The O’s draft philosophy and economic principles

[drjohnnyfeva]

I don't disagree with the OP.  I think the idea of doing what you're best at should be a pretty universal goal...  The jury is still out with the Elias regime, tho.  Unlike others, I'm still willing to give him a couple years.  I think we were a total mess when he was brought in... far worse off than others gave credence to. 

I don't think there is anything wrong with the philosophy of developing bats and buying or trading for arms.  My fear is that we are not good at identifying why a pitcher is successful on other teams and that we'll throw away good money on boom or bust prospects like Ubaldo Jimenez.  He was identified by everyone outside of our organization as a boom or bust - with VERY high bust potential and we know that history.  Frankly, I think  signing P's in FA or getting them in trades is a very risky proposition.  Even in our last successful stretch, while having many busts, like Arrieta etc, we still managed to have some nice middle releivers and even a couple great closers who were developed in the system.   Some of our trades have done well after leaving.  Of course that's all from the old regime and I wouldn't say they excelled at doing it.

One of my biggest concerns with drafting pitchers is their age.  Drafting HS pitching talent is not something I like.  I prefer college players who have displayed some durability.  Those young arms are so fragile and if misused or overused early never seem to overcome bigger problems as they get older.

[HowAboutThat]

“Let other teams take as much risk as possible.”

Let other teams draft talented HS guys and deal with the problems inherent in those choices. The highest ranked pitcher Elias has drafted has already gone down with TJ.

It makes sense to let other teams take that risk while assembling a deep system from which you can offer good return for the pitchers who succeed.

I have no idea whether that’s their thinking but it does explain what is going on.

 

[Ohfan67]

On 9/24/2021 at 9:34 AM, Frobby said:

I was thinking today about the Orioles’ hitter heavy drafts, and how the team’s developmental and evaluative strengths might dictate their strategy in accordance with economic principles.   

In brief, all of us can do many things.   But we do some things better than others.   So, we tend to earn our livings doing the things we are good at, and we pay other people to do the things we’re not so good at, or which would take more time than we want to divert from our main occupation.    I could do my own taxes, but they’re pretty complicated, so I pay an accountant to spend 3 hours doing them because it would take me 10 hours to do, and I’m better off spending that 10 hours providing legal services to my clients and earning more money in those 10 hours than it costs me to pay the accountant to do my taxes.   

I think the O’s believe that they are very good at (1) identifying those hitters available to be drafted/signed who can be developed into good major leaguers, and (2) developing those hitters to make them successful.    And I think they believe that (1) it’s harder to identify and develop successful pitchers, and (2) even if you do everything right, many pitchers get derailed by injury.   So therefore, their strategy is to focus on drafting, signing and developing hitters, and trade some of them to acquire much of the pitching they need when those pitchers are further up the developmental curve.   

It’s not a bad philosophy, and I think Adam Smith would approve of the strategy.   We all need to eat, but we don’t all grow our own food.   

I do think the O’s are taking this thinking to a pretty extreme level, though.  I’ll be interested to see if they begin shifting gears next year in the draft, and how they do at acquiring pitchers from other organizations.   

Another way to think about it: I think the Orioles model focuses on drafting WAR and not positions. I think the dependent variable is the probability of yielding X amount of WAR while the player is under control. If you are going to base your draft on analytics, then that seems like the best approach...sort of the only approach. 

[wildcard]

Most of the best starters the O's have had since they moved from St Louis have been drafted and developed in house.    Palmer (268 wins), McNally (181),  Mussina (147), Flanagan (141),  Pappas (110), Dennis Martinez (106),  Steve Barber  (95) Boddicker (79), Ponson (73),  Storm Davis (63), McDonald (53),  Phoebus (50),  Cabrera (28), Estrada (48) Bunker (44)  were all drafted and developed in house. 

Those that were not include:

Cuellar (143) Traded for at age 32 for Curt Blefary (24) former Rookie of the year.

McGregor (138) Traded by the New York Yankees with Rick Dempsey, Tippy Martinez, Rudy May and Dave Pagan to the Baltimore Orioles for Doyle Alexander, Jimmy Freeman, Elrod Hendricks, Ken Holtzman and Grant Jackson. McGregor was 22 when acquired.

Erickson (79) Traded by the Minnesota Twins to the Baltimore Orioles for a player to be named later and Scott Klingenbeck. The Baltimore Orioles sent Kimera Bartee (September 19, 1995) to the Minnesota Twins to complete the trade.  Erickson was 27 when the O's acquired him.

Tillman  (74)   Traded by the Seattle Mariners with Tony Butler (minors), Adam Jones, Kam Mickolio and George Sherrill to the Baltimore Orioles for Erik Bedard.  Tillman was 20 when acquired.

Rodrigo Lopez (60)  Signed as a Free Agent with the Baltimore Orioles.  Sign at 26 after the Padres granted him Free Agency.

Grimsley (51)  Traded by the Cincinnati Reds with Wallace Williams (minors) to the Baltimore Orioles for 2nd rounder William Wood (minors), 1st rounder Junior Kennedy and Merv Rettenmund. Grimsley was 24 when acquired by the O's.

Guthrie (47) Selected off waivers by the Baltimore Orioles from the Cleveland Indians.  Guthrie was 28 when acquitted.

Chen (46)  Signed by the Baltimore Orioles as an amateur free agent out of the Japan League.  Chen was 26 when signed 

I think its noteable that not one of the starters that earned at least 46 wins as an Oriole was a 6 year free agent.

I think its well known by the O's and other teams that acquiring 6 year free agents starters that are good is expensive  and hard to do for the O's in a hitter's ball park. The O's will have to substantially overpay to attract a quality FA starter.  And overpaying for top pitchers is probably not in the O's economic model.

Trading may be an avenue that will get the O's a quality starter with both Stower and Neustrom looking ready or close to ready to joining the majors. This may allow the O's to trade Mancini and Santander though neither appears to be at peak value this off season.

I think the list of starters that O's have signed and developed in the past shows that there is great benefit to following that path.   Though Elias has concentrated on signing position players until now probably because he saw the pitching in the farm system was better than the position players.   That appears to have changed with  his last few drafts.   He probably needs to draft more pitchers higher in the draft  in  the near future. 

The solution to being successful in drafting and developing quality starters is to draft more of them not less. The more that are drafted means the more chances one or more will be developed.  Its true that drafting position players is less risky but not drafting starters will probably never allow the O's to have a Palmer, McNally or Mussina.  Those kind of top quality pitchers will probably only come to the O's in the draft.  And those kind of pitchers are the ones that win World Series. That is the long term solution in my opinion.

 

 

 

 

[RZNJ]

Let's hit that Japanese and Korean market again!

[Jammer7]

On 9/24/2021 at 12:58 PM, NCRaven said:

I still think it's hard to determine exactly how much their strategy in recent drafts is due to the effects of COVID on the high school and college players and seasons and how much is a deliberate, long-term strategy that will continue post-COVID.  Any conclusions that we make now will be based on incomplete information.

Excellent point. Each year’s draft is a case-by-case basis, I think. Their evaluations must have a lot of projection based on small samples and other scouting input to gauge sustainability. They think they got under-priced and under-valued pieces. We’ll see, but I think they did well.