about it, I am much more concerned about what this year says about our ability to coach, instruct, and develop pitchers.   That's what has me upset.  Seeing people so made at the product on the field, to me, is missing the forest for the trees.  (Or is it the trees for the forest?   I'm never sure how that works).

Not really.  Certainly a part of it (although Zimmerman performed fine but to hurt) but that isn't all of it.  There were a lot of factors that led this.

The biggest factor was the lack of talent and depth.  Every team has injuries but the ones the Os suffered to good but not great players really highlighted how little depth we currently have.  The team's margin for error was zero.

[SteveA]

4 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

It's been years since I sifted through this in an effort to figure out who was responsible for the "delusion" that the Orioles could continue to compete well after that ship had sailed, so I'm going from memory. What I do recall is that Duquette wanted to trade veterans who weren't going to be extended but was thwarted (in typical inconsistent, indecisive, what-the-hell-is-going-on Angelos fashion), and didn't want to sign Davis to a lucrative long-term contract. Buck and Brady played some role in those decisions, especially the ones to add free-agent pitching, but their role was and is hazy to me, other than to say that in no well-run organization would they have the authority they appeared to have. 

I concluded then that, while the details remained murky, Peter Anglos was behind the disastrous overall strategy of 2017-18, and I don't view those decisions as delusional. In 2017, Angelos had owned the team for almost a quarter century without ever getting to the World Series, in the process gaining a reputation as one of the worst (if not he worst) owners in major U.S. professional sports. Desperate to make it the Fall Classic, he brought in Showalter and then Duquette, and the core of players they assembled got close. As long as he could hold on to some key plyers from those teams, Angelos was not willing to give up on what he knew would be his last shot to get to the Series -- whether his "baseball people" or the oddsmakers thought the likelihood of doing that was 20 percent or 5 percent or 2 percent. Trading  veterans who weren't going to be signed in free agency for prospects who might improve the team in the future, had no more appeal to him than spending on bonuses to international teenagers who'd be years away from the Orioles. Maybe Duquette could have done better in some of those trades, but I was and remain confident that he was trading depreciated assets because of decisions by Peter Angelos. 

Call Angelos's decisions delusional if you want, and maybe they were a little bit. But I think it's more accurate to say that were stubborn, short-sighted, stupid, selfish and made without regard for the future health of the franchise. The real difference between us and Peter Angelos in 2017-18 is that we cared about what would happen to the team going forward. 

I also think that due to Duquette's flirtation with the Toronto job, Angelos listened to him less and listened to other voices (Brady? Buck?) more in the last few years of that period.   So if DD pitched the idea of a selloff prior to 2018, or a mini-retrenchment partial rebuild, it probably was ignored.   I have a feeling Duquette was a lame duck for the last couple years and wasn't allowed to do what he wanted.   Now we don't know what he wanted, we can only guess.   But in the end the result is the same.

[HowAboutThat]

28 minutes ago, SteveA said:

Hate to beat a dead horse, but once again, it all comes down to the failure of Akin/Zimmerman/Lowther/Kremer.

I think it was the RIGHT THING to do to go into the season expecting at least two of those guys to be in the rotation and one to be in the bullpen.   None of them are super young, it was time to find out what they could do.    And, unfortunately, we found out.

I think if:

• One of those guys had been a complete bust
• One of them had been an adequate 4th or even 3rd starter
• One of them ate some innings at 5th starter but wound up not being very good
• One of them had been an adequate bullpen piece

We would probably be on pace for a 60+ win season instead of the 51 win pace we are on (and which we will probably exceed; we have weathered what is likely our worst two stretches of the year and starting Labor Day more than half our remaining games are vs non contenders).

Would we be good?   No.  But we wouldn't be the embarrassment we have been.

As I have said before, in hindsight, there ARE a few things I would have liked to have done:

• Bring in ONE major league caliber pitcher (i.e. not a dice roll like Harvey and King Felix)
• Non tender Pedro and sign a veteran MLB backup who plays half decent defense
• Handle the 2B situation much better than they did 

But honestly, that's about it.   None of those are earthshaking or huge difference makers.   I have no problem with signing Galvis and Franco.   I have no problem with rolling the dice on Harvey and Hernandez.   I honestly believe it was the correct thing to do to throw most of Kremer/Akin/Lowther/Zimmerman into the deep end of the pool and see if they can swim.   So while I would have made a few tweaks here and there, I am not of the school of thought of many in this thread that Elias just completely gutted the team and set them up to be awful.

I am FAR FAR more concerned about the developmental failures than I am about the team that has been put on the field this year.   While everyone here is giving the organization heat for the product on this field, hopping mad about it, I am much more concerned about what this year says about our ability to coach, instruct, and develop pitchers.   That's what has me upset.  Seeing people so made at the product on the field, to me, is missing the forest for the trees.  (Or is it the trees for the forest?   I'm never sure how that works).

Excellent comment and no disagreement is possible. You’re exactly correct. I do think Mike is deliberately holding the team back, and I do think he wants as few wins as possible, but I’m willing-most of the time- to give him the benefit of the doubt. He must have a reason he bounced Lowther( now injured) up and down without giving him a meaningful trial, and Wells( called up three times, sent down three times, with 18 innings to show for it) instead bringing on board the now departed Shaun Anderson (for 10 innings and a 9.00 ERA) but I confess I don’t understand it. 
I would add to your comment getting rid of Plutko and Sisco much sooner( so bringing in/up two catchers instead of one) changing how Lopez was/is handled, but those are details.

I have several problems with Hyde, but those are addressed in your “coaching ability” comment.

[NCRaven]

2021 was a season that I hoped would see the beginnings of a resurgence in our pitching.  Like SteveA said, the failures of Kremer, Lowther, Akin, and Wells, along with the injury to Zimmerman have had a huge impact on this season.  Having said that, I see no practical difference between a 45 win team and a 75 win team except that one gets you a much better draft position and pool.  I see no reason for MLB to incentivize mediocrity.  Spending money just to be somewhere in the middle and not quite playoff worthy is a waste of money.  Unless that is, mediocrity is just a stepping stone on the way to sustained excellence.

[Sports Guy]

There is no doubt that Elias got handed a bad hand by the previous regime.  The reason we aren't the White Sox (in terms of rebuilding) is because they traded their best assets at peak value and got back difference making talent.  It allowed them to get really good a lot quicker.  Had we done what we should have after 2016, we would be in a far difference place.

That being said, it still doesn't excuse Elias for ignoring the ML team and let's face it, that is what he has done and largely admitted to doing.  When you say, in so many words, that losing is fine by us, you are saying you won't be addressing the ML team and don't really care that much about it.

[Sports Guy]

6 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

2021 was a season that I hoped would see the beginnings of a resurgence in our pitching.  Like SteveA said, the failures of Kremer, Lowther, Akin, and Wells, along with the injury to Zimmerman have had a huge impact on this season.  Having said that, I see no practical difference between a 45 win team and a 75 win team except that one gets you a much better draft position and pool.  I see no reason for MLB to incentivize mediocrity.  Spending money just to be somewhere in the middle and not quite playoff worthy is a waste of money.  Unless that is, mediocrity is just a stepping stone on the way to sustained excellence.

Huh?  

[NCRaven]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Huh?  

Neither team makes the playoffs.  Neither team is good.  One gets the #1 draft pick and draft pool.  The other is picking 10th.  So there is no practical advantage to winning 75 games over winning 45 games.  You don't want to win 45 forever.  And if you think we've been huge losers too long, I will grant you the right to make that argument.  But, IF 2018 - 2022 leads to a title soon thereafter, flags fly forever.  I think that the fans in Houston and Chicago will accept the rebuilds prior to their Championships.  IF NOT, this really sucked.

Note:  45 and 75 are merely arbitrary numbers picked for the sake of discussion.  One represents really bad.  The other just your garden variety kind of bad.