O’s sign Jordan Lyles

[Sports Guy]

11 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Dramatic post considering the O's have a payroll in the low 60 millions and its a one year contract.

Take a deep breath and try to stay off that road.

I don’t think you are quite getting the point.  It’s the thought process of the move.  It’s paying someone 7M for a performance worth half that (at least).  And it’s paying for someone coming to far worse pitching situation than what he had last year. 
 

Lyles is not good.  You can’t spin it anyway you like but he’s just not that good.  His value is the innings and taking the ball every 5th day.   However, if he comes here and is more of a 6+ ERA guy, he likely won’t be left in games long enough to eat the innings they are hoping he provides.  
 

If he gives us similar numbers as he did in 2021, I will be fine with the signing and that is the hope but the reality is that it’s a tough hill for him to climb to be a similar pitcher coming into this situation.

[DrungoHazewood]

23 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Dramatic post considering the O's have a payroll in the low 60 millions and its a one year contract.

Take a deep breath and try to stay off that road.

I'm sure you remember paying just $7M for Jaret Wright.  And another $6M for Danys Baez.  And only $4.5M for Jamie Walker.  And another $4M for Kevin Millar.  And a couple million for Steve Trachsel.  The all of a sudden we have a pretty substantial payroll for an old team going nowhere.

Why pay $7M for a 30-year-old replacement player when you can get the same thing for $600k?  This is the team that fired coaches apparently to save $100k or $200k, but they can afford $7M for a guy who is below replacement across an 11-year career.

[interloper]

Well there's no further point in discussing this since SG, Drungo, CoC, and Phillip have determined it's 100% a bad and dumb move. I certainly don't want to waste any more time offering my opinions at brick walls. As a Baltimore band once said, the brick wall will always win. 

It's gonna be a long off-season around here.

[SteveA]

14 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I'm sure you remember paying just $7M for Jaret Wright.  And another $6M for Danys Baez.  And only $4.5M for Jamie Walker.  And another $4M for Kevin Millar.  And a couple million for Steve Trachsel.  The all of a sudden we have a pretty substantial payroll for an old team going nowhere.

Why pay $7M for a 30-year-old replacement player when you can get the same thing for $600k?  This is the team that fired coaches apparently to save $100k or $200k, but they can afford $7M for a guy who is below replacement across an 11-year career.

Yeah, I think we are all in agreement that this doesn't make sense.   And it seems pretty obvious.   So why does a guy getting paid what Elias is to make these decisions make a move like this?   I'm trying to play devil's advocate on the "it's a stupid move" opinion and trying to come up with what HIS reasoning is.

I agree with all the criticism of this move, it looks bad.   But I'm not just going to sit there and say the explanation is that Elias is stupid and thus he makes a stupid move.   There has to be a bit more to it than that...

Some theories:

   1) We got burned so badly last year by assuming we could get legitimate innings out of guys like Kremer, Akin, Lowther, Lopez, LeBlanc, Harvey, King Felix, and it wound up being detrimental to our bullpen because they were overworked, that we are now overreacting and overspending for a guy who appears to, despite being bad, have a legitimate ability to pitch 5+ innings a higher % of the time than anyone but Means?

   2) Some data or analytics stuff that makes them think he is worth a lot more than his performance stats would indicate, or that he can be tweaked to be much much better?

   3) Some sort of edict from MLB to join in the pre-lockout spending spree so the owners can hammer home the point that the players are getting?

[DrungoHazewood]

10 minutes ago, SteveA said:

Yeah, I think we are all in agreement that this doesn't make sense.   And it seems pretty obvious.   So why does a guy getting paid what Elias is to make these decisions make a move like this?   I'm trying to play devil's advocate on the "it's a stupid move" opinion and trying to come up with what HIS reasoning is.

I agree with all the criticism of this move, it looks bad.   But I'm not just going to sit there and say the explanation is that Elias is stupid and thus he makes a stupid move.   There has to be a bit more to it than that...

Some theories:

   1) We got burned so badly last year by assuming we could get legitimate innings out of guys like Kremer, Akin, Lowther, Lopez, LeBlanc, Harvey, King Felix, and it wound up being detrimental to our bullpen because they were overworked, that we are now overreacting and overspending for a guy who appears to, despite being bad, have a legitimate ability to pitch 5+ innings a higher % of the time than anyone but Means?

   2) Some data or analytics stuff that makes them think he is worth a lot more than his performance stats would indicate, or that he can be tweaked to be much much better?

   3) Some sort of edict from MLB to join in the pre-lockout spending spree so the owners can hammer home the point that the players are getting?

I agree that Elias isn't stupid and there is probably some kind of justifiable rationale for this, but I'm having a hard time coming up with one.  Your #1 is kind of plausible, #2 doesn't make any sense (why overpay for a guy everyone can see stinks and no one else would pay half that?), and #3... maybe? 

I think it's somewhat likely that the Orioles see a floor coming when the CBA is ironed out, and know that they have no chance on good free agents so they need to do something to get the payroll up to the floor. If that's the case I'd prefer they just give Mullins, Mancini and Means $5M raises.

[Ohfan67]

3 minutes ago, SteveA said:

Yeah, I think we are all in agreement that this doesn't make sense.   And it seems pretty obvious.   So why does a guy getting paid what Elias is to make these decisions make a move like this?   I'm trying to play devil's advocate on the "it's a stupid move" opinion and trying to come up with what HIS reasoning is.

I agree with all the criticism of this move, it looks bad.   But I'm not just going to sit there and say the explanation is that Elias is stupid and thus he makes a stupid move.   There has to be a bit more to it than that...

Some theories:

   1) We got burned so badly last year by assuming we could get legitimate innings out of guys like Kremer, Akin, Lowther, Lopez, LeBlanc, Harvey, King Felix, and it wound up being detrimental to our bullpen because they were overworked, that we are now overreacting and overspending for a guy who appears to, despite being bad, have a legitimate ability to pitch 5+ innings a higher % of the time than anyone but Means?

   2) Some data or analytics stuff that makes them think he is worth a lot more than his performance stats would indicate, or that he can be tweaked to be much much better?

   3) Some sort of edict from MLB to join in the pre-lockout spending spree so the owners can hammer home the point that the players are getting?

4) It's the Orioles. I know you are looking for deeper reasons, but there is a ton of data supporting the hypothesis that the Orioles organization, especially ownership, is not good. As a stand alone move, this feels like an Orioles move from say 2005. 

 

That said, out of your three suggestions I think it is definitely #1. There may be a few more of these signings right before spring training. It seems a little desperate. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 minute ago, Ohfan67 said:

4) It's the Orioles. I know you are looking for deeper reasons, but there is a ton of data supporting the hypothesis that the Orioles organization, especially ownership, is not good. As a stand alone move, this feels like an Orioles move from say 2005. 

 

That said, out of your three suggestions I think it is definitely #1. There may be a few more of these signings right before spring training. It seems a little desperate. 

I'm not willing to go with the idea that Mike Elias and team are dumb.  Because they're not.  If the answer "Mike Elias = Syd Thrift" I'm going to disagree.

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I agree that Elias isn't stupid and there is probably some kind of justifiable rationale for this, but I'm having a hard time coming up with one.  Your #1 is kind of plausible, #2 doesn't make any sense (why overpay for a guy everyone can see stinks and no one else would pay half that?), and #3... maybe? 

I think it's somewhat likely that the Orioles see a floor coming when the CBA is ironed out, and know that they have no chance on good free agents so they need to do something to get the payroll up to the floor. If that's the case I'd prefer they just give Mullins, Mancini and Means $5M raises.

If a floor is incoming I'd 100% spend it on extensions for younger players.  I'm sure it would go by AAV so it wouldn't even raise current payroll by a lot.

[DrungoHazewood]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

If a floor is incoming I'd 100% spend it on extensions for younger players.  I'm sure it would go by AAV so it wouldn't even raise current payroll by a lot.

Sure. I'm just trying to spitball reasons why a good analytics guy would spend $7M plus and $11M club option on a guy who's been worth $3.22 and a bag of magic beans over an 11-year career.

[wildcard]

57 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I don’t think you are quite getting the point.  It’s the thought process of the move.  It’s paying someone 7M for a performance worth half that (at least).  And it’s paying for someone coming to far worse pitching situation than what he had last year. 
 

Lyles is not good.  You can’t spin it anyway you like but he’s just not that good.  His value is the innings and taking the ball every 5th day.   However, if he comes here and is more of a 6+ ERA guy, he likely won’t be left in games long enough to eat the innings they are hoping he provides.  
 

If he gives us similar numbers as he did in 2021, I will be fine with the signing and that is the hope but the reality is that it’s a tough hill for him to climb to be a similar pitcher coming into this situation.

You have been yelling for months/years about what a cheapskate the O's owner is and how Elias could spend much more on a variety for players of your choosing.  And certainly Elias has no history of over paying.

And you acknowledge that Elias is analytically driven.  

So maybe, just maybe he and Sig see something that you don't.  Maybe to get a starter to come to Camden Yard in the AL East for a last place team he had to pay.   But we will not know how good or bad an assessment Elias has made until after the season and if he is right it may not be true at all that this was the wrong thing to do.

It would be out of character for Elias to through 7m down the drain for no good reason when he has been trying to do nothing but cut payroll for 3 years.

 

[eddie83]

4 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Sure. I'm just trying to spitball reasons why a good analytics guy would spend $7M plus and $11M club option on a guy who's been worth $3.22 and a bag of magic beans over an 11-year career.

Replacement players is a term and not an actual player. If they existed then where are they?

[Can_of_corn]

5 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Sure. I'm just trying to spitball reasons why a good analytics guy would spend $7M plus and $11M club option on a guy who's been worth $3.22 and a bag of magic beans over an 11-year career.

Have you tried blaming ownership?

[Ohfan67]

8 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I'm not willing to go with the idea that Mike Elias and team are dumb.  Because they're not.  If the answer "Mike Elias = Syd Thrift" I'm going to disagree.

I don't think Elias is dumb. But ownership is a different story. The moves seems like it does not fit the plan that Elias has communicated to the media multiple times, seems desperate, and is overpaying for mediocrity. That is incredibly consistent with the way the Orioles operated during the naughts. 

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, wildcard said:

You have been yelling for months/years about what a cheapskate the O's owner is and how Elias could spend much more on a variety for players of your choosing.  And certainly Elias has no history of over paying.

And you acknowledge that Elias is analytically driven.  

So maybe, just maybe he and Sig see something that you don't.  Maybe to get a starter to come to Camden Yard in the AL East for a last place team he had to pay.   But we will not know how good or bad an assessment Elias has made until after the season and if he is right it may not be true at all that this was the wrong thing to do.

It would be out of character for Elias to through 7m down the drain for no good reason when he has been trying to nothing but cut payroll for 3 years.

 

Even if they see something it's still bizarre they would pay that much to sign him this early.

They need to see something and be convinced that at least one other team was making him a priority.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Ohfan67 said:

I don't think Elias is dumb. But ownership is a different story. The moves seems like it does not fit the plan that Elias has communicated to the media multiple times, seems desperate, and is overpaying for mediocrity. That is incredibly consistent with the way the Orioles operated during the naughts. 

I'm not sure if calling them the naughts instead of the oughts/aughts was intentional but I like to think it was.