Giving Dan Duquette his due

[interloper]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I see Duquette as a mixed bag, neither all good nor all bad.  I do find it interesting that, despite having some success in his various stops, he went 9 years without a job in MLB after Boston fired him, and he’s been unable to land another position in the 4+ years since being fired by the Orioles.  That suggests he’s not the easiest guy to work with, regardless of whatever other merits he has.  At this point, I think time probably has passed him by.   

Yeah I just think he's a super interesting guy. Much like his time with the Red Sox, he's a divisive guy who had moments of greatness mixed with moments of not. 

The same guy signed Chen, but got himself blacklisted in S. Korea. The same guy turned Miguel Gonzalez and Jason Hammel into very good pitchers, but couldn't get basically any pitching prospect to pop. Just an interesting, mixed body of work. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by interloper

[Sports Guy]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I see Duquette as a mixed bag, neither all good nor all bad.  I do find it interesting that, despite having some success in his various stops, he went 9 years without a job in MLB after Boston fired him, and he’s been unable to land another position in the 4+ years since being fired by the Orioles.  That suggests he’s not the easiest guy to work with, regardless of whatever other merits he has.  At this point, I think time probably has passed him by.   

I agree with this. You also wonder if he hurt himself with the whole Toronto thing. 

The relationship in Baltimore obviously changed after that. I just wonder if it hurt him elsewhere too, not that he would be the first executive to consider going elsewhere for a promotion.

[rudyrooster]

36 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I see Duquette as a mixed bag, neither all good nor all bad.  I do find it interesting that, despite having some success in his various stops, he went 9 years without a job in MLB after Boston fired him, and he’s been unable to land another position in the 4+ years since being fired by the Orioles.  That suggests he’s not the easiest guy to work with, regardless of whatever other merits he has.  At this point, I think time probably has passed him by.   

This exactly!

[Tony-OH]

5 hours ago, DirtyBird said:

And Chris Davis

Chris Davis will be paid more by the O’s in ‘23 than any on the list.

Hopefully you know that Dan Duquette had nothing to do with the Chris Davis signing, right? Peter Angelos made that signing at the behest of Buck Showalter.

[Tony-OH]

2 hours 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 don't think anyone will disagree with any of that, but I think Wildcard was saying that a hopefully contending team still has players from the Duquette regime contributing five years later.

I'm going to pick Elias 1000 times in 1000 for the way baseball is played now with technology, but Duqutte did do several good things and did build a team that had a core run. Obviously Buck gets some credit here too for that run, but before the Toronto thing happened that sucked most of Duquette's power away, They were a great duo when it came to putting a winning major league team on the field.

The drafting was pretty solid behind Rajsich but the development was clearly behind the times and that hurt the organization.

Elias is heads and shoulders above anything Duquette installed development wise.

[jamalshw]

41 minutes ago, interloper said:

Yeah I just think he's a super interesting guy. Much like his time with the Red Sox, he's a divisive guy who had moments of greatness mixed with moments of not. 

The same guy signed Chen, but got himself blacklisted in S. Korea. The same guy turned Miguel Gonzalez and Jason Hammel into very good pitchers, but couldn't get basically any pitching prospect to pop. Just an interesting, mixed body of work. 

I think the development system was his biggest downfall. Though the blacklisting from S. Korea isn't great either. 

They could draft well, but not develop well as evidence by some of his draft prospects thriving in the new Orioles environment. 

On a side note, I blame Angelos and company more than DD for the delay (and ultimately the poor execution) in selling off the core of the 2012-2016 teams. I think its better practice to bring in a new GM to down the dismantling. As unbias as someone tries to be, its got to be harder for the GM that built the team to dismantle it without some level of bias. 

[Tony-OH]

3 hours ago, DirtyBird said:

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

Huh? He acquired both in trades. Why would he not get credit for them?

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, LTO's said:

We don't truly know any of this. You're guessing. I find it odd that they would keep a GM around with no power and allow him to do the 2018 sell off. But my point is that we do know that DD was permitted to explore trades for Britton in 2017. And the trade he had on the table was terrible but was nixed by PA. So it's not a given that if DD would've sold off earlier, the deals would've been better. 

This all was documented in my "Game of Thrones Orioles style" article. I had plenty of sources for hat article.

[SpOkane]

3 hours ago, tntoriole said:

... my O’s boss at the time (Dan Duquette) had me working on economic evaluations of a new contract for Mr. Davis starting in August of 2015; none of the contemplated offers went beyond four years. I confidently wagered Mr. Duquette a lavish lunch in Little Italy that Mr. Davis’ value on the open market would be less than nine figures, overall.

The https://www.camdenchat.com/platform/amp/2019/4/9/18303386/orioles-chris-davis-contract-peter-angelosidea that there might have been a world where the Orioles did not go beyond either four years or $100 million to sign Davis is like a punch to the gut for me. Imagine how much less miserable all of this would seem now if this was the last year of Davis’s contract. He probably would have been cut loose long before he could get himself into his current 0-49 ditch.

Walters was my Microeconomics prof at Loyola in the 80s. Interesting, nice, likable dude who was a tough grader who lacked charisma.

[btdart20]

IMO, DD was really focused on the ML team.  That's fine with an owner who wants to spend to win.  That approach takes a big hit if the underlying support changes for any reason (good/bad/indifferent).  And that's exactly what happened, PA showed some appetite for spending/winning early on, then at some point it shifted and we were left hopelessly holding onto a competitive window a year too long.  

As much as Elias relies on the SigBot, he also highly values the human side of player development of bridging the gap between the mental development and skills development.  His approach to GM'ing seems more holistic (and detailed) from a org and a personnel perspective.

[eddie83]

I respect the job Dan did. He made mistakes but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again nobody was going to be successful long term with the structure of the organization. 
 

You can’t ignore a major market of talent, operate like a mid market franchise with a meddling owner and strong willed manager and be successful.  

I’m real happy with Elias and he was a great hire but we don’t really know what Dan was capable of here on some levels. Thankfully Elias was the right man for the job.  

[eddie83]

20 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

IMO, DD was really focused on the ML team.  That's fine with an owner who wants to spend to win.  That approach takes a big hit if the underlying support changes for any reason (good/bad/indifferent).  And that's exactly what happened, PA showed some appetite for spending/winning early on, then at some point it shifted and we were left hopelessly holding onto a competitive window a year too long.  

As much as Elias relies on the SigBot, he also highly values the human side of player development of bridging the gap between the mental development and skills development.  His approach to GM'ing seems more holistic (and detailed) from a org and a personnel perspective.

The team he inherited had solid position player talent but awful pitching. He helped to build the staff that created a turnaround in 12. Then Manny comes up in 12 and he and David pop in 13. 
 

It’s hard enough to draft well at the same time as you are winning. The Dodgers have shown it can be done. That said Dan never had the depth of MiL talent most other organizations had due to the lack of International spending. Perhaps some of the trades he made would have been different. Not like he was able to buy a big time starter. I still think Buck’s pitching coach choices are the worst part of Buck’s tenure. Arrieta makes a world of difference if he figures it out here. 

[Frobby]

40 minutes ago, SpOkane said:

Walters was my Microeconomics prof at Loyola in the 80s. Interesting, nice, likable dude who was a tough grader who lacked charisma.

Good scouting report.  

[eddie83]

42 minutes ago, SpOkane said:

Walters was my Microeconomics prof at Loyola in the 80s. Interesting, nice, likable dude who was a tough grader who lacked charisma.

Sounds somewhat like Dan. 

[sevastras]

This could be a completely different conversation if Manny doesn’t go down in 2013 and 2014 at the ends of the season and then Wieters with TJ and CD with Aderall.  I also wonder about the “cavalry” and Bucks TTP crap.