O's were contenders!!

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, wildcard said:

Urias and Nevin are the stop gap 3B.  Urias is in there today.  And Adley and Grayson will be in the majors this month IMO.  

The bigger problem is missing Mountcastle for 10 days.

Elias is not tanking.

If this is what trying to win looks like we are in trouble.

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

If this is what trying to win looks like we are in trouble.

There’s something between trying to win and tanking, I think.   That’s where we are this year.   It would have been tanking if we’d traded away some of our better players.   

[sportsfan8703]

19 minutes ago, Frobby said:

There’s something between trying to win and tanking, I think.   That’s where we are this year.   It would have been tanking if we’d traded away some of our better players.   

Isn’t that what we did when we traded away our two most proven relievers right before OD without telling the manager?

That move didn’t exactly help this year’s team. 
 

At some point you can’t just be the GM and GM on draft day. 

[spiritof66]

3 hours ago, wildcard said:

Has he fleeced other GMs in trades?   Yes, a broken down Bundy for Bradish.

Has he found talent deep in amateur drafts, and if so was that a result of his evaluations?  Well maybe not deep but paying overslot for Mayo looks pretty good right now.  That was not a mainstream move.

Has he acquired an impressive collection of talent from other teams' scrap heaps?  Yes, Mateo, Perez, Lopez, Krehbeil, Baker, Urias.

I think there are several smart things he has done:

1.  He evaluated what a mid market Baltimore team had to do to win and he has the patience and aggressiveness to pursue that goal.  Many GM start down the path of rebuilding and cave in to outside pressures along the way.  He has stuck to his focus and goals.

2) He brought Holt and Sig with him.  Holt has unify the pitching development from the majors through the minors.  And there are many stories of pitcher improvement  along the way from Means to Bradish to Tyler Wells to Bautista.  Sig has built the analytics dept from 1 to 15 or 20.  Many of the changes that have been made come from the research and analysis done in his shop.  And the coaches has been hire to translate and teach the players.  Pretty innovative stuff on the coaches hiring.

Elias says the big change in the analytics over the past five year as revolutionized player evaluation and development.  He has hired the people to change the O's organization.   That is a long way from where the O's were when he was hired.

I doubt if Peter had anything to do with his hiring.  I think it was the Sons.

Could anyone else have done it.  Probably but not to many would want to take on a complete rebuild for a low revenue team in the AL East.  Its got to be one of the hardest jobs for an MLB GM.

Is Elias perfect?  No but he  seems to be headed in the right direction over the next few year.  We should be happy about that.  

Thanks. That's a helpful summary, though I don't find it too persuasive one way or the other. A couple of comments:

1. I'm not sure whether it's a strength or weakness that Elias has patiently stuck to his focus and goals. Sometimes that's a sign of stubbornness and inflexibility. It does seem to me that one result of his patience has been to extend the time when we can judge his ability to produce a successful major-league team. That's a luxury lots of GMs don't have.  Another is his transparent lack of concern about the team fielded by the Orioles -- the one his employer is trying to see tickets to and drum up interest in -- and his apparent lack of concern for the tanking accusations aimed at the Orioles by a number of critics. 

2. I don't find the list of scrap-heap acquisitions all that impressive. With a few of those guys, it's too early to tell whether they'll contribute. Same with the Bundy trade, and it's hard to fault Elias for the lack of trading accomplishments since he had so little to deal with when he came in. I hope that as young players advance there will be some trades where there's redundancy at some positions and weaknesses in others, and that they'll benefit the Orioles. We'll see. 

3. One thing I can't get a bead on is the effectiveness of the Orioles' analytics work, or Elias's input into that. You quote him as saying that "analytics over the past five years has revolutionized player evaluation and development." That tells me only that he's been paying some attention to baseball -- and if he recently said "five years" he's been doing so for just a short time. Obviously the Orioles' analytics group has been increased in size and and influence, but the most recent thing I recall reading said it remains relatively small, and Sig either misused the term "diminishing returns" or acknowledged that a larger department could accomplish more. The Orioles certainly don't have a reputation for being accomplished or innovative in their use of analytics, but that may be because their improvements in this area are recent. It does look like there are teams that  invest more and accomplish more in this area. This is an area where there was, and may still be, an opportunity for lower-revenue teams, with a modest investment relative to their overall costs, to work better and smarter than teams that can outspend them, and use that to gain a competitive advantage. It sounds like the Orioles may have reduced their competitive disadvantage in this area relative to the NYYs, Dodgers, Red Sox, Rays, Astros and others, but I've seen nothing to suggests that they're close to out-performing those teams. Maybe they are. Is there a plan to do better than other teams in this area, or just to do worse by less?

The chart below shows the Orioles' analytics staff in October 2018 at 5, near but not at the bottom of the American League. (If I recall correctly, the staff shrunk, maybe down to one as you say, later in 2018 when the others quit (or were fired or eased out) and were not immediately replaced. To me that's irrelevant: after 3 1/2 years, we should be judging Elias' work by looking at where things are, not where they came from.

There was a lot of discussion on this board in 2018 about whether the Orioles would have trouble convincing a talented person to take the GM job. I recall pretty clearly that, as you say, the search and hiring of Elias were led by Peter Angelos's sons. One thing I've wondered is what assurance Elias was given, or thought he had (and still has), that Peter Angelos can't or won't countermand his sons' decisions about budgets, free-agent contracts, etc. 

 

[Can_of_corn]

52 minutes ago, Frobby said:

There’s something between trying to win and tanking, I think.   That’s where we are this year.   It would have been tanking if we’d traded away some of our better players.   

They aren't trying to win.

They aren't trying to lose.

They aren't being active in calling up prospects.

What are they trying to do this year?  Just killing time?

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

They aren't trying to win.

They aren't trying to lose.

They aren't being active in calling up prospects.

What are they trying to do this year?  Just killing time?

They will call the prospects up soon enough.  

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

They will call the prospects up soon enough.  

He really doesn't have a choice when it comes to the big three.

[sportsfan8703]

This lineup we are trotting out today is just downright tanking. Year 4 of Elias. This is embarrassing. 
 

I’m not asking for miracles but maybe play Mancini at 1B and DH Santander with Diaz in RF. 
 

How about not giving Mateo a day off right now with everyone hurt?

Of course AR should be up. 
 

This is officially the worst lineup I can remember us trotting out. Elias really sucked the air out of this team. IL players if they are hurt. 
 

Out and out tanking. 

[survivedc]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

He really doesn't have a choice when it comes to the big three.

Bradish already up and doing well, Nevin and Bannon up, not sure who else really deserves it right now

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, survivedc said:

Bradish already up and doing well, Nevin and Bannon up, not sure who else really deserves it right now

I don't think Nevin deserved a promotion.

I'm not in the deserve it camp.  I'm in the see what the guys can do camp. 

Keep in mind I was the guy that wanted Gunnar to learn in the majors (after signing a team friendly ten year deal).

 

[Going Underground]

Eighth worst winning percentage in MLB. They are close to many teams to move up in the rankings and also move down with a losing streak. Contenders ,probably not.

[Going Underground]

So the Orioles aren't built to withstand injuries? But every team has injuries in an 162 game season. Key players also get hurt.Plus only Mountcastle on the IL.

The club isn’t built to withstand injuries to key players, and the cluster is a killer.

 

Injuries contribute to painful outcomes for Orioles in Detroit - Blog
https://www.masnsports.com/orioles-rss/injuries-contributdce-to-painful-outcomes-for-orioles-in-detroit

 

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Going Underground said:

So the Orioles aren't built to withstand injuries? But every team has injuries in an 162 game season. Key players also get hurt.Plus only Hayes on the IL.

The club isn’t built to withstand injuries to key players, and the cluster is a killer.

When you have guys like Odor on your 25 man roster you certainly don't have the minor league depth to overcome injuries.

[maybenxtyr]

53 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

When you have guys like Odor on your 25 man roster you certainly don't have the minor league depth to overcome injuries.

If only they had better options to call up. I admit that I'm not a scout or anything, but when you continue to call the same failed players up you're going to get terrible results.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, maybenxtyr said:

If only they had better options to call up. I admit that I'm not a scout or anything, but when you continue to call the same failed players up you're going to get terrible results.

Elias hasn't deemed it necessary to acquire better options.