Ben Clemens of Fangraphs: Orioles-losers at the trade deadline

[Frobby]

I enjoy reading Fangraphs, but I will trust Mike Elias’ judgment over Ben Clemens.  There was a lot of ink spilled over how we didn’t do enough last winter, and a lot of projections that we’d be at best a .500ish team.  And yet here we are, in first place.   At this point, Elias has earned the benefit of the doubt to the maximum extent possible.   And, if he is still leaning a bit towards preserving long term assets vs. doing more to “go for it” now, I will live with that.   

[Hank Scorpio]

There are good deals and bad deals in every business.

I trust Elias & Company to make intelligent decisions. 

[banks703]

6 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I enjoy reading Fangraphs, but I will trust Mike Elias’ judgment over Ben Clemens.  There was a lot of ink spilled over how we didn’t do enough last winter, and a lot of projections that we’d be at best a .500ish team.  And yet here we are, in first place.   At this point, Elias has earned the benefit of the doubt to the maximum extent possible.   And, if he is still leaning a bit towards preserving long term assets vs. doing more to “go for it” now, I will live with that.   

That's fair. If the division comes down to game 162 in OPACY and they are trotting Flaherty out there but could have had Verlander or Scherzer (again, no idea if they just didn't want to come to Baltimore) .. will you still be able to live with it?

I ask that not to discount the addition of Flaherty. I mentioned him as a target a few months back. I like the move and I don't necessarily think I wanted either of Scherzer or Verlander but I'm also not going to suggest that all things being equal, that I wouldn't rather have the big game experience of a guy throwing game 162 with the season on the line.

[orioles119]

2 hours ago, EdwinRip said:

We also got an F last year on the Jorge Lopez Trade.

F for fantastic (at least most of the year).

[CaptainRedbeard]

32 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I'd say 2-2.5-ish wins over a full year?  I think those guys are 4-5 win pitchers right now, and Flaherty is closer to a 2 win pitcher.   Close to a win.  The difference is basically a rounding error to me.  The O's have a little more than 1/3 their season left too, so that might make up some of the difference.

Fangraphs rest of season fWAR projections:

Verlander: 1.2

Scherzer: 1.1

Montgomery: 1.0

Flaherty: 0.6

The extra half a win certainly does make a difference in increasing their odds of skipping the wildcard round, that’s a fair point. But these are still very small margins of difference at this point.

Not that Scherzer or Verlander were ever realistic, but say that we traded Joey Ortiz instead of Cesar Prieto to get a pitcher 0.5 fWAR better than Flaherty for rest of season. Does 6 years of Joey Ortiz instead of Cesar Prieto increase our playoff/WS odds cumulatively over those 6 years more than the extra 0.5 wins this season?

Having elite pitchers, either SP or RP, does matter more in the postseason when you can concentrate more of your IP to your best pitchers. But the playoffs are still very much decided by what team gets hot at the right time, and the overall team quality matters a lot more than marginal differences brought by a single player (short of Ohtani, Judge MVP 7+ WAR types). 

[Ridgway22]

All posturing and Public Relations speak aside, I truly wonder what financial latitude Elias had when considering deals. We could have easily matched what Houston gave the Mets for Verlander, however, Houston is taking on a financial commitment beyond this year.

We'll never know, but could we have had Verlander for an Ortiz, but Angelos wouldn't OK the $$ we'd have to commit for the coming couple of years?

So easy for the keyboard warriors out there to judge Elias for what he did or didn't do when they have ZERO clue what kind of constraints he was actually operating under.

Elias has built a first-place team in the toughest division in MLB, with a strong farm system. I'm inclined to cut him some slack.

 

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, banks703 said:

That's fair. If the division comes down to game 162 in OPACY and they are trotting Flaherty out there but could have had Verlander or Scherzer (again, no idea if they just didn't want to come to Baltimore) .. will you still be able to live with it?

I ask that not to discount the addition of Flaherty. I mentioned him as a target a few months back. I like the move and I don't necessarily think I wanted either of Scherzer or Verlander but I'm also not going to suggest that all things being equal, that I wouldn't rather have the big game experience of a guy throwing game 162 with the season on the line.

First of all, I’m not saying I’m sure Elias was right not to be more aggressive.  I’m saying he gets the benefit of the doubt from me based on his track record to date.  

Second, I’m still looking at our team as one whose window is just opening.   If they collapsed and missed the playoffs, I’d be pretty despondent.  But if they lost the division title on the last day of the season and “only” got a wild card, and then didn’t make the ALCS this year, I wouldn’t commit hara-kiri  over it.  This is a rebuild I’m judging by long term results.  In the meantime, I’m having a great time this season and I’m expecting to continue having a great time.

 

[e16bball]

49 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I'd say 2-2.5-ish wins over a full year?  I think those guys are 4-5 win pitchers right now, and Flaherty is closer to a 2 win pitcher.   Close to a win.  The difference is basically a rounding error to me.  The O's have a little more than 1/3 their season left too, so that might make up some of the difference.

That’s a pretty lofty standard. There were 20ish pitchers last season who posted 4+ WAR (by both formulations). I don’t think any of those guys has been pitching like a top 20 SP in baseball this season.

And the O’s have 55 games left, so they’ll hit the one-third point around 10pm tonight, so I’m not sure that’s making the difference.

Gun to my head, I would probably bet on each of those guys to out-pitch Flaherty — but I think realistically, we could really project a fraction of a win difference between all these guys. Someone will probably get hot and pitch better than that, and someone will probably get cold or hurt and be totally useless. But it’s pretty hard to predict that ahead of time.

49 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I think what would change my mind on this is if they unlock 2019 Flaherty somehow.  Or even part of 2019 Flaherty.  The O's have had a lot of luck fixing people, so we can't discount that.   Flaherty is definitely talented and I think the present-day O's love tinkering with talented guys and unlocking them, so if they do that then I take back everything and I'll just say that I'm an idiot for disliking the deadline moves.

This has been my hope from the jump. I doubt 2018 Flaherty is ever coming back, but if they could even just keep him at this 3.50ish ERA level that he’s managed for the last dozen starts, that would be a massive upgrade for us. 

Between an upgraded defense and maybe one or two helpful tweaks to help sustain what’s been working, I think that’s a realistic hope. 

[Frobby]

4 minutes ago, Ridgway22 said:

All posturing and Public Relations speak aside, I truly wonder what financial latitude Elias had when considering deals. We could have easily matched what Houston gave the Mets for Verlander, however, Houston is taking on a financial commitment beyond this year.

We'll never know, but could we have had Verlander for an Ortiz, but Angelos wouldn't OK the $$ we'd have to commit for the coming couple of years?

So easy for the keyboard warriors out there to judge Elias for what he did or didn't do when they have ZERO clue what kind of constraints he was actually operating under.

Elias has built a first-place team in the toughest division in MLB, with a strong farm system. I'm inclined to cut him some slack.

 

We do know what Elias said, per Roch:

Elias also praised chairman and CEO John Angelos for making the budget possibilities “ample.”

“We were up and down the spectrum. We have the wherewithal to do what we needed and wanted to do at the baseball level, and that’s always huge,” Elias said.

“We were totally able to explore what we wanted to and needed to and everything up and down the spectrum from a financial perspective and take advantage of good opportunities and good investments for the team, and this is where we landed.”  

 

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Frobby

[RZNJ]

21 minutes ago, banks703 said:

That's fair. If the division comes down to game 162 in OPACY and they are trotting Flaherty out there but could have had Verlander or Scherzer (again, no idea if they just didn't want to come to Baltimore) .. will you still be able to live with it?

I ask that not to discount the addition of Flaherty. I mentioned him as a target a few months back. I like the move and I don't necessarily think I wanted either of Scherzer or Verlander but I'm also not going to suggest that all things being equal, that I wouldn't rather have the big game experience of a guy throwing game 162 with the season on the line.

I watched Jim Palmer get blown out in game 162 against Don Sutton and Palmer was great down the stretch in his last good year starting.  
 

I get what your saying but why stop at Verlander?   We could have gotten any two pitchers we wanted.   One eye on the present and one eye on the future.  No complaints so far.

[tntoriole]

51 minutes ago, banks703 said:

No. I love the one they have now. Don't jinx it and ruin it for us for the next ten years. 

Oops right … and they may seek to hire a division rival GM .. heaven forgive me! 

 

 

 

[oriole]

I’m definitely somewhere in the gray area about this topic. But I don’t see why it either had to be all or nothing. Flaherty is pretty close to nothing, but not quite there. But trading some other guys for an actual SP that will help win games isn’t some nail in the coffin that I feel like gets insinuated. I have no doubt that the Yankees will be a much better team next year and the Red Sox are heading there too. Sometimes there is a moment to strike and Elias fumbled. Sure, we’ve still got a plethora of highly touted prospects but we’ve got no where to play them all. On top of that, we still have a huge glaring hole at the top of the rotation. 
 

Anyways, I’m fine with how things transpired. But it’s certainly not an honest attempt at putting your best foot forward. If the prospects were gold, Elias is a dragon guarding the door. 

[Three Run Homer]

1 hour ago, banks703 said:

I

I gave them an A in the poll that @Frobby posted but at least half of the reason for that is because I genuinely expected them to do nothing. The other half of my reason is because I like Flaherty as an add but when we look at the deals that were made around the league, specifically at the Mets deals and considering how much the Mets paid for the Rangers and Stros to take on Scherzer and Verlander, I'm disappointed that the O's came away from the deadline with neither pitcher. I wasn't outwardly advocating for either and I truthfully don't think that I wanted either of them but both guys may have been better options than Flaherty and probably would have cost the O's about the same in terms of prospects.

I agree that the Orioles should have gotten a better pitcher than Flaherty, but I certainly don't think we could have gotten Verlander or Scherzer for the package we gave up for Flaherty.  The outfield prospects the Mets got back for Verlander are both highly regarded--not quite as high as Cowser or Kjerstad, but probably higher than Jud Fabian.  

[banks703]

1 hour ago, RZNJ said:

I watched Jim Palmer get blown out in game 162 against Don Sutton and Palmer was great down the stretch in his last good year starting.  
 

I get what your saying but why stop at Verlander?   We could have gotten any two pitchers we wanted.   One eye on the present and one eye on the future.  No complaints so far.

I get that but two pitchers I think would have required them to part with someone currently in the rotation and I personally want to see Kremer, Braddish, GrayRod and TWells continue to develop.

Acquiring Flaherty allows them to move TWells to the pen if they want to do so and we hope that John Means can factor into their run at some point. I’m not outwardly disappointed with what Gibson has done this year. I think they COULD upgrade his spot but we know they won’t unless he absolutely implodes. He and Flaherty are going to continue to eat innings which should provide some relief to the pen.

I’m not in any way disappointed in Flaherty. In fact I am very happy that is who they ended up with actually. He’s young enough that if they can unlock something to help him take that next step and he likes Baltimore, he can fit into next year’s rotation. I happen to think that’s partly why they acquired him - the hope to potentially re-sign a 27 year old veteran ML starter. That would put the 2024 rotation at:

Means

Braddish

Flaherty

GrayRod

Kremer

That’s a very solid rotation that offers A LOT of potential. 

[Ridgway22]

7 hours ago, Frobby said:

We do know what Elias said, per Roch:

Elias also praised chairman and CEO John Angelos for making the budget possibilities “ample.”

“We were up and down the spectrum. We have the wherewithal to do what we needed and wanted to do at the baseball level, and that’s always huge,” Elias said.

“We were totally able to explore what we wanted to and needed to and everything up and down the spectrum from a financial perspective and take advantage of good opportunities and good investments for the team, and this is where we landed.”  

Frobby, no poster on this board I have more respect for. And, of all people, you understand the power, value, and, how shall I put this.... "future income preservation" aspect of praising your boss and spinning / positioning / re-framing information in the best possible light to potential "jurors". Just because house floormat Roch regurgitated sugar-coated sweet nothings from Elias about the hand that feeds him does nothing in my mind to counteract the FACT of the absolute ZERO investment into this team since..... (raised eyebrows and furtive glances at jury....) 

 

Your honor, I do not refute the defense's objection, as my evidence is purely circumstantial. But let us review the facts...

The O's are in a mess of an ownership transition, and there has been ZERO indication current ownership wishes to invest in a winning product on the field in terms of player salaries or upgrades. Players Union calls: "Come on, dude, you've got to do something!" Ownership: "What do you have in mind?" Players Union: We owe Adam Frazier a favor. Give him $10 million. Ownership: Adam who? We'll give him $8, but you have to have to stop calling". Players Union: Ugh. Okay" 

Ownership: "Hey Mike, we signed Adam Frazier". "Oh hell no, you didn't! SigBot3000(tm) has optimized our lineup with Westburg and Ortiz!" "Sorry Mike, it be what it be. Gotta go see my estate lawyer, Mom's calling again, and I'm late for my pre-golf Himalayan salt and sage caramel sponge foot bath at the spa." 

Mike: (phone ringing). "Hello?" Hey Sig, Mike. We need to talk. When is our contract here up? Let's make damn sure we make these guys look as good as possible, it'll make our interview process with the Yankees / Red Sox / Mets go much smoother. Sig: Got it covered boss.

Citizens in Nashville: "Yay! We're getting a major league baseball team".