Jump to content

Giving Dan Duquette his due


wildcard

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, AnythingO's said:

This from the Toronto Star

Rumours of the Blue Jays’ pursuit of Baltimore Orioles GM Dan Duquette as a replacement for team president and CEO Paul Beeston re-emerged Wednesday with a series of conflicting reports from a variety of sources.

Angelos admitted to the paper that Jays’ ownership, Rogers Communications, has expressed interest in Duquette.

An accountant who was the first employee ever hired by the Blue Jays in 1976, Beeston rose to become team president in 1989, staying on until 1997, when he was tapped by outgoing MLB commissioner Bud Selig to serve a five-year term as MLB president. He returned to the role of Jays president in 2008 and hired Anthopoulos a year later.

His contract technically expired at the end of October but Beeston — who turns 70 in June — has said on multiple occasions he has often worked without a contract and will stay on for as long as Rogers wants him.

The persistent rumours suggest either that a faction within Rogers is looking to nudge Beeston out, or that the company is simply preparing for life after the long-time president and its early recruiting efforts were clumsy rather than spiteful. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.

Either way it resulted in a disastrous offseason after 2014 and the fault for that lies squarely on Duquette in my opinion.  If I had been the owner I would have fired him in 2015. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, tntoriole said:

Acting out 

I think DD genuinely thought there was a chance of Angelos letting him go.   Angelos did try to extract some prospects/players from the Jays in return for giving them permission to talk/hire DD.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

I think DD genuinely thought there was a chance of Angelos letting him go.   Angelos did try to extract some prospects/players from the Jays in return for giving them permission to talk/hire DD.    

From what I heard at the time Angelos was asking for an unprecedented haul of prospects for an executive.

Which sounds like him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

I think DD genuinely thought there was a chance of Angelos letting him go.   Angelos did try to extract some prospects/players from the Jays in return for giving them permission to talk/hire DD.    

Just from an outsider’s knowledge of the way Angelos has operated vis a vis employees.. if DD thought Angelos would just say “great, Dan, just love you moving on to our division rivals” then Dan was an idiot and he is no idiot. 
No, maybe Dan thought it could leak out and MLB /Toronto leadership sort of force the hand of Angelos .. wrong again. 
or he thought at worst Angelos would fire him and he could then take it .. nope. 
 

What Dan did not do was resign obviously. But his relationship such as it was took a huge hit and he had to know he was going to be really limited in influence on PA after this mess. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

I needed a rehash of the Duquette years like I needed a video replay of my last colonoscopy.  

Well we could spice things up by rehashing the Syd Thrift years next. I think Gary Dell'Abate would appreciate a retelling of the Thrift era Orioles.

Edited by OsFanSinceThe80s
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, RZNJ said:

Yes.  In retrospect, it didn't turn out to be much if this article is accurate.

https://www.thestar.com/sports/bluejays/2015/01/25/blue-jays-halt-dan-duquette-talks-report.html

I remember PA asking for OF Dalton Pompey. 
 

You can’t blame that offseason on DD. I think as soon as he actually returned he was forced to pull of the Travis Snider trade for Brault/Tarpley.
 

Not resigning Markakis led to the Snider trade, and eventually the Parra trade. The Trumbo extension. Seth Smith. The Kim Signing, and likely the Rasmus signing as well. It would’ve been much cheaper just to bring back Markakis. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Not resigning Markakis led to the Snider trade, and eventually the Parra trade. The Trumbo extension. Seth Smith. The Kim Signing, and likely the Rasmus signing as well. It would’ve been much cheaper just to bring back Markakis. 

Markakis was an average player in ATL. It should've been relatively easy to replace his production. Their biggest mistake was not giving Cruz the extra year he wanted. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

**** Colby Rasmus.

6 minutes ago, LTO's said:

Markakis was an average player in ATL. It should've been relatively easy to replace his production. Their biggest mistake was not giving Cruz the extra year he wanted. 

Should have been, but it wasn't.  You say Markakis was average but I think he was slightly better than that.  Not by much, but he was still a good player.  We could have used him in 2015 and 2016.  It was silly to think that Snider was going to replace him.

That said, I agree that they should have retained Cruz.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Posts

    • What I'd like to see in the next game Holliday plays, is for him to keep his eyes following through on the ball when he swings. In the last game I saw, he was yanking his head off the zone when he swung and couldn't see the bat to the ball. He was missing wildly and it wasn't even competitive. So, keep your eye on the ball! Follow all the way through! If your swing is so violent that it's yanking your head off the sight of the ball, then adjust your mechanics because you can't hit what you can't see!
    • What a great example of pedantic! Please tell us you meant to do that. I honestly can’t tell these days. 
    • Well it certainly doesn't look like he'll be winning Rookie of Year award. And if we send him down for like the tiniest amount of time, we get him for another year, right? I think if this poor hitting continues it's financial mismanagement not to send him back down. Grayson got sent down and came back way better.
    • He certainly isn't a bust but I wasn't happy with the pick at the time and I don't love using the second overall pick for that type of player profile. Westburg signed for slot so he's irrelevant but Mayo was a great use of the money saved.
    • Think Heston will be the next call up. Mayo’s K/BB ratio is poor and I think they’ll want to see that even out. Stowers and Norby have seen their numbers slip a bit.  It will likely take an injury to an outfielder or first baseman, but I think we see HK next. 
    • I have to laugh at some of my pre-draft thoughts as well as others. I will say on behalf of myself and some others is that what we did not understand then was what the Orioles brain trust knew to be their model, and what they best developed. What traits they were looking for is an important thing to know, in hindsight anyway. And really, the Jackson Holliday leap in development was not something most of us heard anything about until about a month before the draft. I saw him the previous summer and I cannot say he was all that impressive, but it was only one look. His physicality took a big jump after that.  I will also add that we’re never going to know what would have happened if they drafted Austin Martin, Jones, Lawler, Lacy, etc. Their development could well have been different as O’s. The funny part of this board, in general, is the absolute certainty some have in their opinions and how eager they are to trash Elias and staff. There is plenty of humility to go around, now that things have played out. It’s fun to finally have a truly great front office and ownership group, and a stacked stable of horses. 
  • Popular Contributors

×
×
  • Create New...