Ok, so now what?

[bmorebirds_24]

Why not? If we offer him a good contract he should take it.

Your right, He should take it. What are the chances of him seeing he only has 2 years left then he is a free bird? Personally, I think he knows this team is terribly ran and will walk as well.

[SteelerG]

1. Trade Roberts and Mora for prospects.

2. Trade Olson, Tillman, Montanez and Reimold for Jake Peavy. Sign Peavy to a 5/85 extension.

2. Sign SP Ben Sheets - 3/30.

3. Sign SP Brad Penny - 2/16.

4. Sign SP Mark Mulder or SP Bartolo Colon - 1/3.

5. Sign 1B Adam Dunn - 5/75

6. Sign 3B Joe Crede - 2/10

7. Extend RF Nick Markakis - 7/84.

8. Let Jake Arrieta and Brian Matusz pitch at AA all season to get ready for 2010 jump to MLB.

[Birds08]

1. Trade Roberts and Mora for prospects.

2. Trade Olson, Tillman, Montanez and Reimold for Jake Peavy. Sign Peavy to a 5/85 extension.

2. Sign SP Ben Sheets - 3/30.

3. Sign SP Brad Penny - 2/16.

4. Sign SP Mark Mulder or SP Bartolo Colon - 1/3.

5. Sign 1B Adam Dunn - 5/75

6. Sign 3B Joe Crede - 2/10

7. Extend RF Nick Markakis - 7/84.

8. Let Jake Arrieta and Brian Matusz pitch at AA all season to get ready for 2010 jump to MLB.

That's an interesting approach if nothing else.

[SteelerG]

I omitted signing Willy Taveras as well.

I believe Sheets and Penny have good years ahead o0f them. With Guthrie - it could potentially give us a solid 1-3 for less than the cost of CC Sabathia. When healthy - Sheets and Penny dominate. They are worth the risk IMHO.

I also like taking a flier on Colon or Mulder. This organization needs to take a risk. Why sign Garland to an overpriced contracy? Why sign Hendrickson? The ceiling is way too low on him. Stop being so conservative.

Dunn will smash the ball at Camden. 45-50 HRS. Crede is a defensive stud who has 20-25 HR potential and is still young.

[Sports Guy]

Peavy won't agree to a trade here.

[o'sfan2009]

I omitted signing Willy Taveras as well.

I believe Sheets and Penny have good years ahead o0f them. With Guthrie - it could potentially give us a solid 1-3 for less than the cost of CC Sabathia. When healthy - Sheets and Penny dominate. They are worth the risk IMHO.

I also like taking a flier on Colon or Mulder. This organization needs to take a risk. Why sign Garland to an overpriced contracy? Why sign Hendrickson? The ceiling is way too low on him. Stop being so conservative.

Dunn will smash the ball at Camden. 45-50 HRS. Crede is a defensive stud who has 20-25 HR potential and is still young.

Actually your idea is interesting. Not sure I'm a fan of the Tillman plus for Peavy, but Peavy/Guts/Arrieta/Matsuz in three years would be dirty. I'd much rather roll the dice on multiple players than put all the eggs in one basket (Tex)

[waroriole]

Peavy won't agree to a trade here.

And he's certainly not going to sign an extension for 5/85.

[Sports Guy]

Really? You don't get that if we didn't compete for Tex, we'll never compete for a top FA? Wow, ok

Let's see:

- Payroll flexibility to do it = check

- Top flight offensive player who can give you power you don't have on the team or in the pipeline = check

- Top flight defensive player who plays a position that is virtually dry organizationally = check

- Top of the shelf community guy/family man who clearly won't embarrass the organization or due anything to make you regret his contract = check

- Virtually all immediate family lives in the area and his wife has expressed a clear wish to remain near family = check

- Young enough that he will be a contributing force through our next "up" cycle at the top of his game = check

What negatives were there about Tex that would make us walk away? It just doesn't fit any better than he did. I'm not saying he wasn't a bit too expensive. Of course he was. All top flight FAs for the rest of our lives will be "too expensive" unless the rules of the game are changed. The Yanks have a virtually unlimited payroll. There are a couple other teams that aren't far behind.

We have issued an edict that we no longer will compete for a top free agent. Heck, MacPhail's own words about Minnesota confirmed as much. When was the last time that Minnesota signed an "A" free agent? Has it ever happened?

I think you're deceiving yourself if you don't think this is conclusive evidence that we intend to operate as a smallish market team rather than the mid-to-upper market team we should be.

This is the best post you have ever written IMO...It is spot on 100% correct.

I said the same thing the other day..although you said it better than me and went into greater detail than I did.

[ejf1025]

Really? You don't get that if we didn't compete for Tex, we'll never compete for a top FA? Wow, ok

Let's see:

- Payroll flexibility to do it = check

- Top flight offensive player who can give you power you don't have on the team or in the pipeline = check

- Top flight defensive player who plays a position that is virtually dry organizationally = check

- Top of the shelf community guy/family man who clearly won't embarrass the organization or due anything to make you regret his contract = check

- Virtually all immediate family lives in the area and his wife has expressed a clear wish to remain near family = check

- Young enough that he will be a contributing force through our next "up" cycle at the top of his game = check

What negatives were there about Tex that would make us walk away? It just doesn't fit any better than he did. I'm not saying he wasn't a bit too expensive. Of course he was. All top flight FAs for the rest of our lives will be "too expensive" unless the rules of the game are changed. The Yanks have a virtually unlimited payroll. There are a couple other teams that aren't far behind.

We have issued an edict that we no longer will compete for a top free agent. Heck, MacPhail's own words about Minnesota confirmed as much. When was the last time that Minnesota signed an "A" free agent? Has it ever happened?

I think you're deceiving yourself if you don't think this is conclusive evidence that we intend to operate as a smallish market team rather than the mid-to-upper market team we should be.

Yes.

Anyone who does not see that this non-signing was the nail in the coffin to our dreams of being competitive at a "high level" with regards to free agency is fooling themselves.

We officially declared ourselves small market. And, unlike Minnesota, when you are competing with the likes of Boston and New York, that's a very bad place to be.

I will keep saying it, we will not finish above third for the next decade. And at 27, I highly doubt I will see more than 5 postseason appearances for the rest of my life.

[geschinger]

I think you're in dreamland. We may find FAs at a fraction of the total price of 180m, but that will be because the FA is 32-35 and can't get the total years. There will never be a FA with the total package of Tex again that can be had for under 18 mil/year. It just won't happen and I'll be shocked if we go there.

And the exact same thing (with a slightly different numbers) could have been said 8-10 years ago when ARod was getting 250m, Jeter 190m, Delgado 17m a year, Mike Hampton and Kevin Brown 100+m contracts. If you graph the marketplace for the top free agents year in and year out it's not a straight line upwards and if you did so, I think you'd end up agreeing with my point. Unless of course you don't think markets are cyclical.

The Yanks are at a point where they can afford to pay an avg salary of 15 mil/yr to their starting 9, starting 5, and closer. Think about it - 15 x 15 = 225 million. Pay the bullpen and back ups an average of 2 mil per and you've added 10 x 2 = 20 mil for a total payroll of 245 million. This is basically where they are right now and they are still going to sign Manny. Watch and see.

I don't doubt it, the Yankees could probably go up to 300m or more if they really wanted to.

[OsandRavens787]

I think you're in dreamland. We may find FAs at a fraction of the total price of 180m, but that will be because the FA is 32-35 and can't get the total years. There will never be a FA with the total package of Tex again that can be had for under 18 mil/year. It just won't happen and I'll be shocked if we go there.

The Yanks are at a point where they can afford to pay an avg salary of 15 mil/yr to their starting 9, starting 5, and closer. Think about it - 15 x 15 = 225 million. Pay the bullpen and back ups an average of 2 mil per and you've added 10 x 2 = 20 mil for a total payroll of 245 million. This is basically where they are right now and they are still going to sign Manny. Watch and see.

Per MLB rules, the Yankees have exhausted the amount of Type A Free Agents they can sign (3- CC, AJ, "that other guy")... so thankfully, even if they wanted to sign Man-Ram, they can't.

[RShack]

Really? You don't get that if we didn't compete for Tex, we'll never compete for a top FA? Wow, ok

IMO, it's very dubious to be drawing permanent conclusions about the O's future behavior from this incident.

What negatives were there about Tex that would make us walk away? It just doesn't fit any better than he did.

I disagree.

First off, I think you've mischaracterized it by referring to the O's stance as "walking away". AFAIK, the O's did not walk away. It appears that the O's made an initial offer that was highest of the initial offers in terms of $/yr and would have made Tex the 4th highest paid ballplayer in history, and they did so knowing that it would likely have to be increased, which the O's were willing to do. AM publicly announced the O's "flexibility" beyond the initial offer. There are 2 unknowns:

• What limit did the O's have on how high they would go. (Evidently, Tex was not interested in finding out.)
• Whether Tex would have been interested in coming to BAL even had the O's limit been highest of all. (Evidently, his criteria included that his new team be a ready-made contender, and just top-dollar was insufficient.)

Secondly, while there are indeed multiple things about Tex that make him attractive, there are also things that go against your view that he was somehow a perfect fit. Chief among these are:

• Superstar money for "merely" all-star performance. While the guy is an excellent ballplayer who has been a machine, his numbers are "only" very, very good; they are not superstar-amazing.
• The timing was off. The state of progress of the O's franchise means that the O's are not 1-player-away. This not only makes the O's relatively unattractive to him, it also means that the Tex issue arrived a couple years too soon re: the O's development.

Both of these are non-trivial. Yet despite these 2 issues, the O's did proceed with both a substantial initial offer (highest $/year) as their calling card, together with public pronouncements that they could go higher.

As I understand what you're saying, either the O's had to approach this as if they had no limits and were handing Boras a blank check, or else the O's were announcing that they're committed to never paying top dollar. I think that's a faulty conclusion.

Face it, by not getting Tex, in some ways AM just made his own job harder. When he traded Erik, he started the clock ticking. I think he only had 1 season to burn, and that was last season. Now, he's got to make the team improve each and every year. By signing Tex, AM may or may not have helped the franchise in the long run, but he certainly would have helped his own situation re: showing year-by-year progress. We don't know if there's anything the O's could have done to sign Tex, but whatever restraint they showed amounts to fiscal restraint in an atmosphere where some people wanted them to simply blow out the money regardless of whether it made any sense or not. As symbolism go, Tex is a very costly symbol who evidently had no interest in coming here anyway.

The big winner here is Tex. He got what he got in some part due to sheer luck: he was *the* big fish in this year's FA circus.

They say timing is everything, and this was very good timing for him.

[Babypowder]

Really? You don't get that if we didn't compete for Tex, we'll never compete for a top FA? Wow, ok

Let's see:

- Payroll flexibility to do it = check

- Top flight offensive player who can give you power you don't have on the team or in the pipeline = check

- Top flight defensive player who plays a position that is virtually dry organizationally = check

- Top of the shelf community guy/family man who clearly won't embarrass the organization or due anything to make you regret his contract = check

- Virtually all immediate family lives in the area and his wife has expressed a clear wish to remain near family = check

- Young enough that he will be a contributing force through our next "up" cycle at the top of his game = check

What negatives were there about Tex that would make us walk away? It just doesn't fit any better than he did. I'm not saying he wasn't a bit too expensive. Of course he was. All top flight FAs for the rest of our lives will be "too expensive" unless the rules of the game are changed. The Yanks have a virtually unlimited payroll. There are a couple other teams that aren't far behind.

We have issued an edict that we no longer will compete for a top free agent. Heck, MacPhail's own words about Minnesota confirmed as much. When was the last time that Minnesota signed an "A" free agent? Has it ever happened?

I think you're deceiving yourself if you don't think this is conclusive evidence that we intend to operate as a smallish market team rather than the mid-to-upper market team we should be.

Almost all the moves made since MacPhail has come aboard suggest that this may not be true. I don't believe they liked the financial state we were in after fielding a high payroll in 2007. I believe MacPhail was brought in to do what he does best, make the franchise more cost effective. I don't believe we will see another payroll approaching 100 million in the next few years, and if that is the case then it does not make a lot of sense to pay one player over 20 million/yr. It might have been better if they just said that to begin with instead of trying to trick everyone into thinking we were really in this sweepstakes to begin with.

[hoosiers]

Really? You don't get that if we didn't compete for Tex, we'll never compete for a top FA? Wow, ok

Let's see:

- Payroll flexibility to do it = check

- Top flight offensive player who can give you power you don't have on the team or in the pipeline = check

- Top flight defensive player who plays a position that is virtually dry organizationally = check

- Top of the shelf community guy/family man who clearly won't embarrass the organization or due anything to make you regret his contract = check

- Virtually all immediate family lives in the area and his wife has expressed a clear wish to remain near family = check

- Young enough that he will be a contributing force through our next "up" cycle at the top of his game = check

What negatives were there about Tex that would make us walk away? It just doesn't fit any better than he did. I'm not saying he wasn't a bit too expensive. Of course he was. All top flight FAs for the rest of our lives will be "too expensive" unless the rules of the game are changed. The Yanks have a virtually unlimited payroll. There are a couple other teams that aren't far behind.

We have issued an edict that we no longer will compete for a top free agent. Heck, MacPhail's own words about Minnesota confirmed as much. When was the last time that Minnesota signed an "A" free agent? Has it ever happened?

I think you're deceiving yourself if you don't think this is conclusive evidence that we intend to operate as a smallish market team rather than the mid-to-upper market team we should be.

Wow! From one of my favorite posters, one of his worst posts.

Just because we failed to sign Tex, you reach an irrational conclusion that we will never win the bidding for a top FA again? That's a huge leap of (negative) faith.

Top FAs want two things - $ and the chance to compete. The Os have $ and will someday offer an opportunity to compete.

One thing not mentioned here is the LT nature of these NYY contracts. When will they be in a position to sign a 1B or 3B again? Not for another 8 years will they be able to bid for a top corner infielder.

There is so much statistical evidence saying having too much $ invested in one ballplayer hampers the competitiveness of a team. If we had to go to $25M to sign Tex (and we were never really treated by Tex as a likely destination, it's the Nats he used), it would have been near impossible to compete in four or five years when AJ and Wieters would be in arbitration, NM getting paid big bucks and nothing invested into the pitching staff. You know what team we would have been like - Toronto - with a huge % of the payroll invested in five or six players and little left over for everyone else. IMO, the Os would not have competed in the next two or three years with Tex and by then Tex's affect on the payroll, along with the $ due to everyone else, would have negated our ability to compete.

One other point - since we have so many long term question marks, why fill the one at 1B with the big $ several years in advance? How logical is that? Where is the precedent for that? What re-building teams have invested into their future competitiveness several years down the line with a top FA 1B?

Tex is all the things in VT's post - but, surely, there reaches a point when the $ is not worth it. Still, that's not the point. Until we are in a position to compete, we will not sign a top FA. When we are in a position to compete, I expect we will sign an appropriate FA and to argue otherwise is a reactionary opinion for an otherwise level-headed poster.

[Lucky Jim]

Really? You don't get that if we didn't compete for Tex, we'll never compete for a top FA? Wow, ok

Let's see:

- Payroll flexibility to do it = check

- Top flight offensive player who can give you power you don't have on the team or in the pipeline = check

- Top flight defensive player who plays a position that is virtually dry organizationally = check

- Top of the shelf community guy/family man who clearly won't embarrass the organization or due anything to make you regret his contract = check

- Virtually all immediate family lives in the area and his wife has expressed a clear wish to remain near family = check

- Young enough that he will be a contributing force through our next "up" cycle at the top of his game = check

What negatives were there about Tex that would make us walk away? It just doesn't fit any better than he did. I'm not saying he wasn't a bit too expensive. Of course he was. All top flight FAs for the rest of our lives will be "too expensive" unless the rules of the game are changed. The Yanks have a virtually unlimited payroll. There are a couple other teams that aren't far behind.

We have issued an edict that we no longer will compete for a top free agent. Heck, MacPhail's own words about Minnesota confirmed as much. When was the last time that Minnesota signed an "A" free agent? Has it ever happened?

I think you're deceiving yourself if you don't think this is conclusive evidence that we intend to operate as a smallish market team rather than the mid-to-upper market team we should be.

Frankly, I'm perfectly okay with rarely competing for "top free agents."

It's disingenuous to say ask what negatives there were, because plenty of people have listed what the negatives were for you. The main negative was timing: we'd be paying for three years of Teixeira production at $20m+ a year w/o winning, and then hoping that Teixeira's (likely declining) production at ages 32-35 were enough to put us over the hump as the team was then constructed.

The only real argument anyone offered in rebuttal was scarcity. That, in three years, a Teixeira-equivalent wouldn't be around. All this means, in the end, is that we need to find a way to get something approaching .835-.900 OPS production (an approximation of Teixeira's likely production in years 4-6 of his contract) by 2011.

How do we do that? My suggestion was to keep attaining talent that we can parlay for someone like the prospects in this list:

http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74037

That's it.

I don't think any of this means we can't purchase valuable FAs. But - frankly - outbidding the Yankees for a FA who makes more financial sense for the Yankees than for the Orioles wouldn't change anything. We wouldn't be more able to compete if we'd gotten Teixeira. I mean, the law of finite resources would suggest that we'd be less likely to sign high-priced FAs going forward if we already had $20+m a year devoted to declining 30something production.

Buster Olney was wrong: we weren't insane for looking at Teixeira. And we're not losers because we put a governor on our spending in pursuit of Teixeira.

Geschinger is also right about the FA market. There are swings, if not cycles. Playing a premium in a high-market makes sense when the purchase is leveraged for immediate winning.

With a long-term plan, we can wait until a down cycle and then purchase what we need (if it's out there). And signing long-term contracts, as part of a long-term plan, at a lower market cause makes infinite more sense than competing against the biggest spenders for a scarce resource for which they have more immediate need.

VT, your analysis focuses entirely on the Orioles and the Orioles' need at the expense of considering the market in its full three dimensions: you need to consider the Yankees and Red Sox and their needs. When you do that, and combine this with their available resources, then it makes sense that, as attractive as testing this market was, the end result was fairly predictable.

The fact is, given the amount of money and the immediate need a team like the Yankees had, the ONLY way that AM and the Orioles could compete was to hope for a hometown discount. That's it. When that discount wasn't there, we lost.

A quick edit: I'm not sure what to make of the Minnesota fears. I think building a self-sustaining organization like the Twins is a great idea. With more revenue than the Twins, we'll be able to purchase FAs when we need to, even high-value ones. There's nothing in the Twins' system or organization that precludes signing a FA other than the bottom line. With a different bottom line, we're in shape to buy when the timing is right. Assuming that the timing is right now - as has been spelled out many times before - is assuming too much.

I'm a little surprised at your take on this situation, as you're generally one of our most reliably objective/rational posters (and I admit that rationality/objectivity have their own limitations - most importantly, that there are things numbers don't see which are wrongly discounted). There appears some kind of admixture of optimism bias with some kind of predictive pessimism about future FA markets. I mean, a lot of us who think not pursuing Teixeira was prudent can see the reasons for disappointment and even the rationalization for spending the cash.

Ah well, I guess it's all good board fodder.