I'd rather see Ortiz, Westburg, Cowser and Stowers than Urias, Mateo, Frazier, and Vavra

[Frobby]

3 hours ago, DocJJ said:

Not that Urias, Mateo, Frazier, or Vavra are all really that bad...  and we don't know if the aforementioned guys would end up being any better....   but I'd be in favor of it...

Elias isn’t, and that’s all that matters. 

[LA2]

5 hours ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Agreed Urias has been a very valuable player he is averaging 4.3 WAR per 162 games played during his career so far. And Mateo even if he doesn’t hit as some value due to his outstanding defense at SS. 

A problem is that his defense has not been outstanding this season.

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, LA2 said:

A problem is that his defense has not been outstanding this season.

Rdrs +4

Rtot +5

UZR +1.5

OAA +2

In less than a quarter season, I’d call that outstanding.  

[sportsfan8703]

Someone is advocating to replace Mateo?  Lost me right there. 
 

Vavra is actually proving to be a nice bench piece. Did anyone notice he get the nod as a defensive replacement over McKenna last night. He also got an AB and drew a BB before the Mullins HR. The dude is even trying out emergency catching. 
 

Stowers… Stowers needs to do something offensively. His slump is much different than what Gunnar is going through. Gunnar is getting the Adley treatment at the plate. Teams are afraid of him. Teams are not afraid of Stowers. 
 

Cowser… I’m pretty sure we see him after the Super Two cutoff in mid June. 

[LA2]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

Rdrs +4

Rtot +5

UZR +1.5

OAA +2

In less than a quarter season, I’d call that outstanding.  

I'm surprised.

[DirtyBird]

Just now, sportsfan8703 said:

Vavra is actually proving to be a nice bench piece. Did anyone notice he get the nod as a defensive replacement over McKenna last night. He also got an AB and drew a BB before the Mullins HR. The dude is even trying out emergency catching. 

I believe that was because there was the chance of his spot coming up to bat, and it would be against a RHP. Not really him getting defensive nod over McKenna.

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, LA2 said:

I'm surprised.

Why?  I’d say Mateo has messed up a couple more routine plays than last year, but he’s still making spectacular plays on a regular basis.  Maybe you’ve gotten so used to them that you’re not recognizing them as great plays any more.  

[LA2]

4 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Why?  I’d say Mateo has messed up a couple more routine plays than last year, but he’s still making spectacular plays on a regular basis.  Maybe you’ve gotten so used to them that you’re not recognizing them as great plays any more.  

I follow on Gameday and the Game Threads. That tends to play up errors. (I can afford mlb.com financially, but not the time suck it wd create as I got distracted by other teams as well.)

[InsideCoroner]

25 minutes ago, LA2 said:

I'm surprised.

Mateo has been very erratic in the field this year (especially with his throws being off-target), but look at yesterday’s game as an example. He bobbled a transfer to let a batter reach first and blew that throw to home. Yet he also made a solid step-and-throw DP, a nice little jump to snag a soft liner, and showed tremendous range on a grounder to the middle with a spin throw to nail the runner at first. Not perfect, but he probably still made more plays in those situations than most shortstops would have.

[Aristotelian]

2 hours ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Vavra is actually proving to be a nice bench piece. Did anyone notice he get the nod as a defensive replacement over McKenna last night. He also got an AB and drew a BB before the Mullins HR. The dude is even trying out emergency catching. 

There could be a Lenn Sakata moment coming with him. Hope we get to see it. 

[oriole]

I was thinking about making a similar post but I’m terrible at organizing thoughts and data. Plus it’s not really worth a whole thread dedicated to this.  But I am curious what anyone thinks of this exercise….

Obviously the O’s will be at a $70-$80 million payroll for the foreseeable future.  Next year our current players will get their arbitration raises so for the sake of keeping things simple I’m going to use the number $75m. Also, I am referring to 2024 and beyond. Which of these two are the better course of action?

First, keep the current team together and pay their raises and trade from the stockpile of near ready prospects for some SP from other teams to get us over the competitive edge. We’ll keep some of the lower minors guys like Holliday, Beavers, and Basallo to hopefully replenish the team when the current O’s leave. But for this exercise, I’m talking about trading just about anyone and everyone at AAA and AA for legit SP. Not rentals or comeback candidates. I mean like trading for both Cease and Bieber or something like that. Something that moves the needle a lot.

Second, trade the arbitration guys who are blocking the prospects and play the prospects. So we’re trading Mullins, Hays, Mountcastle, Urias, Mateo, and Santander for prospects…really only Mullins would net anything particularly good…but really it’s about clearing payroll and space for the cheap young guys to play. Then that frees up a significant amount of payroll to go after really good free agents. For the sake of making a point, let’s say we sign Ohtani and Nola. But everyone else is basically major league minimum.

 

So the obvious answer is neither. The right thing to do is a mix of the two approaches. I’m dealing in extremes here. But for the thought experiment, choose one. Just to see the lineups and rotation laid out, here is what I’m suggesting.

 

Option A

C Rutschman

1B Mountcastle 

2B Urias

SS Mateo

3B Henderson

LF Hays

CF Mullins

RF Santander

Rotation - Bieber, Cease, Rodriguez, Wells, Kremer/Bradish

Expensive veterans and farm in the upper minors basically wiped out

Option B

C Rutschman

1B Kjerstad

2B Westburg

SS Ortiz

3B Henderson

LF Haskins

CF Cowser

RF Stowers

Rotation - Ohtani, Nola, Rodriguez, Wells, Kremer/Bradish

Expensive aces, longer competitive window but much less proven talent

 

Also want to note, that the specific free agents and trades aren’t as important as the level of talent added 

[Fiver6565]

3 hours ago, DirtyBird said:

I believe that was because there was the chance of his spot coming up to bat, and it would be against a RHP. Not really him getting defensive nod over McKenna.

Agree with this and actually thought that was a clever little managing move by Hyde, realizing he’d rather have Vavra up vs a likely RH reliever. And it paid off with the walk to get to Mullins’ AB. I thought Brown/McDonald would pick up on that but unless I missed it, they didn’t. 
 

I was a little surprised he didn’t then go to McKenna in the ninth. I’m guessing he probably would have had it still been a 1 run lead. 

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, oriole said:

 

Obviously the O’s will be at a $70-$80 million payroll for the foreseeable future.  

This is not obvious to me at all.  The team ran a payroll over $100 mm every year from 2013 to 2018 and there is no reason whatsoever it can’t do that again unless John Angelos just decides he wants to be super-greedy.  I had no problem whatsoever with the Orioles slashing payroll during the rebuild, but the natural corollary is the payroll builds back up once the team gets good again.  I don’t necessarily expect the team to reach the $161 mm plateau again, but I’ll be quite surprised and disgusted if payroll isn’t well over $100 mm when it needs to be.   It might take another year or two to get there because the team’s best players are super cheap right now, but that’ll change.  

[rm5678]

Roch just tweeted that "Joey Ortiz is here on taxi squad".

I thought the new taxi squad rules only allow for a catcher. So I am totally confused as to how & why Ortiz is there on the taxi squad.

 

[AnythingO's]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

This is not obvious to me at all.  The team ran a payroll over $100 mm every year from 2013 to 2018 and there is no reason whatsoever it can’t do that again unless John Angelos just decides he wants to be super-greedy.  I had no problem whatsoever with the Orioles slashing payroll during the rebuild, but the natural corollary is the payroll builds back up once the team gets good again.  I don’t necessarily expect the team to reach the $161 mm plateau again, but I’ll be quite surprised and disgusted if payroll isn’t well over $100 mm when it needs to be.   It might take another year or two to get there because the team’s best players are super cheap right now, but that’ll change.  

Agree with all this. Also, with better attendance the Revenue will increase. The unknown variable is how much profit JA will want. The last 2 years the profits were $83M and $67M, is he saving that for inheritance taxes??? Per the Forbes data, the breakeven point was about $130M for Payroll plus Expenses (Salaries around $100M plus benefits and other costs that aren't defined). Salaries are about $65M now including Active, Injured, and Retained (Davis $5.6M) but not Deferred($15.1M) so depending on how you count you have $20M to $35M in Salaries to play with.