I'm already over this offseason.

[interloper]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

Can’t argue with that.   Hard to say if the Elias team bears any blame for his lack of progress, but it’s happened on their watch.   Overall, they seem to be doing a good job developing hitters and nobody wins them all.  

For Diaz it seems to me to be an erosion of tools and a bunch of injuries, not anything systemically wrong with their development approach. Who knows I guess, I just found the comment to be predictable. I haven't really seen CoC give credit to any development that has gone well. 

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, interloper said:

For Diaz it seems to me to be an erosion of tools and a bunch of injuries, not anything systemically wrong with their development approach. Who knows I guess, I just found the comment to be predictable. I haven't really seen CoC give credit to any development that has gone well. 

Forget Diaz then…there are a host of other players that are in the upper minors or majors that they have failed to develop.

CoC is right…if you are going to praise them for good things, it’s also open season to praise the bad and let’s face it, at the ML level, its been mostly bad so far.

[interloper]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Forget Diaz then…there are a host of other players that are in the upper minors or majors that they have failed to develop.

CoC is right…if you are going to praise them for good things, it’s also open season to praise the bad and let’s face it, at the ML level, its been mostly bad so far.

I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not happy with how the crop of pitching prospects developed last year. But I'll also frame that in the context of there being no minor league season in 2020 and, for some guys, working with 3 different baseballs over the course of the year. And more than those things, perhaps we've overvalued those pitchers.

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, interloper said:

For Diaz it seems to me to be an erosion of tools and a bunch of injuries, not anything systemically wrong with their development approach. Who knows I guess, I just found the comment to be predictable. I haven't really seen CoC give credit to any development that has gone well. 

Grayson's been great.

Means' has a wonderful change up.

 

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, interloper said:

I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not happy with how the crop of pitching prospects developed last year. But I'll also frame that in the context of there being no minor league season in 2020 and, for some guys, working with 3 different baseballs over the course of the year. 

But that's every team right?

Were other teams having the same type of issues with their young pitching?

I just HATE the no minor league season excuse, every team had to deal with it. 

[interloper]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

Grayson's been great.

Means' has a wonderful change up.

 

Honestly, it wasn't that great last season lol. 

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, interloper said:

Honestly, it wasn't that great last season lol. 

I'd say Mountcastle was being more selective but we all know that is because of the talk Buck had with him in Spring Training back in 2018(?).

[interloper]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

But that's every team right?

Were other teams having the same type of issues with their young pitching?

I just HATE the no minor league season excuse, every team had to deal with it. 

I have no idea if other teams had the same issues, but I'm not sure any team exposed their young pitchers to ML hitters as much as we did. Especially in the AL East. But I'm not positive on that either. 

Like I said, I'm not happy with the development of certain guys, mainly Kremer and Lowther. But some guys you can tell from their quotes, like Akin, that they just didn't adjust or had the wrong mental approach. Alex Wells was never not going to get shellacked with his stuff. Zimmermann was doing well prior to the injury. Tyler Wells was mostly great. Lopez I think we actually got the best from him that you can hope for. So it's a mixed bag for me. A lot of guys turned it around late in the season, too. So we'll just have to see, but I'm not trying to say development is going as well as it could be. 

I do think overall there's a much more cohesive development plan in place across all levels of the system. We'll see how it goes. 

[NCRaven]

4 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

You or I could have nailed the draft simply by picking Adley.

In that same draft, they also took Gunnar Henderson (Round 2) and in AA Bowie at the end of the season; Kyle Stowers (Comp B) AAA Norfolk; along with Zach Watson AA, Joey Ortiz AA, and Darrell Hernaiz in the top 10 rounds.  All of these guys have shown flashes, as a minimum and much more than that with Henderson and Stowers.

The 2019 draft was just Adley Rutschman.  He was an easy choice at 1-1, but Elias and team made good picks after that, as well.

[Sports Guy]

33 minutes ago, interloper said:

I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not happy with how the crop of pitching prospects developed last year. But I'll also frame that in the context of there being no minor league season in 2020 and, for some guys, working with 3 different baseballs over the course of the year. And more than those things, perhaps we've overvalued those pitchers.

Yea, you will give them all the excuses you can while also ignoring that other organizations had to deal with the same issues and didn’t fall completely on their faces.

[Porky]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Couldn’t disagree with you more.   The roster was horrible.  They won 47 games and, of course, played even worse than that after trading Manny, Schoop, Gausman, Britton etc.   That team was bound to be awful for the next few years no matter what.   

As to the farm system, I agree it was a bit underrated, but (1) it was still a below average system, and (2) the best talent in it was far away from the majors.   

And, of course, we had zero international talent in the pipeline and didn’t even have a pipeline built.

My point here is limited.   I am simply saying Elias wasn’t in a situation where he had a decision to make whether to do a teardown vs. a patch job.   The teardown was 90% complete when he arrived.   Patching wasn’t an option.   

The issue of what to do this offseason is a separate question.  


 

I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying I disagree with what Elias is doing. But simply, Elias was not hired and then on Day 1 he started to think, "Oh, what should I do? This situation here is crazy."

Every candidate for that job outlined what they would do during the interview process. The Angelos Sons hired Elias because they wanted to do an Astros-style tank rebuild. Elias aligned with that vision.

Building a baseball team is not a binary decision between a full teardown and some perpetual 75 win patch job. I really don't get why that is accepted as some sort of fact around here. The Orioles chose to do a teardown. But certainly, look around baseball and there's plenty of teams doing it other ways, with and without money.

[interloper]

6 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Yea, you will give them all the excuses you can while also ignoring that other organizations had to deal with the same issues and didn’t fall completely on their faces.

I think that's a little unfair, especially since I said I wasn't happy with it. I also don't think it was all that surprising that all those pitchers got knocked around last season. And again, which other teams were running out that many rookie SP? In the AL East? 

It doesn't have to be so black and white: "the Orioles are BAD at developing / the Orioles are GOOD at developing". There's a lot of nuance going on. I'm sure they failed with some guys on the development side and succeeded with others. 

Overall I trust the development side of things is improving, but yes, they have a lot to prove in particular with some of these mid-tier SP prospects with iffy stuff. 

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Porky said:

I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying I disagree with what Elias is doing. But simply, Elias was not hired and then on Day 1 he started to think, "Oh, what should I do? This situation here is crazy."

Every candidate for that job outlined what they would do during the interview process. The Angelos Sons hired Elias because they wanted to do an Astros-style tank rebuild. Elias aligned with that vision.

Building a baseball team is not a binary decision between a full teardown and some perpetual 75 win patch job. I really don't get why that is accepted as some sort of fact around here. The Orioles chose to do a teardown. But certainly, look around baseball and there's plenty of teams doing it other ways, with and without money.

My point (and going back to the post about the Cubs that started this) is that 47-115 and 71-91 are two very different starting points when deciding how to get back to being a contender.   To me, the Cubs have choices; the Orioles really didn’t, by the time Elias got here (and arguably even before that).   

If your point is that Elias knew what he was getting into, well sure he did.   And if you’re saying the owners picked him because his vision was consistent with the approach they wanted to take (and had already set out on), I’m fine with that too.   
 

[Tony-OH]

As for the title of this thread, so is major league baseball apparently.