We Want To Win Now - Not in 2012

[section18]

I don't want to hear anything about 2010, 2011 or 2012. Have we all become losers for life? I have been hearing about winning since 2000 it seems like. Why are we accepting losing? Now is the time! Get off the pot and do something. Does Peter allow his attorneys to go into a court room and lose everyday? No. Does he tell them to get used to losing cases and we will be better in 2012?

Let's get real around here. Maybe Tony and Scott can take up a collection from each OH member and we can take out a half page ad in the Sun explaining our position and why it's important to win now. Just let our GM and owner know we pay the freight and we are tired of spending at OP and paying our monthly MASN tab to see a losing product. Another losing season is not going to cut it in 2009 with our Ravens having put another winning product on the field. We have an economy that is depressing to talk about and world news that isn't much better. Sports is an escape outlet for many people. Millions of people to be more precise. We cannot take another losing season of watching Oriole Baseball in 09. I have some marketing experience and I'm serious when I say this is not the year to be cheap with this team. You have the opportunity to win back some fans because people are not being as extravagant with trips and cars and are staying closer to home. It's still a great product going to Oriole Park to watch a baseball game and don't forget it's not 10 games at OP like the Ravens have at M & T. It's 81 trips to OP. There is a lot of money to be made and there is a lot of money to lose if the Orioles don't start making some moves to improve the team.

[NewMarketSean]

We can't win now. We're in year 2.5 of a rebuilding period. Given AM's slow and decisive track record, I don't think we can hope for anything before 2010, and I think that is even too soon given the make-up of this team currently.

If we had a quicker, more daring GM at the helm of this rebuilding process, I think we'd start to see more happen, but with player personnel only. I think we have to remember that AM is trying to not only bringing in better talent, but restructure the entire organization from top to bottom and do a lot of things that we've never done before (scouting in the Caribbean, Asia, etc...).

We're not only rebuilding on the field, but throughout the entire organization. So it's going to take longer than other rebuilding processes.

[wildcard]

Losing is a hard pill to swallow isn't it.

I realized when MacPhail was negotiating to trade Bedard what we were in for. Yes, that trade helped the future. However, it was the signal of the "win later" philosophy. Signing the O's #1 starter meant the O's would continue to try to build around their best players. Trading him for "some one to help win the future" meant a 4-5 year building plan.

I am not saying that MacPhail has not picked the best path. Frankly, I don't know what is going to work to get the O's back to the top of the division. However, I knew this approach would be a hard road.

As O's fans, we have to suck it up, endure and hope that the young guys turn out to be as good as the scouts and O's management say they will be.

The future is not now, it's 2012.

[section18]

I appreciate your comments but there is an important thing called selling tickets that is not happening right now. I heard recently that some of the advertisers at OP are not laying out money this year. The company I work for stopped advertising last year. Why spend over $100,000 for signage when there are 10,000 - 12,000 people in the stands when Boston and NY is not playing here? It's cheaper to lease a billboard on a monthly basis and spend $2,000 - $3,000. AM, PA, the marketing department and sales department should be meeting everyday discussing what they need to do to improve ticket sales. They are not in business to have empty seats. Having strategists planning for 2-4 years from now is important but they have been doing this I think for almost 10 years and we're still a losing team. AM has not been part of their planning during this entire time frame but he is the GM and he needs to modify the plan and soon.

[Objectivity]

I'd be fine with waiting a few years if I thought the plan would work. Unfortunately, we appear to have put the weight of our future success on the idea that every player we have in the minors with potential will achieve it.

That's fine if you have double or triple the number of prospects you need, like Florida, of if all your prospects are former #1 picks like Tampa Bay, but otherwise history shows this approach fails almost every time it's attempted.

If you're going to build from within, get as many prospects as you can and work with the assumption that 75% or more won't make it. If you're going to supplement with your system, build your major league team with talented players, they don't have to be expensive, and have something ready for when those prospects arrive and have a plan B for if they don't.

The way we're going now, even if all our prospects do pan out (an impossible situation) we'll still be a losing team because the players we have now that are our core will be gone. If you were a Markakis type player would you stay with a team that shows no urgency to win?

[NewMarketSean]

I'd be fine with waiting a few years if I thought the plan would work. Unfortunately, we appear to have put the weight of our future success on the idea that every player we have in the minors with potential will achieve it.

That's fine if you have double or triple the number of prospects you need, like Florida, of if all your prospects are former #1 picks like Tampa Bay, but otherwise history shows this approach fails almost every time it's attempted.

If you're going to build from within, get as many prospects as you can and work with the assumption that 75% or more won't make it. If you're going to supplement with your system, build your major league team with talented players, they don't have to be expensive, and have something ready for when those prospects arrive and have a plan B for if they don't.

The way we're going now, even if all our prospects do pan out (an impossible situation) we'll still be a losing team because the players we have now that are our core will be gone. If you were a Markakis type player would you stay with a team that shows no urgency to win?

Which is why you trade Roberts and not extend him. Which is why you take on a great deal of Huff's salary to trade him for prospects. Which is why you don't go into the 2009 season with Walker and Baez on the roster. Which is why you don't sign Mark Hendrickson.....

There are a lot of things that could be done to speed up the future success of this team. But AM has other plans. Let's just wait and see if they work.

[section18]

There are probably 10 million reasons why Markakis will sign. $$$$$

[section18]

January should be an interesting month for the Orioles and the fans.

[section36]

I appreciate your comments but there is an important thing called selling tickets that is not happening right now. I heard recently that some of the advertisers at OP are not laying out money this year. The company I work for stopped advertising last year. Why spend over $100,000 for signage when there are 10,000 - 12,000 people in the stands when Boston and NY is not playing here? It's cheaper to lease a billboard on a monthly basis and spend $2,000 - $3,000. AM, PA, the marketing department and sales department should be meeting everyday discussing what they need to do to improve ticket sales. They are not in business to have empty seats. Having strategists planning for 2-4 years from now is important but they have been doing this I think for almost 10 years and we're still a losing team. AM has not been part of their planning during this entire time frame but he is the GM and he needs to modify the plan and soon.

I'd love to agree with this section18, but unfortunately, when Angelos has a a guaranteed revenue of $130 million / year from MLB, it really puts a lot less emphasis on how many tickets he sells.

[Hank Scorpio]

As stated in the Hendrickson's hidden value thread :

http://www.baltimoremag.com/article.asp?t=1&m=1&c=32&s=478&ai=68101

I’ve always felt an attachment to the franchise. I have a lot of respect for Peter Angelos, who I worked with on the negotiations for the collective bargaining agreement with the players association. I think the franchise has the capability to do a lot better. I’ve always enjoyed the area. I have family here, my wife has family in the D.C. area.

[Ours is] a very unforgiving division. To truly win you have to be very good. I thought the team was stuck in a neutral approach where you try to apply band-aids and that wasn’t going to be what was needed. I thought we had to take some pretty dramatic steps, whether it was adding a lot of young talent, creating a new academy in the Dominican Republic, improving the international scouting department, changing how we do our entire program. I thought we needed to make significant structural changes in the organization as opposed to going out and trying to purchase a free agent or two. It’s not like we’re trying to reduce payroll. We committed over $7 million to our top two draft choices, we made a significant investment in our new academy in the Dominican Republic. I think redeploying your assets in your infrastructure as opposed to making one more signing is the way to go. We have some significant financial assets and we have an owner that’s been willing to spend in the past.

Obviously we’re going to emphasize pitching. We always need to value defense, it’s something we need to put into every equation. Offensively we need to value those players that can work the count. If you look at the six lineups that saw the most pitches last year, five wound up in the postseason. We need to value character. It takes a certain kind of focus to optimize your talent over a six-month, 162-game season.

I think you’ll find the fans to be pretty forgiving if you give them three things: effort, energy, and enthusiasm. I certainly hope we can do that.

And if you don't believe him...

Without a doubt, people tend to think of Peter as someone who doesn’t care that much about competing. He really does care, he just has a really difficult time trusting people. You have to trust an Andy MacPhail type of guy. [baseball executives] aren’t going to go to Baltimore if they think they won’t be able to do their job. You look at the mid-market organizations where they have had success. Minnesota has stability, Oakland has stability, Cleveland has stability. In theory, the Orioles really should be in that second echelon. Hiring Andy MacPhail is clearly the first step. I’ll always believe that when Gillick recommended that they blow up the team in ’96 and Angelos vetoed the trades, from that point on he kind of got the feeling, ‘Do these people really know what they’re doing?’ Since then, he’s had a difficult time trusting people. But Andy is someone who he really trusts. He worked with him on the labor negotiations. The magic question is how wide open is that window of opportunity? Is it a never ending trust? Is it something that’s going to close? They’re not looking at two or three years, they’re looking at a five or six year rebuilding plan. It’s a major job. That’s the question. I do think that it’s such an educated fan base and I think they recognize a good plan when they see it. But they need to see a plan in place for several years. If Andy only lasts a couple of years, it’s going to be the same old same old.

Or maybe this guy :

I think people would just like to have a team that is better in September than they are in April, one where the younger players mature. Nick Markakis is going to have another chance to prove that he can be one of the best young players in the game. But he’s not going to have as much protection in the lineup. Those are the challenges.

It’s going to be an interesting year because I don’t think anyone can really tell you how they’re going to perform. Anytime you try to build something you have to have a drawing plan. Andy [MacPhail] said there’s safety in numbers, you hope that your scouts are good enough. You look at the numbers of the players the Orioles have received, somebody’s going to have to teach those guys how to play the game. They’re going to have to develop their players at the minor league level. You have to refine their natural ability, which is really what the Oriole Way was all about.

You look at Adam Jones, he can run and throw and steal bases. He’s going to get an opportunity to play and prove himself every night. It’s kind of like building a restaurant. You served great food on Friday night, well you have to do it again on Saturday.

That’s the great thing about the Orioles right now: If you’re a young player, what better organization would you want to be in? You’re going to get an opportunity to either succeed or fail. That’s what I wanted when I started.

Get comfortable with your torches and pitchforks. It's going to take awhile to re-structure something that has been continually fouled up for 8 previous years by a constant state of flux.

[Objectivity]

There are probably 10 million reasons why Markakis will sign. $$$$$

Yes. And he'll get that money and more elsewhere. I could see Markakis signing a deal now that goes one year past arbitration. No more than that. Why would he? He's hearing the same things now that players who were his age 6-10 years ago were hearing. Does he want to risk waiting until he's past his prime to discover that the latest "This time we really mean it" excuse is also not true?

It's not that I'm opposed to building from within. I can see successful paths that use that trail or use a FA acquisition trail. What I don't see is the path that we're currently on being successful. We're gambling on a 1,000,000 to 1 shot as our only hope of success with no plan B.

None of these players are stupid, and if they are, their agents are smart. They saw the Detroit Tigers go from the second worst team in the history of the sport to the World Series. All these excuses about having a seven year rebuilding plan are nonsense.

[tennOsfan]

To an extent, AM could be doing more to improve the 2009 product while still reforming the organizational structure.

I'm glad he's improving the scouting, trying to draft and sign top young players, and his two trades thus far. But how does inking Adam Dunn hinder the rest of that? It shouldn't.

They could be trading off some pieces, sign a good player or two AND improve the farm system all at same time.

I don't see it as an either/or situation, unless PA is just milking profits.

[clapdiddy]

To an extent, AM could be doing more to improve the 2009 product while still reforming the organizational structure.

I'm glad he's improving the scouting, trying to draft and sign top young players, and his two trades thus far. But how does inking Adam Dunn hinder the rest of that? It shouldn't.

They could be trading off some pieces, sign a good player or two AND improve the farm system all at same time.

I don't see it as an either/or situation, unless PA is just milking profits.

Agree with this 100%. People forget that we have about 27 million dollars coming off the payroll next year.

[Tx Oriole]

Well, it is still early January. Want to see what happens later. You mentioned Dunn. What if Dunn does not want to sign with the O's? Unless you way over pay him and that is not the way to go. IMO

[JTrea81]

The problem is that so many people don't realize the ML club isn't or at least wasn't too far away from competing given the resources it could have allocated.

Had they signed Tex, Burnett, Moyer/Sheets and extended Roberts, this team would be competing in 2010 IMO.

And then you could still acquire younger talent and stock the minors during those years you had that core locked up.

It didn't have to be an all or nothing scenario like so many on here think. We could have competed for 3-4 years with the players we have already and would have added and then supplemented them from the farm.

Now we are going to have to develop pitching and hitting to compete, a much tougher scenario, and meanwhile our AL East rivals will continue to strengthen. 2013 is now a realistic date for competing and not any sooner given the way MacPhail is taking his time.

It didn't have to be that way...