How Long Will Elias Stay in Baltimore?

[geschinger]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Again, the component to rebuilding that people don’t seem to get is that ownership wants it.  Why does ownership want it?  Do you really think it’s to build a sustained winner?  No, of course not.  They want it to be cheap and pocket as much money as possible.

That's an assumption with no evidence to back it up.  You could be potentially be right.  But what we know for sure as of now is that early phases of the plan have been relatively successful.  Significant improvements in the international presence, analytics and the farm system.  

Why would ownership want to successfully implement a plan that builds a sustained winner?  How about signifcantly increasing the value of the franchise while at the same time also raking in signfiicant profits.  Those are the benefits Jim Crane has received as a result of a successful implementation of the type of plan the Orioles are trying.  Why wouldn't Orioles ownership want similar?

 

[Sports Guy]

26 minutes ago, geschinger said:

That's an assumption with no evidence to back it up.  You could be potentially be right.  But what we know for sure as of now is that early phases of the plan have been relatively successful.  Significant improvements in the international presence, analytics and the farm system.  

Why would ownership want to successfully implement a plan that builds a sustained winner?  How about signifcantly increasing the value of the franchise while at the same time also raking in signfiicant profits.  Those are the benefits Jim Crane has received as a result of a successful implementation of the type of plan the Orioles are trying.  Why wouldn't Orioles ownership want similar?

 

They may want that long term but they can use the disguise of rebuilding as a reason to rake in profits now because there is zero reason to suck for 4+ years on purpose.

And btw, there is plenty of evidence of ownership being cheap and valuing saving money.

 

[big_sparxx]

21 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

They may want that long term but they can use the disguise of rebuilding as a reason to rake in profits now because there is zero reason to suck for 4+ years on purpose.

And btw, there is plenty of evidence of ownership being cheap and valuing saving money.

 

Like the Chris Davis contract.

 

Once bitten...

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, big_sparxx said:

Like the Chris Davis contract.

 

Once bitten...

The Davis contract was under different ownership and in different circumstances.  It has no relevance to today.

It was also a stupid move at the time.  
 

 

[geschinger]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

They may want that long term but they can use the disguise of rebuilding as a reason to rake in profits now because there is zero reason to suck for 4+ years on purpose.

I don't think they are sucking on purpose in 2022.  I see it as an interesting year to see what they have as I think a lot of young players are going to get a ton of playing time this year.  

As for the reasons, who cares?  If the intention was pure - the goal was truly to rebuild a franchise as quickly as possible or if it was all just a disguise to rake in profits - the end result is the same, they took the optimal approach to rebuilding their farm system and have been successful. 

Now they are in the transition phase hoping to develop the talent and then there will be an inflection point next year - after seeing what they have do they spend to fill needs?  If Orioles ownership wants that long term the answer will be yes.  I think they will as well as it would be illogical not to if they want to maximize the value of their asset and rake in profits.

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, geschinger said:

I don't think they are sucking on purpose in 2022.  I see it as an interesting year to see what they have as I think a lot of young players are going to get a ton of playing time this year.  

As for the reasons, who cares?  If the intention was pure - the goal was truly to rebuild a franchise as quickly as possible or if it was all just a disguise to rake in profits - the end result is the same, they took the optimal approach to rebuilding their farm system and have been successful. 

Now they are in the transition phase hoping to develop the talent and then there will be an inflection point next year - after seeing what they have do they spend to fill needs?  If Orioles ownership wants that long term the answer will be yes.  I think they will as well as it would be illogical not to if they want to maximize the value of their asset and rake in profits.

Who cares?  Seriously?  Ownership intentionally sabotaging the team to lose games on purpose for several years just to make extra money doesn’t bother you?  
 

Wow, when winning becomes something you don’t care about, I see no reason to discuss the matter any further.  I don’t watch, discuss, write about and care about the team because I want to say we have a top Rated farm system.  To each their own I guess.

[geschinger]

26 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Who cares?  Seriously?  Ownership intentionally sabotaging the team to lose games on purpose for several years just to make extra money doesn’t bother you?  

A complete tear down and losing games to optimize getting the fanchise getting to the point where they can build a sustained winner doesn't bother me.  I believe that was absolutely the right approach.  

I can't get into ownerships head to know *why* they took the optimal approach to rebuilding the franchise and even if the motives were inpure the bottom line for me is that they they took the right approach and did it successfully - we wouldn't have anywhere near as strong of a farm system if we instead had tried to maximize wins the past couple of years.  

26 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Wow, when winning becomes something you don’t care about, I see no reason to discuss the matter any further.  I don’t watch, discuss, write about and care about the team because I want to say we have a top Rated farm system.  To each their own I guess.

Winning is what I care about.  I feel pretty good where they are having a top farm system going into 2022 transitioning to trying to translate that into wins at the MLB level.

[Sports Guy]

They should be maximizing wins starting now.  That’s the issue.

[geschinger]

31 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

They should be maximizing wins starting now.  That’s the issue.

I disagree.  I think what they should be maximizing is the development of their young players.   

I would have liked to have seen them sign one more starting pitcher as workload may be an issue if there are some awful starts which seems inevitable with the lack of experience. 

I would have been totally against going out and getting 3-4 free agent pitchers and giving them 100+ starts to try to maximize wins.

[Sports Guy]

13 minutes ago, geschinger said:

I disagree.  I think what they should be maximizing is the development of their young players.   

I would have liked to have seen them sign one more starting pitcher as workload may be an issue if there are some awful starts which seems inevitable with the lack of experience. 

I would have been totally against going out and getting 3-4 free agent pitchers and giving them 100+ starts to try to maximize wins.

You can do both.  You can maximize development of your young players and win.

Teams do it all the time.

What you don’t do is what the Padres did in the mid 2010s.  They were looking like they would be in the cusp of something but instead of staying that course, they dealt a lot of young talent and handed out some bad contracts (although one of them turned Into Tatis).

They pushed the organization back instead of continuing to move forward.

[geschinger]

29 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You can do both.  You can maximize development of your young players and win.

Teams do it all the time.

What you don’t do is what the Padres did in the mid 2010s.  They were looking like they would be in the cusp of something but instead of staying that course, they dealt a lot of young talent and handed out some bad contracts (although one of them turned Into Tatis).

They pushed the organization back instead of continuing to move forward.

With a couple of players, totally agree.  Not sure when it's half a roster.

I guess it depends on how many starts/innings you think is reasonably needed to make a judgement on whether the player has a future.

I'd like to see the Orioles give extended opportunites to as many players as they can in 2022 among guys like Akin, Lowther, Bradish, Wells, Baumann, Rodriguez, and probably a couple more  I'm not remembering.  I'm not sure you can get them all adequate opportunities if you are maximizing winning in 2022 and say sign 3 FA starters who take an additional 70-80 of those available starts and 400+ of those available innings.   

[Sports Guy]

8 minutes ago, geschinger said:

With a couple of players, totally agree.  Not sure when it's half a roster.

I guess it depends on how many starts/innings you think is reasonably needed to make a judgement on whether the player has a future.

I'd like to see the Orioles give extended opportunites to as many players as they can in 2022 among guys like Akin, Lowther, Bradish, Wells, Baumann, Rodriguez, and probably a couple more  I'm not remembering.  I'm not sure you can get them all adequate opportunities if you are maximizing winning in 2022 and say sign 3 FA starters who take an additional 70-80 of those available starts and 400+ of those available innings.   

I would have signed/traded for 2 FA starters.

I don’t think we are losing much by not getting starts for most of the starters you named.  Plus, they can still perform in the pen, which is terrible.  Plus, there are plenty of starts available for those guys anyway.

[geschinger]

1 minute ago, Sports Guy said:

I would have signed/traded for 2 FA starters.

I don’t think we are losing much by not getting starts for most of the starters you named.  Plus, they can still perform in the pen, which is terrible.

I don't think developing potential starters in the pen is successful approach, but yes, after an extended opportunity it's reasonable to suspect they don't have a future as a starter, I'd send those guys to the pen to see if they can make it there.

Unless you aren't counting Lyles as a FA starter, we agree.  I think they should have signed one more starter.

[Sports Guy]

7 minutes ago, geschinger said:

I don't think developing potential starters in the pen is successful approach, but yes, after an extended opportunity it's reasonable to suspect they don't have a future as a starter, I'd send those guys to the pen to see if they can make it there.

Unless you aren't counting Lyles as a FA starter, we agree.  I think they should have signed one more starter.

I’m saying 2 total..but Lyles isn’t good, so I would have gone a different direction.

And no but you can develop relievers in the pen and that’s what most of them are.

But again, there would be plenty of starts for those guys to prove themselves.  
 

 

[Frobby]

8 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Here’s an even better question…why should we care about how long it took Houston?

Again, the component to rebuilding that people don’t seem to get is that ownership wants it.  Why does ownership want it?  Do you really think it’s to build a sustained winner?  No, of course not.  They want it to be cheap and pocket as much money as possible.

The Angelos family are lawyers.  Big Pete made a lot of money off of asbestos.  They didn’t buy this for some love the sport or the team.  They bought it to make money.  And the way this has played out has made them money.  

This has never been about Elias, his plan or anything like that.  It’s about ownership not caring about the product.  

In your comparison, the Orioles could be sending out a rotation that includes Stroman AND ERod if they wanted.  They could have a much better left side of the IF they wanted.   They could have a better BP if they wanted. 
 

But ownership doesn’t want that.  And don’t worry, when this team starts winning, ownership will be out there saying, we hired the right guy, this was our plan all along, blah blah blah.  It’s all bullish!t.  It’s a lie.  
 

It’s pretty easy to say this because the team sucks now and the payroll is super low.   But the team has shown in the past that it’s willing to spend when the team is competitive.   If they just wanted to be cheap, they didn’t need to spend $150-160 mm on payroll for a few years there.

Let me ask you, assuming the team is pretty good in the next couple of years, what do you think will happen with the payroll?  Do you not think it will climb to $150-160 mm or higher?

I actually do think the owners would like to build a sustained winner.   That’s good for revenue and they can show their faces in public.   Having a winning team and turning a good profit don’t have to be inconsistent objectives.