Keith Law’s O’s top 20

[Tony-OH]

58 minutes ago, LTO's said:

What does this mean in practice? What were the things he wanted to do but wasn't allowed to? And what proof do we have of this? Wouldn't his rep around the league still be strong if this was an obvious fact? He's completely out of the sport.  He made mistakes that led to a terrible state of the org and his ultimate firing. Doesn't mean he didn't do some good and have some success but as Interloper eluded to, there was more success to be had there. History will show they won one playoff series and didn't win a single ALCS game. 

I wanted Buck gone but I do think he is a better manager than DD was a GM and I think most people in the sport think that as well. 

No disagreement here. I do think he should be graded on a curve a tad considering DD had vastly higher payrolls afforded to him, but if all he accomplishes is one playoff series W and no ALCS wins, then that's a massive disappointment and he will be criticized as much as I have criticized DD. 

Good Lord, if you are still asking those first questions about Duquette and Toronto, we can go ahead and stop debating until you are properly informed. Well, never mind, because you are just a Duquette hater/ I'm not going to waste my time trying to educate you on what happened and the change across baseball that makes guys like Duquette not get opportunities anymore.

[Frobby]

11 minutes ago, Number5 said:

Agreed.  For example, Expos signed Vlad under DD's watch.

Vlad signed for $2,500, so he’s not really an example of large international spending.  But Montreal definitely had good success in the Dominican under DD’s watch.  

[LTO's]

20 minutes ago, deward said:

The end of his tenure here was clearly a mess that tainted him (probably more to do with the Toronto debacle than one really bad season). DD didn't have Buck in Montreal or Boston, and those teams still won a bunch of games. I take you aren't in the group who thinks success in the playoffs is largely random chance....in which case, you must think Billy Beane is also a bad GM, right? 

Duq won everywhere he went, that speaks plenty for me.

He won everywhere he went but didn't get an serious consideration for any job after he was fired. Why is that? Almost like successes from 20-30 years ago mean nothing when it's obvious to everyone that the game has passed you by. And no, I don't think playoff success is largely random chance. Even if I did, making it to the ALDS only 2 out of your 7 seasons as GM isn't exactly a ton of chances. His teams were always massively flawed, a big reason for their up and down nature year to year and their pre-season projections always being low. That showed up in all of their playoff failures when they just weren't able to consistently string together hits/baserunners. 

His image is what it is because of the 14 years of losing previously and peoples (rational) hatred of Peter and their (irrational) hatred of Buck. The state of the org that he inherited when he became GM was so much better than he how he left it. It's not even close. I personally don't think 2012 and 2014 were appropriate trade offs for how bad things got toward the end. If it's an unpopular opinion here then so be it. 

[Can_of_corn]

29 minutes ago, LTO's said:

All true. But when he arrived he was in a far more enviable position than Elias.

 

Depends on what you are looking for as a GM.  For someone like Elias, I think he would have preferred the situation he found himself in.

I wouldn't say that one position was clearly better than the other.  Dan's team was obviously closer to being competitive.

[LTO's]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Depends on what you are looking for as a GM.  For someone like Elias, I think he would have preferred the situation he found himself in.

I wouldn't say that one position was clearly better than the other.  Dan's team was obviously closer to being competitive.

Elias job was/is tougher. Whether or not that's more enviable I suppose depends on the type of person you are. 

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, LTO's said:

Elias job was/is tougher. Whether or not that's more enviable I suppose depends on the type of person you are. 

What's harder, take a team to the playoffs in the AL East with Peter Angelos as an owner and Buck Showalter as a manager you didn't hire or oversee a complete tank job and not have ANY expectations about winning for at least four years?

It's a totally different situation with wildly different expectations.

[deward]

11 minutes ago, LTO's said:

He won everywhere he went but didn't get an serious consideration for any job after he was fired. Why is that? Almost like successes from 20-30 years ago mean nothing when it's obvious to everyone that the game has passed you by. And no, I don't think playoff success is largely random chance. Even if I did, making it to the ALDS only 2 out of your 7 seasons as GM isn't exactly a ton of chances. His teams were always massively flawed, a big reason for their up and down nature year to year and their pre-season projections always being low. That showed up in all of their playoff failures when they just weren't able to consistently string together hits/baserunners. 

His image is what it is because of the 14 years of losing previously and peoples (rational) hatred of Peter and their (irrational) hatred of Buck. The state of the org that he inherited when he became GM was so much better than he how he left it. It's not even close. I personally don't think 2012 and 2014 were appropriate trade offs for how bad things got toward the end. If it's an unpopular opinion here then so be it. 

DD stepped into a highly dysfunctional organization and was the first person in 15 years to figure out how to turn it from a laughingstock into a winner. That 2014 team probably wins the WS if they don't run into KC at the wrong time. People keep trying to tell you that him not getting hired elsewhere after 2018 likely had more to do with how the Toronto thing went down than anything else, but you don't want to listen. I think there's a good argument that a lot of the flaws to his approach in Baltimore came from his marching orders from Angelos, given that his MO at his other stops was not the same. I'm not saying Duq was perfect or amazing, but the biggest metric of success for a GM is winning games, and he always won games. 

[LTO's]

5 minutes ago, deward said:

DD stepped into a highly dysfunctional organization and was the first person in 15 years to figure out how to turn it from a laughingstock into a winner. That 2014 team probably wins the WS if they don't run into KC at the wrong time.

The organization wasn't "highly dysfunctional" when DD took over. They had just made their best managerial hire in decades and he had already made two great acquisitions as the interim GM. This was also on the heels of one of the team's greatest all time trades and greatest draft picks. The 2014 team didn't win the WS because KC was clearly better than them. I suppose if you believe everything is luck then you can make yourself feel better that way but in reality the Royals smoked them and then won the WS the next year while the O's were .500. 

10 minutes ago, deward said:

People keep trying to tell you that him not getting hired elsewhere after 2018 likely had more to do with how the Toronto thing went down than anything else, but you don't want to listen.

He didn't get another job because teams were not interested in his perspective in this new era of Baseball. Every other reasoning, including a situation from 4 years prior, is silly. I'm pretty sure he didn't even get an advisory role or anything like it. 

13 minutes ago, deward said:

I think there's a good argument that a lot of the flaws to his approach in Baltimore came from his marching orders from Angelos, given that his MO at his other stops was not the same.

You'll never lose this argument if you deflect any and all blame onto someone else. But hey, we'll always have that one playoff series win in 7 years to look back fondly on.  

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, LTO's said:

The organization wasn't "highly dysfunctional" when DD took over.

 

Didn't the O's go through a pretty embarrassing stretch in which Andy declined to stay and a bunch of GM candidates turned the job down?

[LTO's]

23 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

What's harder, take a team to the playoffs in the AL East with Peter Angelos as an owner and Buck Showalter as a manager you didn't hire or oversee a complete tank job and not have ANY expectations about winning for at least four years?

It's a totally different situation with wildly different expectations.

It's hilarious that people like you keep throwing in Buck as some sort of jab to defend DD. Completely out of touch with how the baseball world views them. The team won all of those games largely due to the work he and his staff did with the defense and his management of the bullpen. They routinely outplayed their pre-season projections because of this. The 1-9 was always incredibly flawed and the SP talent was always mediocre to downright bad. O'day (a Buck move) was practically the reason they had any success in the 2012 playoffs and Davis (also a Buck move) was a major reason those badly put together 2013+2015 teams were even somewhat respectable. 

If you had to choose Buck as this current team's manager or DD to be this team's GM. Who are you taking? 

[deward]

10 minutes ago, LTO's said:

The organization wasn't "highly dysfunctional" when DD took over. They had just made their best managerial hire in decades and he had already made two great acquisitions as the interim GM. This was also on the heels of one of the team's greatest all time trades and greatest draft picks. The 2014 team didn't win the WS because KC was clearly better than them. I suppose if you believe everything is luck then you can make yourself feel better that way but in reality the Royals smoked them and then won the WS the next year while the O's were .500. 

 

What interim GM? MacPhail stepped down right after the season ended in Oct 2011 and DD was hired Nov 2011. The org has been dysfunctional since the 90s. KC was a wild card team that got blazing hot in Aug-Sep and carried it over to the post-season. They were the hottest team in baseball at the time, not the best.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, LTO's said:

It's hilarious that people like you keep throwing in Buck as some sort of jab to defend DD. Completely out of touch with how the baseball world views them. The team won all of those games largely due to the work he and his staff did with the defense and his management of the bullpen. They routinely outplayed their pre-season projections because of this. The 1-9 was always incredibly flawed and the SP talent was always mediocre to downright bad. O'day (a Buck move) was practically the reason they had any success in the 2012 playoffs and Davis (also a Buck move) was a major reason those badly put together 2013+2015 teams were even somewhat respectable. 

If you had to choose Buck as this current team's manager or DD to be this team's GM. Who are you taking? 

Which is the more difficult position to come into as a GM?

A job in which you can come in and name the person you want to be manager or a job in which you come into with a charismatic, media savvy veteran manager who has prior experience as a GM and the ear of the owner?

 

That has zero to do with how Buck is at being an actual manager.

Do you think Elias has to worry about Hyde going to the owner over personnel decisions?

[deward]

21 minutes ago, LTO's said:

You'll never lose this argument if you deflect any and all blame onto someone else. But hey, we'll always have that one playoff series win in 7 years to look back fondly on.  

I'll never win this argument because your mind is made up and not interested in any other viewpoint. I won't waste any more time on it.

[Stotle]

On 2/8/2023 at 3:20 PM, Tony-OH said:

A think the big difference is the impact of those players, While Manny and Britton at some point, and Schoop to a lesser extent were impact guys, the rest were at best average major leaguers though Wieters ha a few years of being better than average.

I think we are going to see many, many more of these guys coming out of this system as impact guys on playoff caliber teams and they will come in waves. 

Thanks to a string of 90+ loss season from 2024-2010, the team did build up a better farm system, but the best pitcher to be drafted (Arrieta) ended up being good elsewhere because they failed to develop him properly. 

So yes, the system wasn't barren, but no way that 2009 system (Machado was drafted in 2010) even close to this system.

I think you can also argue player dev was not great with that group. There should have been more impact from the late-00s/early-10s group of prospects. Some of that is on the players (like a certain 1rd arm) but a lot is on the org for not having a unified approach to developing its players and understanding the right things to emphasize. Hindsight, of course.

[deward]

4 minutes ago, deward said:

What interim GM? MacPhail stepped down right after the season ended in Oct 2011 and DD was hired Nov 2011. The org has been dysfunctional since the 90s. KC was a wild card team that got blazing hot in Aug-Sep and carried it over to the post-season. They were the hottest team in baseball at the time, not the best.

Ok, I see that O'Day was picked up off waivers before DD was hired, so I'll give you that one.