The Ringer: Orioles Losers at Deadline

[Pickles]

I saw the Fangraphs thread and figured I might as well add this here.  Another national publication criticizing the O's deadline moves or lack thereof.

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2023/8/1/23816523/mlb-trade-deadline-2023-buyers-sellers-justin-verlander-max-scherzer

Loser: Baltimore Orioles

In: Jack Flaherty, Shintaro Fujinami, Logan Rinehart

Out: César Prieto, Drew Rom, Zack Showalter, Easton Lucas, Eduard Bazardo

The Orioles are like the Rangers—a surprising first-place team at the deadline. But they’re also not like the Rangers, because it’s unclear whether the Orioles actually realized they’re a first-place team at the deadline. Texas acted like it, strengthening its roster in an effort to both make the playoffs and maximize its opportunity once there.

Baltimore, though, acted with nowhere near that amount of aggression, even though the Orioles had more prospect depth to trade than any other contender. The Orioles have so many good young hitters that they can’t even play all of them together—yet they didn’t use any of their top 25 prospects, by FanGraphs’ reckoning, to upgrade at the deadline. There’s a large gap between not “set[ting] the minor league system on fire just because we’re in first place,” which GM Mike Elias warned against doing, and holding every notable prospect close.

It’s not as if Baltimore is devoid of holes, either. The bullpen is overly reliant on just two brilliant arms, Félix Bautista and Yennier Cano, and Cano has struggled of late, with a 4.91 ERA and 1.018 OPS allowed in his last 13 appearances. Yet the club’s only bullpen addition was Fujinami, a speculative acquisition with control problems who was terrible for the A’s this season.

The starting rotation is in even more dire straits, ranking 19th in the majors in WAR this season, and without a true ace who can helm a playoff rotation. How does some combination of Kyle Gibson, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, Dean Kremer, and Tyler Wells (recently demoted to Double-A after a slump) sound in October? The club has succeeded with such uninspired rotations before—remember when Joe Saunders beat Yu Darvish in a wild-card game, or when Chris Tillman, Wei-Yin Chen, and Bud Norris swept Verlander, Scherzer, and David Price?—but that doesn’t mean Baltimore’s bound to win in the same fashion again a decade later.

And all the team did in this regard was add Flaherty in the final minutes before the deadline. Flaherty’s a big name—but now he’s only an average pitcher, not the top-of-the-rotation type the Orioles need. While Flaherty was dominant for the Cardinals en route to the NLCS in 2019, he hasn’t posted an above-average FIP in any full-length season since then. His strikeouts have fallen, his walks have risen, and now he’s an impending free agent who’s largely indistinguishable from the Gibsons of the world.

Make no mistake, the Orioles are still flying high with the best record in the American League, and their fans should still be exuberant about the team’s overall direction. But their playoff potential would look a lot less precarious if they’d cashed in some of their prospect value to make a real run at the 2023 title.

[Brooks The Great]

That's a spot-on writeup. Adding Flaherty and Fuji was better than doing nothing. But that's not enough. 

[Gurgi]

You have to think Elias did not make these moves unaware.  I bet he is getting updates from Means that are promising.  Also Grey Rod looks like he might be sharp now.   

Why give away any real prospects if you know Means is right around the corner?  

[baltfan]

I appreciate all of this but I will listen to Elias when he says they were trying for big swings but other clubs basically were focused on an big overpay.  It's not clear this team is a World Series contender even if they got Scherzer, Verlander, and Robertson, e.g.  I would much rather they do what they did versus give up 3 top 10 prospects and more for those players.  

[Chavez Ravine]

The main purpose of these hot takes is to fill out the losers section of the  “winners and losers” column they are obligated to write so that they can get to lunch.

[sportsfan8703]

How do we know that Flaherty won't out perform two guys in their 40's?  Who else was available?  Ed Rod?  I'm sure we would still be losers if we traded for Civale.  

[Moshagge3]

The Ringer covers baseball?

[Sanfran327]

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why anyone here is upset with what we gave up at the deadline. 

I totally understand why some would be upset that we were not more aggressive. It definitely would have been nice to get ERod, for example. But if folks were upset about the nothingburger we traded for Flaherty, I don't even want to think of the level of mass hand-wringing that would be going on here if we assembled an ERod package. 

I saw this article earlier and laughed because it's full of crap. Editorial fluff. We'll get Wells and Hall back into the bullpen in the near future, and that trickle-down effect will give everyone else a role better suited for their ability. Do not underestimate what we just did at the deadline. It's easy to do if you focus solely on the player that arrived in a vacuum, which I admit is not that spectacular, but it unlocks so much potential within our own org without giving up anything of any consequence to acquire him that I'd almost guarantee that this article will not age well. 

If anyone is a loser, it's the author and the people that lap it up (no offense to the OP).

[sportsfan8703]

Everyone decided after Sunday Night Baseball that Verlander would put us over the hump.  So then it must have had to happen.  

[ThisIsBirdland]

It's a common response. I was unfortunate enough to tune into 105.7 yesterday evening as the Flaherty trade was just about to go down, only to hear the hosts alternating between despair and being apoplectic.

It's no different than the free agency moves from the off-season. And just like with those moves, the O's will be judged entirely by how the rest of the season plays out. At this point, if they don't make it to the ALCS, or their pitching implodes at any point in the playoffs (including the World Series), I think there will be some legitimate criticism over the lack of moves made last winter and yesterday.

Until that happens though, just sit back and enjoy what has to this point been extremely fun baseball. And it doesn't hurt to appreciate just how far they've come as quickly as they have.

[ledzepp8]

I bet this writer would consider Ohtani, McClanahan, or Gallen an Ace and yet their only worth between 0.1 and 0.3 WAR more than Bradish. 

[TheWall]

19 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Everyone decided after Sunday Night Baseball that Verlander would put us over the hump.  So then it must have had to happen.  

Everyone is also ignoring that Verlander had a no-trade clause. We saw how that turned out for the Dodgers when they tried to make a move for E-Rod. 

[lovetoaster]

39 minutes ago, Gurgi said:

You have to think Elias did not make these moves unaware.  I bet he is getting updates from Means that are promising.  Also Grey Rod looks like he might be sharp now.   

Why give away any real prospects if you know Means is right around the corner?  

And maybe Hall too. For the pen at least. They have been working with him in Sarasota for a bit and with him heading to Norfolk Friday, it might not be long before he's ready to be back in Baltimore. 

[Sports Guy]

27 minutes ago, Moshagge3 said:

The Ringer covers baseball?

Not very well

[TheWall]

5 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Not very well

They used to have a solid MLB podcast, but dumped it.