Bowden discusses the trade deadline

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Billy F-Face3 said:

The fact they went out and recruited Kodai Senga lends some validity to that idea. You would think that have another pitcher who came from Japan might be a comfortable/attractive location for someone (Ohtani) who has gone through that same (relatable) type of journey.

I think they just wanted Senga.

[banks703]

6 hours ago, tntoriole said:

There was a thread on OH about one ex Oriole from the past and I said Zack Britton at his peak .. same reasoning.  Of course, Zack 2023 IS still available lol ..

It would be a nice story but he doesn’t move the needle. 
 

I still remain extremely skeptical that they will make ANY moves that improve the big club this year. Given the long term plans I just don’t see that happening. 

[OriolesMagic83]

6 hours ago, Bemorewins said:

Multiple top 100 guys for 2 months? Really?? I don’t see how you came up with that valuation. The WAR math doesn’t add up. Even if Ohtani had a great 2 months or so what would that be 3-4 WAR? How could any team justify giving up “multiple top 100 guys” for that small return? .. I guess if you were able to go all the way to the World Series and win that would be worth it. But there is no guarantee of a title just because you have a Ohtani.

The O's got a package of 4 prospects including Diaz who was ranked in the 60's in prospect ratings for 2 months of Machado.  It seems that Ohtani would be much more in demand than Machado and thus require more in trade.  I'm not in support of the O's trading for him, just saying if he's available, some GM will trade a lot for him.

[Billy F-Face3]

17 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

The O's got a package of 4 prospects including Diaz who was ranked in the 60's in prospect ratings for 2 months of Machado.  It seems that Ohtani would be much more in demand than Machado and thus require more in trade.  I'm not in support of the O's trading for him, just saying if he's available, some GM will trade a lot for him.

When I think back to what Machado got the Orioles in return, I'm reminded that un-established prospects are more valuable in a return for a All Star than normal fans realize.  Manny is a much better player than what was given for him.

So.... let's look for a team thinking they can't agree to a contract with a star player, and then we buy low.

[Bemorewins]

7 hours ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

The O's got a package of 4 prospects including Diaz who was ranked in the 60's in prospect ratings for 2 months of Machado.  It seems that Ohtani would be much more in demand than Machado and thus require more in trade.  I'm not in support of the O's trading for him, just saying if he's available, some GM will trade a lot for him.

I’m not sure what list(s) you found but I went back and looked at BA and MLB. There were some very interesting names on those list including our own Jorge Mateo, Ryan Mountcastle, and Austin Hays… just to name a few.

I didn’t see Diaz’s name appear on either list. Maybe he appeared in season after his performance in the mid-season minor all-star game? 

Maybe I’m misremembering, but did we get Kremer in that deal as well? He’s certainly nothing close to an all-star, but when you think about the WAR he will give us for 6 years and compare that to the WAR Machado gave the Dodgers for less than half of a season. It may not be as lopsided as you think.

[Frobby]

52 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

I’m not sure what list(s) you found but I went back and looked at BA and MLB. There were some very interesting names on those list including our own Jorge Mateo, Ryan Mountcastle, and Austin Hays… just to name a few.

I didn’t see Diaz’s name appear on either list. Maybe he appeared in season after his performance in the mid-season minor all-star game? 

In terms of pre-season lists, Diaz was ranked 73rd by BP going into the 2018 season.  At the end of that year, he was ranked 37th by BA, 64th by MLB.com, 44th BP.   He didn’t do much in 2018 after the trade, so I think you can infer that he was at least as highly regarded as of the trade as he was when the season ended.  

By the way, in case you didn’t know, if you look at the BB-ref page showing any player’s MiL stats, if they ever made the top 100 for BA, MLB.com or BP, a button appears towards the top of their page entitled “show prospect rankings” and it will list where they appeared on these three lists.   So, you don’t need to go sifting through old lists if you want this information on a specific player.  Here is Diaz’s page showing his minor league stats and rankings: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=efrain000yun

[Bemorewins]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

In terms of pre-season lists, Diaz was ranked 73rd by BP going into the 2018 season.  At the end of that year, he was ranked 37th by BA, 64th by MLB.com, 44th BP.   He didn’t do much in 2018 after the trade, so I think you can infer that he was at least as highly regarded as of the trade as he was when the season ended.  

By the way, in case you didn’t know, if you look at the BB-ref page showing any player’s MiL stats, if they ever made the top 100 for BA, MLB.com or BP, a button appears towards the top of their page entitled “show prospect rankings” and it will list where they appeared on these three lists.   So, you don’t need to go sifting through old lists if you want this information on a specific player.  Here is Diaz’s page showing his minor league stats and rankings: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=efrain000yun

Thank you! 

[wildcard]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

In terms of pre-season lists, Diaz was ranked 73rd by BP going into the 2018 season.  At the end of that year, he was ranked 37th by BA, 64th by MLB.com, 44th BP.   He didn’t do much in 2018 after the trade, so I think you can infer that he was at least as highly regarded as of the trade as he was when the season ended.  

By the way, in case you didn’t know, if you look at the BB-ref page showing any player’s MiL stats, if they ever made the top 100 for BA, MLB.com or BP, a button appears towards the top of their page entitled “show prospect rankings” and it will list where they appeared on these three lists.   So, you don’t need to go sifting through old lists if you want this information on a specific player.  Here is Diaz’s page showing his minor league stats and rankings: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=efrain000yun

The list that Diaz rank the highest on was the Disabled List.

[Frobby]

8 minutes ago, wildcard said:

The list that Diaz rank the highest on was the Disabled List.

Yup.  Even this year, back on the Dodgers’ AA affiliate, he’s missed 5+ weeks with an injury already.  He’s healthy at this nanosecond.  

[ThomasTomasz]

9 hours ago, Billy F-Face3 said:

When I think back to what Machado got the Orioles in return, I'm reminded that un-established prospects are more valuable in a return for a All Star than normal fans realize.  Manny is a much better player than what was given for him.

So.... let's look for a team thinking they can't agree to a contract with a star player, and then we buy low.

Agree.  A lot is made of the trade of Bedard which got us Jones and Tillman.  Looking back at the rumors at the time, the Dodgers were rumored to have offered Kershaw and Kemp, and the Reds offered us Votto and our pick of Cueto/Bailey.  If you hit on the ceilings, you hit on the ceilings.  But it can easily be a dud prospect package if you don’t develop correctly, or the player can’t make adjustments at a higher level. 

Also, the value of a player goes down the closer you get to FA.  So a Machado rental was worth a top 100 prospect (Diaz), an organizational top 10 pitcher (Kremer), a decent upside top 30 organizational pitcher (pop) and utility at best ceilings (Bannon and Valera.). That’s still not a bad return, but we would’ve gotten at least two top 100 prospects and three others if that deal was made a year before

[Brooks The Great]

On 6/12/2023 at 12:30 PM, Tony-OH said:

This is a good point. What are needs are now vs the deadline could be different based on performance and injury.

Right now, I think this team needs one more starter and one more shut down reliever in the pen.

I think they can upgrade the offense by bringing up Westburg and Cowser at some point. 

Ortiz replacing Mateo as well. Cowser, Westburg, and Ortiz essentially replacing Mountcastle, Frazier, and Mateo in the lineup would be a clear upgrade, and perhaps a significant upgrade in the aggregate.

[OrioleMagic79]

Honestly, we are still ahead of schedule, which is difficult to remember and to be patient. But if you abandon the plan just because you are ahead of schedule, then you run a high level of risk toward setting things back significantly. If there are not any TOR starters with at least a year or two left on their contract, then you don't use your prospects to trade for talent that really won't help you win a WS. The issue with us as fans is that we will be impatient and push for trade deadline acquisitions of SPs, then when a true TOR isn't available (or is only offered at a completely unreasonable price), we will get upset about the 3 or 4 starter that the O's acquire. If we don't acquire a SP at all, we will complain that Elias (or more likely ownership) isn't trying to win and they are just happy wish status quo. Remember when we were all ticked off that we didn't get Rodon, Verlander, DeGrom, Quintana, or Wacha? 

Outside of Wacha, the other signings would have been a disaster. Wacha also hadn't proven that 2022 wasn't just a fluke, given his performance in the years previous to 2022 included ERAs above 5 and 6. I don't know about you, but even if we had signed a big SP and even if he would have performed up to whatever massive contract he would have required to sign in Baltimore, I still wouldn't have guessed that it would have us in the place we are in right now, with the third best record in all of baseball.

I think we all need to get used to the fact that traditional wisdom is not what is being used here, and so far, that has been VERY successful. I am not sure that it doesn't mean we don't need an ACE to win a WS, because I still think we do ... however, I do trust that Elias knows what he's doing. Even when it comes to starting pitching. Our biggest SP prospects looked better as a projection this past offseason, so the drafting philosophy/approach may have been different than it will be next month. Now that we have more data to evaluate on those guys and it shows more signs of potentially not panning out as planned, so it may mean Elias goes and gets a pitcher or two in the early rounds of this draft. 

The more I watch things play out, the more I am OK with either approach at this year's trade deadline. Either stay the path and don't sell off our prospects for mediocre options that will not result in a WS appearance/title, or try to go for it a bit and see if you can grab a Shane Bieber type guy with the prospects you have been keeping in AAA to keep their value higher (non-40 man, or avoiding less than impressive stats at the MLB level). 

Either way, this is a really fun and exciting time to be an Orioles fan. When Elias signed on, I was hearing predictions of playoff contention by 2024 or 2025, and then taking the leap to possibly being ready to play at a level that has a real shot to win a WS by 2027. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we are WAY ahead of that timeline. Which means we don't need to panic and break up our current progress/minor league system to get desperate about trying to win it all this year. 

Now, if we can be sellers at the deadline like we were last year and sell guys that we don't really need in order to fleece the Twins or another organization, then sign me up. That was amazing. We didn't know it at the time, but something tells me that Elias and company didn't just get lucky on that one.

[tntoriole]

7 hours ago, Bemorewins said:

I’m not sure what list(s) you found but I went back and looked at BA and MLB. There were some very interesting names on those list including our own Jorge Mateo, Ryan Mountcastle, and Austin Hays… just to name a few.

I didn’t see Diaz’s name appear on either list. Maybe he appeared in season after his performance in the mid-season minor all-star game? 

Maybe I’m misremembering, but did we get Kremer in that deal as well? He’s certainly nothing close to an all-star, but when you think about the WAR he will give us for 6 years and compare that to the WAR Machado gave the Dodgers for less than half of a season. It may not be as lopsided as you think.

Anytime you get a serviceable and controllable middle rotation starter for a trade of a rental player no matter how good, then that is a win or at least a wash 

[FlipTheBird]

23 hours ago, Bahama O's Fan said:

Well, it's one team we can be pretty certain is selling.

They amazingly don't have a single player that I think *any* contending team would want to buy... At least not that they'd actually move. Even the ones that a team might be interested in would really only qualify as bench/role players, they're young enough and cheap enough that it wouldn't make sense for Oakland to move on from them.

[Can_of_corn]

5 minutes ago, FlipTheBird said:

They amazingly don't have a single player that I think *any* contending team would want to buy... At least not that they'd actually move. Even the ones that a team might be interested in would really only qualify as bench/role players, they're young enough and cheap enough that it wouldn't make sense for Oakland to move on from them.

It's not really amazing to me.  They've been selling folks off for a while now.