Adam Jones Tweet

[RZNJ]

16 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

How did he make the wrong choice for himself?  He didn’t want to uproot for half a season in Philly and had the right not to. Seems like a reasonable decision by him. He wasn’t going to get a major FA contract anyway but he wanted to stay in CF as long as he could until then. Again seems reasonable. No mistakes made here, just a guy exercising his rights as a veteran player. 

Uprooting himself or family was not one of the reasons given in the article.  He had the choice of playing for a playoff contender for a few months with a chance to play in the postseason versus playing on a team going down fast.   It didn't affect his next contact but that's one of the reasons he gives for not accepting. 

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

How did he make the wrong choice for himself?  He didn’t want to uproot for half a season in Philly and had the right not to. Seems like a reasonable decision by him. He wasn’t going to get a major FA contract anyway but he wanted to stay in CF as long as he could until then. Again seems reasonable. No mistakes made here, just a guy exercising his rights as a veteran player. 

I think RZNJ’s point is that to the extent Jones is saying he didn’t accept the trade because the O’s didn’t give him enough notice that he might be traded, that’s just a cover for the fact that he didn’t want to be a part-time RF.  And he’s probably right.  I do think with a guy like Jones, the O’s might have been smarter to discuss the whole concept of a trade with him a few weeks earlier.  But it might not have made any difference as to this particular trade.  

[DrungoHazewood]

On 10/23/2022 at 2:27 AM, Moose Milligan said:

I feel the need to defend DD a little bit here.

Coming out of the 98-2011 doldrums, he did a good job of piecemealing a team together that was sometimes great and usually competitive.  And at that time, that's all that we wanted, I don't think anyone who was a diehard really cared that DD wasn't setting this team up for future success past what they could get out of the core group that was here for the 2010s.  

He got a bit creative with guys like Miguel Gonzalez, Chen, Delmon Young, etc.  

Yes, he mortgaged the future and the drafting and development was pretty poor while he was here but he constructed some great teams and those teams gave us a lot of great memories.  DD wasn't the type of GM like Elias is who's whole goal has been to build a consistent winner via a robust pipeline of talent coming up through the system at all times; he was here to get a winner on the field and sustain it the best he could.  And he did.  That was his strength, but building a minor league development system was not.  And even if he did want to, I don't think he had PA's ear to do so.

Yeah, he left it in bad shape, I'm not ignorant to that and I don't want to come off as a total DD apologist.  But as I said, coming out of that period where this franchise was irrelevant, he put some winners (and some contenders) on the field.

I don't think you have to be a Duquette apologist to say he did a pretty good job here, arguably a great job in the context he was given.  It's no bad luck or weird circumstances that created 1998-2011.  It's just plan old poor management of the franchise. We've talked about this countless times but the team had a crap farm system, didn't spend anything on development or analytics, refused to sign any international players who cost more than $5, signed $8M 33-year-old free agents all the time, drafting guys like Hobgood and Chris Smith, Angelos always prying and overriding and firing, they had disasters like the deaths of Steve Bechler and Mike Flanagan... that was the train wreck.  The whole thing, from Angelos all the way down to Rochester and Bluefield telling the MLB team to go to hell.  And in that context Duquette came in as the O's 6th-choice GM and almost immediately he and Buck had them in contention and kept them there for five years. 

In some ways you could call DD a miracle worker.  He picked through the train wreck, took out the stuff that wasn't completely charred, and built a new ramshackle train that actually ran. Yes, as expected, the Frankentrain crashed and burned in 2018.  But somehow it didn't from 2012-16.

It would be like someone gets hired by the Pirates tomorrow, they're not allowed to fix any of the systemic problems with the Pirates, but somehow they're over .500 for each of the next five years.

Edited October 24, 2022 by DrungoHazewood

[foxfield]

That DD was successful as GM in Baltimore is without question.  The backstory of course is complicated.  Yes it was George Allen "the future is now!", yes some very good talent was traded for small pieces.  But there were also many problems between DD, Buck and even Brady Anderson, that were the result of meddling by the owner.  All of that is par for the Orioles course.  However, after more than a decade of losing baseball in the Peter Angelos era, Dan Duquette said he intended to win immediately and pretty much did...all after being out of the game for 10 years.  It's a pretty fascinating story and if it were possible to know all of the details behind the scenes over the entire run, I think it would make a hell of a movie.

Anyway, back to Adam Jones....

I will take him at his word that he has no animosity.  I hope the team can find ways to celebrate him.  But I also hope that the future success is much more fulfilling and lasting than the DD era.