Elias makes two things clear; 1st base and Irvin

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

They will trade for them. 

You can't trade for free agent pitchers.

They can sign wherever they want.

Geez.

 

[HakunaSakata]

12 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

They will trade for them. 

I'll believe it when I see it, 

[LookinUp]

18 hours ago, HakunaSakata said:

I was taking trades and free agent signings into consideration, but I wasn't factoring in players like GIbson and Irvin because they 1) aren't young and 2) they aren't part of the teams long term future.  Only nine of the team's top 30 prospects are pitchers. How is that a balanced approach to hitter/pitcher development?

It's apparent that the O's are acquiring pitching that's closer to ready while developing hitting. It's not like they don't have young pitchers too, but they must see more risk there. Just look at the staff now. It's mostly guys who had already worked their way through some of the developmental steps. The O's identify guys they think they can help and go get them, mostly for very cheap. 

That's not a mistake or an oversight. It's their model based strategy. Now you may think you have a better model, but I kind of doubt it. We also haven't seen this plan fully mature yet. The international guys aren't ready and many of the draft picks are just starting to get to the higher levels. Heck, we've just now started to implement trading prospect bats for pitching and we got 4 years control of an average starter for our 6th-7th best SS prospect. 

 

This isn't exhaustive, but here's a lot of our top guys and how they were acquired. I'd say we have a decent staff even before maturation of the system and/or making many hitting prospect for pitcher trades.

Gibson, Voth, Watkins, Baker, Bautista, Wells, Givens, Krehbiel  - Signed or claimed
Bradish, Kremer, Zimmermann, Tate, Irvin, Perez, Vespi - Via Trade

Hall, Rodriguez, Means, Baumann, Akin - Homegrown