Rank These Elias Signings

[Aristotelian]

Frazier: Cost $8M and blocks Westburg, but way better than Odor and has performed well. 

Hicks: Minimal cost but could have been an opportunity for Westburg or Cowser. Probably worse than Daz Cameron. 

Mikael Franco: Put up -1.5 WAR, hurting us on offense and defense, but this was peak teardown so arguably he helped us draft Holliday. 

Jesus Aguilar: Picked up for our stretch run, hit .546 OPS and took AB's from Stowers. 

Rougned Odor: -0.4 WAR, .632 OPS but wasn't really blocking anyone at the time and brought some "intangibles" 

I will say, the good thing about Elias is that his head scratchers are all one year guys costing minimal dollars, so from that stanpoint none of his bad moves have been disastrous. I will go with Aguilar, Odor, Frazier, Hicks, Franco in order from worst to least bad. Hicks could get worse if he actually plays. 

 

[Mr-splash]

It's hard to rank signings when you're literally intentionally losing ballgames. From a tanking perspective a "good" signing might have actually been a bad signing. 

[Aristotelian]

Just now, Mr-splash said:

It's hard to rank signings when you're literally intentionally losing ballgames. From a tanking perspective a "good" signing might have actually been a bad signing. 

Two on the list are from this season. Are we tanking now? The only true tanking signing on the list was Franco. I view Odor more as "try to upgrade on as little budget as possible" which is a little different than tanking. 

[Mr-splash]

Just now, Aristotelian said:

Two on the list are from this season. Are we tanking now? The only true tanking signing on the list was Franco. I view Odor more as "try to upgrade on as little budget as possible" which is a little different than tanking. 

This is the first season under Elias that we have genuinely tried to win games. Let's not forget that were sellers last season. As far as the two signings for this season Frazier has been a good signing because he's been the best infielder on the team. Hicks is yet to be determined. 

[Sports Guy]

They are all tied for first for different reasons.  Parsing out horribleness is just just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[Three Run Homer]

As of now, the Frazier signing looks positively good, and so does the Gibson signing (which I was very critical of at the time).   For me the worst of these signings was Aguilar.  The O's were still in contention at the time but they went for the cheap, useless player rather than someone who could have actually helped.  

[forphase1]

25 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Frazier: Cost $8M and blocks Westburg, but way better than Odor and has performed well. 

Hicks: Minimal cost but could have been an opportunity for Westburg or Cowser. Probably worse than Daz Cameron. 

Mikael Franco: Put up -1.5 WAR, hurting us on offense and defense, but this was peak teardown so arguably he helped us draft Holliday. 

Jesus Aguilar: Picked up for our stretch run, hit .546 OPS and took AB's from Stowers. 

Rougned Odor: -0.4 WAR, .632 OPS but wasn't really blocking anyone at the time and brought some "intangibles" 

I will say, the good thing about Elias is that his head scratchers are all one year guys costing minimal dollars, so from that stanpoint none of his bad moves have been disastrous. I will go with Aguilar, Odor, Frazier, Hicks, Franco in order from worst to least bad. Hicks could get worse if he actually plays. 

 

Worst to best ranking for me.

1) Aguilar - We were a winning ball club with playoff hopes.  No reason to sign such a bad and washed up player.  

2) Phillips - see Aguilar

3) Odor - between the signing AND the amount he was used, I'm tempted to make this one higher.  Made a decent play here and there and had a few 'clutch' hits, but overall he was a black hole in the lineup and wasn't that good in the field.  No credit given for 'intangibles' that may or may not exist or help.    

4) Frazier - improvement over Odor, but that bar is so low it almost goes without saying.  He's performing ok, but that's not the point.  He's blocking much more talented players, players who may be part of our future, and who I think would be matching or exceeding his production, while getting the experience needed to perform for the next handful of years.  Plus the would be doing so at a much less rate, and perhaps that 8M could have been spent elsewhere.  Only saving grace is he's performing better than I personally expected, which has been nice, but still doesn't justify the signing as I think the 'kids' would still do better.  He does give solid, professional at bats and plays an ok 2nd base.  

5) Franco - Yeah, he was really bad, and a dumb signing, but we weren't winning and he didn't really block anyone.  It was a waste of money, but didn't REALLY impact anything long term, unlike Frazier could be.  

TBD) Hicks - If Cowser was healthy this would already been close to the top.  Even with Cowser hurt I still think this was a needless signing. The reason I say TBD partly depends on how it plays out.  If he is here for a week, and then cut as soon as Cowser is ready to come up, then fine.  If he's clogging up the roster for the rest of year, taking at bats away from better players either on the MLB roster or at the AAA/AA level, then yeah it'll move quickly up the worst list.  

[DirtyBird]

3 minutes ago, forphase1 said:

Worst to best ranking for me.

4) Frazier - improvement over Odor, but that bar is so low it almost goes without saying.  He's performing ok, but that's not the point.  He's blocking much more talented players, players who may be part of our future, and who I think would be matching or exceeding his production, while getting the experience needed to perform for the next handful of years.  Plus the would be doing so at a much less rate, and perhaps that 8M could have been spent elsewhere.  Only saving grace is he's performing better than I personally expected, which has been nice, but still doesn't justify the signing as I think the 'kids' would still do better.  He does give solid, professional at bats and plays an ok 2nd base.  

If you were wrong about how he would perform, what makes you think you'd be right about other guys being better?

[Pickles]

1 minute ago, DirtyBird said:

If you were wrong about how he would perform, what makes you think you'd be right about other guys being better?

It's a good question.

[Mr-splash]

2 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

If you were wrong about how he would perform, what makes you think you'd be right about other guys being better?

DirtyBird by homicide. 

[forphase1]

Just now, DirtyBird said:

If you were wrong about how he would perform, what makes you think you'd be right about other guys being better?

Never said I was wrong, did I?  I said he's performing better than I expected.  3 previous years he had an OPS of .661, .779 and .612.  I expected something around the .650 range, based upon his most recent performances.  He's at .725 for the year, in 54 games/170 at bats, so still a SSS.  Sure, he's been a bit better than I expected, but that doesn't make me wrong yet.  Still a ton of baseball left to play, and I think it much more likely for him to end up closer to my expected .650 than the .725 he's hitting so far this year.  That said, I HOPE he continues hitting well as long as he is getting playing time.  I want the team to succeed, so I want Frazier to exceed, regardless of if I think it was a dumb signing or not.  I either want him to crater so he gets cut, allowing the kids to come up, or I want him to perform well so we win games.  Worst case is an Odor or Mateo currently situation where he's put out there every game and not producing.

As to the other guys being better, I'm simply looking at how Westburg is hitting in AAA (.998 OPS) and I believe that some of that would translate to MLB also.  Sure, he won't OPS 950+ in the majors, but I do think he'd outdo Fraziers .725.  Even if he just matched Frazier, or even slightly was worse, I'll take that tradeoff to get him the experience in the MLB that he's going to need to help us win over the next 5-6 years.  

[Pickles]

7 minutes ago, forphase1 said:

Never said I was wrong, did I?  I said he's performing better than I expected.  3 previous years he had an OPS of .661, .779 and .612.  I expected something around the .650 range, based upon his most recent performances.  He's at .725 for the year, in 54 games/170 at bats, so still a SSS.  Sure, he's been a bit better than I expected, but that doesn't make me wrong yet.  Still a ton of baseball left to play, and I think it much more likely for him to end up closer to my expected .650 than the .725 he's hitting so far this year.  That said, I HOPE he continues hitting well as long as he is getting playing time.  I want the team to succeed, so I want Frazier to exceed, regardless of if I think it was a dumb signing or not.  I either want him to crater so he gets cut, allowing the kids to come up, or I want him to perform well so we win games.  Worst case is an Odor or Mateo currently situation where he's put out there every game and not producing.

As to the other guys being better, I'm simply looking at how Westburg is hitting in AAA (.998 OPS) and I believe that some of that would translate to MLB also.  Sure, he won't OPS 950+ in the majors, but I do think he'd outdo Fraziers .725.  Even if he just matched Frazier, or even slightly was worse, I'll take that tradeoff to get him the experience in the MLB that he's going to need to help us win over the next 5-6 years.  

How did Stowsers AAA performance translate?

[forphase1]

Just now, Pickles said:

How did Stowsers AAA performance translate?

How did Aldey (.877 career in minors, .817 career in major so far)?  We can play that game all day, you can no doubt show players who didn't hit as well, and I can show those who did.  But that does nothing for either of us to prove how Westburg/Cowser/etc/etc are going to perform.  None of us can say for sure until when/if it happens.  Have fun speculating that they'd fail.  I'd rather go the other way.

[DirtyBird]

1 minute ago, forphase1 said:

Have fun speculating that they'd fail.  I'd rather go the other way.

You speculated that Frazier would fail.

[Pickles]

Just now, forphase1 said:

How did Aldey (.877 career in minors, .817 career in major so far)?  We can play that game all day, you can no doubt show players who didn't hit as well, and I can show those who did.  But that does nothing for either of us to prove how Westburg/Cowser/etc/etc are going to perform.  None of us can say for sure until when/if it happens.  Have fun speculating that they'd fail.  I'd rather go the other way.

I'm not speculating they're going to fail.  I'm simply acknowledging we don't really know if and how long it will take for some of the prospects to adjust.  What I do know for sure, is not all of them will.