I don't want to become the Rays

[RZNJ]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Look at who is on the IL for Tampa.

Franco, Glasnow, Baz, Feyereisen, Fleming, Zunino, Anderson, Margot and Keiermeir.

These guys have been out or out for the year or missed big chunks of the season.  Other guys like Fairbanks came back after missing time.  

These are some of their best and most important players

Yet they have a WC spot and currently the 4th best run differential in the AL.  
 

It’s  astounding what they have been able to do this year and what they do every other year.  

 

They must have bad trainers!    Just teasing, Tony!

[deward]

20 minutes ago, jamalshw said:

I mean, I get the OP to some extent. I don't want to become the Rays either, but not for the same reason. I want a team that can sustain excellence, but I'd love to combine the smarts with some money and retain some guys. The Rays seem to be trying that with Wander Franco given his extension, but I think Baltimore should have the wherewithal to keep a solid system churning and sell off some guys at their peak (like the Rays) while also keeping some key guys around even if it means they aren't sold at their highest value. I'd love to see Adley or Henderson or Grayson be life long Orioles (or at the very least Orioles well into their 30s). It's fun to be able to follow players on your team throughout the vast majority of their careers. 

I agree whole-heartedly. Part of the fun of being a sports fan is getting to follow players you enjoy for significant portions (if not all) of their career as they try to help your favorite team win. Watching someone like Adley grow into his prime is going to be a lot of fun, why in the world would I want part of that prime to be spent in another uniform because he got too expensive? I know reality will sometimes rear its ugly head, but I don't spend my time paying attention to grown men playing a kid's game because I want to worry about reality. I still think that the Ray's approach is a not-insignificant part of why they don't draw fans. Just winning isn't really enough.

[deward]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

As someone who's almost religiously followed the O's since 1979, from 2017 or 2018 until recently I got in the habit of not even watching baseball.  My soccer fandom grew by leaps and bounds, mostly to fill the gap.  When the Orioles are winning 50 games a year baseball is simply no fun.  110 losses a year kills off most of the fanbase. When they're competing it's all kinds of fun. 

There is no way on God's green earth I'd ever trade 10 years of solid, competitive baseball for one trophy and nine years of crap.

Do you actually like watching baseball?  What would you do during the nine years the team is in the basement playing terribly?

This is one of the concerns I've voiced about this rebuild strategy. Sure, things are starting to look up now, but 4 years of utterly unwatchable baseball was a high price to pay, and I worry that it will be hard to recover all of the fans who checked out. 

[DrungoHazewood]

3 minutes ago, deward said:

This is one of the concerns I've voiced about this rebuild strategy. Sure, things are starting to look up now, but 4 years of utterly unwatchable baseball was a high price to pay, and I worry that it will be hard to recover all of the fans who checked out. 

I have the same concerns, but I don't know if there was any other realistic path after the cratering of 2018.  What else do you do with a 47-win team with a bad farm system and a small-to-mid market budget?

[ChuckS]

2 minutes ago, deward said:

This is one of the concerns I've voiced about this rebuild strategy. Sure, things are starting to look up now, but 4 years of utterly unwatchable baseball was a high price to pay, and I worry that it will be hard to recover all of the fans who checked out. 

How about 15 years of unwatchable baseball mixed in with some barely watchable mediocrity from 1998-2011?

Think we’ll be okay and I’ll take this recent run of losing any day over the previous one. 

 

[deward]

1 minute ago, ChuckS said:

How about 15 years of unwatchable baseball mixed in with some barely watchable mediocrity from 1998-2011?

Think we’ll be okay and I’ll take this recent run of losing any day over the previous one. 

 

I watched all of those years, none of them were nearly as painful as 2018-2021. Not even close. Every year, those teams would show at least a little sign of life, they were watchable. Frustrating, of course, but watchable.

[ChuckS]

1 minute ago, deward said:

I watched all of those years, none of them were nearly as painful as 2018-2021. Not even close. Every year, those teams would show at least a little sign of life, they were watchable. Frustrating, of course, but watchable.

The fans who could tolerate 15 years of losing could surely tolerate four. For the fair weather ones they are going to check out during the losing and check back in for the winning regardless. 

That’s my take anyway. 

[deward]

4 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I have the same concerns, but I don't know if there was any other realistic path after the cratering of 2018.  What else do you do with a 47-win team with a bad farm system and a small-to-mid market budget?

Depends how much you value picking so high in the draft for four years in a row, I suppose. One of the things this rebuild has taught me is that my pain tolerance for watching a bad team cuts off somewhere right before 100 losses. I wouldn't have thought that watching a 70-92 team would be THAT much different than watching a 52-110 team, but it is SO much more tolerable. It wasn't just that they were losing, it was the absolute non-competitive nature of the losing. 8-0, 9-1 losses, night after night. Pitchers that had no business on a big league roster getting beaten to death by the Yankees and Red Sox. Night after night of Chris Davis. Four years of that was just.....a lot. I've been living and dying with this team since 1989, and I never would have imagined myself being as disinterested in watching as I have been the last two years. If fans like us couldn't take it anymore, what was it like for more casual fans? 

I don't know if there was a better way to do it, maybe not. All I know is that this plan had better pay off, because getting here sucked.

[deward]

15 minutes ago, ChuckS said:

The fans who could tolerate 15 years of losing could surely tolerate four. For the fair weather ones they are going to check out during the losing and check back in for the winning regardless. 

That’s my take anyway. 

I think there's a big difference between recent years and a franchise that was at least attempting to win. They weren't very good at figuring out how to do that, but none of those teams were put on the field with the idea that they would be terrible. The teams over the last few years were put out there without a care in the world of whether or not they were the slightest bit entertaining to watch. They literally didn't care about giving you a reason to spend money to go see them, or take the time to watch them on tv. They should have just let people come watch for free, instead of taking their money for a product that was deliberately bad. You don't have to be a fair weather fan to be turned off by that. 

Edited August 12, 2022 by deward

[Bemorewins]

This is my first post (been a Long time lurker since like 05-06) so go easy on me... ha ha

I believe that I agree with the OP, as a person who has gone my whole life with having no memories of an O's title let alone world series appearance. My first year following the O's daily ironically was in '88 when I was 8 years old.

I have to tell you when I was at the game Sunday and looked into the outfield to see the numbers of Brooks, Cal, Eddie, Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, etc. and it dawned on me that we haven't had a hall of famer since Cal, it was a little depressing. 

I said that to say, that is where I agree with the OP. If we are not going to retain hardly any of our best players after 6/7 years even if we win consistently, we will not have a lot of fan interest. Right or wrong, most people cheer and invest their time and affections in people not laundry. Especially young people. That is why the Rays and before them, the A's don't have many fans. 

Case in point, when I was in Toronto earlier this Summer and my oldest fell in love with Vlad Guerrero Jr. Though I'm reeducating her about which birds our family will be loyal to...lol... She still asks me all the time, how is he and their team doing.

I believe Adley and soon Gunnar and hopefully Grayson and others will be our guys. The ones kids and some adults buy jersey and invest the time and energies rooting for. 

This with winning will get us back to having a healthy fanbase.

Everything is in front of the O's in terms of having a bright future, but we can't pretend like the organizations doesn't have some work to do in terms of fan engagement and winning people back (who like some on this board are highly skeptical/cynical) regarding if this time it will be different.

One BIG STEP that the org can take is (as was mentioned) investing in young players long term (which gives some fans not your die hards like us on this board) someone to identify with. AND bringing in marque players/free agents (hopefully on shorter term contracts like Verlander or deGroom or whoever) someone to cheer for, want to pay to see, and watch on TV.

[DrungoHazewood]

13 hours ago, Bemorewins said:

I said that to say, that is where I agree with the OP. If we are not going to retain hardly any of our best players after 6/7 years even if we win consistently, we will not have a lot of fan interest. Right or wrong, most people cheer and invest their time and affections in people not laundry. Especially young people. That is why the Rays and before them, the A's don't have many fans. 

First off, the Orioles will probably have the opportunity to sign some players longer-term.  But, I haven't looked into your point in any real way, but I tend to think it's not entirely correct.  Or isn't a really big factor.  Even the big market teams don't usually keep a lot of players longer than 6-7 years.

The Dodgers have as many resources as any team, and I think Kershaw, Julio Urias, and Justin Turner are their only players (at least starters/rotation) who've been around more than six years.  Kershaw the only one over 10.  The Yanks have had Judge/Chapman since 2016, I think those are their longest-tenured players. 

So if the Orioles occasionally sign a Henderson or a Rutschman to a deal buying out arb or free agency years that's not much different than the biggest teams.  Winning is a much bigger factor than losing guys to free agency after their initial 2, 3, 4 years in the minors and six or seven with the big league club.

To be honest, most players who come up at 23, 24 are going to be in decline by years 7, 8, 9, and you probably shouldn't sign them anyway.  I mentioned the Phillies in a recent post.  They were very successful about 12-14 years ago.  And made some poor decisions like the Ryan Howard contract because they thought keeping their guys was more important than a sober, level-headed analysis that our guys probably aren't going to be positive contributors by the middle of this long-term contract.

Two other quick points: First, we love these 2022 Orioles, right? Anthony Santander and Austin Hayes are the players who've been here longest, both getting cups of coffee in 2017.  Second, NCAA sports are some of the most popular in the country and nobody ever stays longer than four years.

Edited August 13, 2022 by DrungoHazewood

[Chelsea_Phil]

16 hours ago, deward said:

Depends how much you value picking so high in the draft for four years in a row, I suppose. One of the things this rebuild has taught me is that my pain tolerance for watching a bad team cuts off somewhere right before 100 losses. I wouldn't have thought that watching a 70-92 team would be THAT much different than watching a 52-110 team, but it is SO much more tolerable. It wasn't just that they were losing, it was the absolute non-competitive nature of the losing. 8-0, 9-1 losses, night after night. Pitchers that had no business on a big league roster getting beaten to death by the Yankees and Red Sox. Night after night of Chris Davis. Four years of that was just.....a lot. I've been living and dying with this team since 1989, and I never would have imagined myself being as disinterested in watching as I have been the last two years. If fans like us couldn't take it anymore, what was it like for more casual fans? 

I don't know if there was a better way to do it, maybe not. All I know is that this plan had better pay off, because getting here sucked.

The Nats are now in their ‘horrible team’ mode and will be in it for at least 5 years imo.  They are drawing diddlysquat at Nats park now, and it will only get worse.

[Riggodrill44]

On 8/12/2022 at 8:45 AM, DrinkinWithFermi said:

It's a little odd that you would poo-poo "homegrown talent" in a post talking about the Yankees dynasty of the 90s, which was so successful due in large part to...homegrown talent.

Jeter, Posada, Rivera, Petitte, Williams, etc.

Not their homegrown pitchers. They had one homegrown pitcher and they acquired the rest through free agency and trades.

[Jagwar]

On 8/12/2022 at 8:01 AM, Sports Guy said:

Veteran aces falter in the playoffs all the time.  

Would be sweet if we could find the Bumgarner outlier

[foxfield]

18 hours ago, winning said:

I would GLADLY take 10 years of being in the basement for 1 World Series victory. 

I understand.  What you are saying is you want something better than what we have been.  Except for two brief flashes, a terrible organization largely spent in the basement, with several of those seasons being sub-basement level.

The Rays level would be such an upgrade from what we have done it is barely fathomable.  But your point that they have no titles is fair.  You have to be in it to win it.  Drungo has posted a couple of times about how winning the WS is almost lucky.  See Atlanta, Kansas City.  

I want a title too.  But my fondness for the Orioles was born when they were arguably one of the best franchises in sports.  There is nothing that would make me happier to return to the era of 1966-1983.  On opening day it will be the 40th season since our last title.

So, I can get on board with not wanting to be the Rays, but not without acknowledging that they are miles ahead of us and as special as our season has been, theirs has been just another shining example of how stacked they are.  We are proud of what we have done winning without Means, or Grayson, now Mancini and Lopez.  Check out their roster and moves.  

I'd love to be as good as the Rays.  Then better than the Rays and like the Astros.  Then better than the Astros and the Yankees, and the Dodgers.

I am sofa king excited about where we are and what could be in front of us I can't stand it.  But we have not really accomplished anything. The easy part is tearing everything down and putting a strong foundation down.  We are going to have to sign real talent as FA.  We are going to have to trade wisely and get real talent that is as good or better than what we trade.  And then we will need luck and patience.  

Much of which I have squandered over 40 years when I thought we  were always going to be good.  Most of the time we haven't been.  But when I think about what those days were like way back when I was a Freshman in College....well....it felt alot like all of us feel today.