Giving Dan Duquette his due

[DirtyBird]

1 hour ago, wildcard said:

The 162m contract was a decision made at the ownership level by Peter Angelos.  Buck Showalter and Adam Jones went right passed Duquette to lobby Angelos to sign Davis.  Duquette and his staff may have handled the paper work but the decison was made above him. 

The point is well taken that Davis is still being paid by the O's but is not on the 40 man roster.

I found it interesting that after a tear down and rebuild by Elias the team still has so many players acquired by Duquette 4 years after he left the team.

It is pretty difficult to gut an organization of all its players, given the number of guys it takes to fill the organization and the time it takes to develop baseball players.

This isn't a college basketball coach who comes in and just needs to find 5 new guys to put on the court.

[DirtyBird]

2 minutes ago, glenn__davis said:

 

He held on for at least a year too long with the core team that led to a terrible firesale.

 

Yeah, I don't think having Tate and Kremer on the list is a reason to give DD his due.

[Jagwar]

1 minute ago, tntoriole said:

The guy worked for Dan .. short of Dan or Peter saying it in public, not sure what evidence you want. 

As I said, I think the narrative is correct. Just wondering if there is anything that shows Duquette's role in the final stages. 

[Sports Guy]

17 minutes ago, glenn__davis said:

There was good and bad with Duquette.

I think Duquette with Gary Rajisch did a good job in the draft.

He did a good job finding "unknowns" (Wei-Yen Chen, Miguel Gonzalez) that formed the basis of a respectable MLB rotation.

He gave up draft picks for bad MLB signings (Yovanni Gallardo).

He held on for at least a year too long with the core team that led to a terrible firesale.

I do not think the player development system was good under Duquette.  I think it is light years better under Elias.  

All of this is true..except we just don’t know what PA allowed and what he didn’t. In other words, if DD came to him and wanted trackman and all of this other tech, would he have turned him down?

My guess is yes but we don’t know for sure.

[tntoriole]

8 minutes ago, Jagwar said:

As I said, I think the narrative is correct. Just wondering if there is anything that shows Duquette's role in the final stages. 

Well Buck said he knew nothing lol 

 

Put yourself in his shoes. Chris wore it on his sleeve. It ate at him, not being able to return statistically what the contract dictated. Let’s face it, the Orioles paid him for what he did in the past and hopefully was going to do in the future. Mr. Angelos felt a real commitment to the city to try to bring Chris back. At the time, everybody was clamoring for it and loved the idea. It was kind of a behind-the-scenes thing. I didn’t know a whole lot about it until it really happened

 

https://pressboxonline.com/2021/08/17/former-orioles-manager-buck-showalter-reflects-on-chris-davis-time-in-baltimore/

[wildcard]

31 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

Yeah, I don't think having Tate and Kremer on the list is a reason to give DD his due.

Dan made the trades.

[Frobby]

I’ve always felt that some of the statements that the Orioles had no talent whatsoever when Elias arrived were a bit overblown.  Interestingly, of the listed players in the OP, only Hays, Mullins and Santander had made their major league debut, and none of them were established major league players.   

One glaring thing about that list is there’s not a single 2B/SS/3B or C.   
 

[DirtyBird]

4 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Dan made the trades.

For Machado and Britton at their lowest value point

[wildcard]

Adam Jones knew who was making the decision.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-jones-main-0225-20160224-story.html

[Moose Milligan]

Yeah, I think Dan deserves some credit here.  Good thread, WC.

DD was a good GM despite having a hand tied behind his back almost at all times (no international scouting and signing in South American countries, Peter Angelos, Showalter, the Chris Davis fiasco, etc).  As mentioned, he did find some really good unknown players in Miguel Gonzalez and the little heralded Chen who were good performers.  He did what he had to do in order to keep the major league team in contention throughout most of the 2010s and I believe he did his best at drafting with a franchise that, under the Angelos reign, hadn't given too much to attention to the farm system.

His fingerprints are still on this team, I'm not upset about it.  I liked DD, he was the first competent GM we'd had in a long time.

48 minutes ago, glenn__davis said:

There was good and bad with Duquette.

I think Duquette with Gary Rajisch did a good job in the draft.

He did a good job finding "unknowns" (Wei-Yen Chen, Miguel Gonzalez) that formed the basis of a respectable MLB rotation.

He gave up draft picks for bad MLB signings (Yovanni Gallardo).

He held on for at least a year too long with the core team that led to a terrible firesale.

I do not think the player development system was good under Duquette.  I think it is light years better under Elias.  

I think this sums it up best.  He wasn't infallible, but his years here were mostly good.  Good teams to watch, sell outs at Camden Yards, playoff appearances, etc. 

I would add to @glenn__davis's list that he gave in to Buck Showalter a little bit too much.  The Davis contract is evidence of that but I also feel like there were a couple of other times (I can't remember off the top of my head) where Buck got what he wanted, perhaps at the expense of the team moving forward.  Buck, as much as I liked him, too, made no bones about the fact that he wasn't interested in a rebuild or developing young players, etc.  He wanted his guys, his vets and I think that's another area where DD had a hand tied behind his back. 

[Ohfan67]

1 hour ago, Jagwar said:

I think I agree with you, and I'm not trying to be a noodge. Just wondering if anyone ever went on the record saying that DD had nothing to do with the Davis signing. 

Duquette basically sat next to Roch on a flight and basically said those words. I can't find the link but Duquette said there was only one person in the warehouse that thought signing Davis to that contract was a good idea. 

[Frobby]

Not to distract from the thread, but Duquette did not find Chen.   Before Duquette was hired, Buck Showalter spoke at some banquet and identified Chen as a pitcher the O’s were looking at seriously.  So, I’ll give DD credit for signing Chen, but not for finding him.  

[Bahama O's Fan]

Didn't he have Trumbo already signed as a replacement for Davis?

[Bahama O's Fan]

I gotta give him some credit. Best O's teams in roughly 20 years

[LTO's]

PA intrusion wasn't all bad. He nixed the trade at the 2017 deadline that would've been Colin Moran (-0.2 career WAR) for Britton.