How Long Will Elias Stay in Baltimore?

[Sports Guy]

Just now, geschinger said:

You don't need to lose to sustain a proper farm system.  And if you have other assets you can build that way (see how Seattle built a top notch farm system).  I'm not someone who thinks every team should tank when their window to compete is closed. With the Orioles it was crystal clear that a full teardown/rebuild was necessary.

When Elias arrived - no international presence, no siginifcant trade chips left, and a bad minor league system both operationally and with the lack of talent in the system.  If he spends on FA to put a team on the field that isn't embarassing there is no chance the Orioles farm system to where it's at today.   Higher picks and the higher draft pools it brings has clearly sped things up.  

Yea it was necessary for a year or 2.  It’s not now.  

[Sports Guy]

Just now, LookinUp said:

It's certainly unusual for the Orioles.

I guess time will tell whether this is sustainably great, particularly after AR and Grayson graduate. I'm bullish on it though. I expect both the international pipeline and the lesser known rule 4 draft guys from the last two years to make a splash this year.

And no, I don't study other orgs. I still think this one is noticeably competent.

Ok, so you don’t study other organizations but yet you say they are top 5 in doing this stuff?  That really doesn’t hold any weight.

And great..they didn’t do it before.  That’s been established for the last 20+ years.  We know it.  We get it. 
 

We are all glad they are doing it.

[Can_of_corn]

52 minutes ago, interloper said:

I don't understand why @Can_of_corndown voted this. There's nothing offensive or trolling about this post. 

The whole 2020 doesn't count excuse.  Every team had to deal with it.

[wildcard]

18 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

This is the thing….people talk about what things were like before.

Who cares?  That’s irrelevant.  Just because you are better than the worst, doesn’t mean you are more innovative than everyone else.

As I said, the bar is so low with this organization that people find big improvements to be the mark of some incredible breakthroughs when in reality, it’s just catching up to what everyone else has been doing for a while.

Not so.  Duquette and Buck were two of the winningest management teams in baseball for 5 years.   They did it their way which run out because Dan was not allowed to do some of the trades he wanted to do.

[wildcard]

9 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

The whole 2020 doesn't count excuse.  Every team had to deal with it.

Yeah, so.  When evaluating how many seasons Elias has been building it should be taken into account.   

[LookinUp]

4 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Yeah, so.  When evaluating how many seasons Elias has been building it should be taken into account.   

Kjerstad, Westburg, Mayo and Baumler were in that draft. It's not exactly a black mark on his resume.

[waroriole]

9 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Not so.  Duquette and Buck were two of the winningest management teams in baseball for 5 years.   They did it their way which run out because Dan was not allowed to do some of the trades he wanted to do.

What trades did Dan want to do?

[Jammer7]

Until the Orioles win at the major league level, the criticism is more than fair. This is the plan he laid out early in his tenure. The major league product has been awful. We knew it would. His job is not just winning at the major league level, but it is certainly what fans care about most and what he’s judged by. Overall, he has done a very good job, so far. 

Mike Elias has built up the infrastructure of the entire organization, from essentially nothing. He has completely changed the culture and made excellent hires, like Sig, Koby, Matt Blood and many others. They have drafted well, and done well to stand up an international program quickly, and the new complex down there is upper echelon. Having the scouting and development staffs on the same page is huge. 

I don’t think every organization is doing all of the same things the Orioles are doing now, but most are. Elias and staff have brought the organization to the modern era, certainly. It’s hard to know what they are doing differently than others because they don’t usually advertise that kind of thing when it is a competitive advantage. One thing that stands out is their use of 4-5 coaches on minor league teams. That is not being done by all teams.

I think Elias stays for a good while, maybe 4-6 more years. It could be something where he becomes a team president and promotes a GM from within. He strikes me as a guy who will stay as long as the ownership will support his plan to make the Orioles a winner in the long term. Things can certainly change quickly. 

[wildcard]

7 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

Kjerstad, Westburg, Mayo and Baumler were in that draft. It's not exactly a black mark on his resume.

We don't know that yet.   Kjerstad and Baumler are question marks at this point.   I hope they turn out to be good.

[geschinger]

I came across a article from Meoili about Elias and the approach from last August 2021 and agree or disagree it looks like he's sticking to the plan.  

From the article:

Quote

“I’m looking forward to that day, which is coming closer and closer to where our odds of reaching the playoffs will be ticking up,” Elias said, noting that the club’s potential investment in free-agent reinforcements will align with that prolonged period of “maximizing playoff odds.”

Playoff odds are clearly not ticking up at this point -  going big in FA in 2022 would not have been consistent with the approach.

Quote

“I think that we look at where we’re at, what we expect our internal group to do next year — and that includes players that we’ll see how the minor league season finishes up, but that may be prominent parts of this major league team next year that aren’t on [the roster] right now — and look where our holes are, and the resources that are available to us and make strategic decisions with the goal in mind of getting this team back to the playoffs as soon as possible and sort of keeping us in a state of not having to go through a gigantic, traumatic rebuild of this degree ever again,” Elias said.

Interesting next year, competitive after that.

It is relatively clear - 2022 is a year to play the prospects to see what they have and start adding for 2023.  I think it's a well reasoned approach even if many others think its not nearly agressive enough.   It also leads me to believe he is not being held back from spending in 2022 but in 2023 and beyond he does expect to be able to increase payroll.  

[LookinUp]

28 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Ok, so you don’t study other organizations but yet you say they are top 5 in doing this stuff?  That really doesn’t hold any weight.

And great..they didn’t do it before.  That’s been established for the last 20+ years.  We know it.  We get it. 
 

We are all glad they are doing it.

Well, regardless of whether you think my ranking of them as top notch is premature, my point in making this thread is that I have no confidence that ownership will do what it takes to keep them around, and that introduces considerable risk to maintaining and continuing to improve upon what even you acknowledge is really positive change.

[LookinUp]

5 minutes ago, wildcard said:

We don't know that yet.   Kjerstad and Baumler are question marks at this point.   I hope they turn out to be good.

Perhaps true, though you have to like a lot of what you see, but there's no reason to totally discount 2020 is my point. The year lost delayed guys that were already in the minors. That much is true for sure.

[Sports Guy]

24 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Not so.  Duquette and Buck were two of the winningest management teams in baseball for 5 years.   They did it their way which run out because Dan was not allowed to do some of the trades he wanted to do.

Yea it is so.  We weren’t doing smart things in the minors when those guys were here.

[Sports Guy]

7 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

Well, regardless of whether you think my ranking of them as top notch is premature, my point in making this thread is that I have no confidence that ownership will do what it takes to keep them around, and that introduces considerable risk to maintaining and continuing to improve upon what even you acknowledge is really positive change.

Sure..I don’t see how anyone can have confidence that ownership will do what’s needed to win.  If we happen to fall ass backwards into winning, like they did in the mid 2010s, great.  Otherwise, i don’t have confidence they will do what’s needed to win.

They can’t even pay for meals and hotel rooms for announcers.

[LookinUp]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

They can’t even pay for meals and hotel rooms for announcers.

And now we come full circle to my point.

Even a very cheap rebuild might be short-circuited by this ownership group. We better hope Elias gets what he wants (resources for an eventual ML team) and a valuable extension, otherwise he's gone and we venture back into the realm of the unknown.

That is a worse scenario than just a very slow and cheap rebuild.