Offseason trade target: Luis Robert

[oriolediehard]

2 minutes ago, CallMeBrooksie said:

Why would you put Westburg in the OF? That would be a horrible waste of his defensive talent and would sap a lot of value from him.

If you don't have a place for Westburg in your IF,  you trade him.

I think is better to have Ortiz in the infield and Westburg in the outfield than have 100 game a year injury prone outfielder Luis Robert!

[Sports Guy]

15 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Robert will make 12.5m in 2024, 15m 2025 with two option years at 20m.   That is more expensive than  any player the O's currently have and you are proposing to trade away several players making the minimum salary.   That does not sound like the O's to me.

We have no idea how the Os will operate now that they are winning. This is the type of thing that the teams Elias has come from (Houston and St Louis) has done over the years. We know he likely is for doing this and we know he has traded cheap years for guys making money or due to make money, although obviously not as much as Robert.

No team is completely home grown. It just doesn’t happen. 
 

 

[dystopia]

12 minutes ago, oriolediehard said:

I think is better to have Ortiz in the infield and Westburg in the outfield than have 100 game a year injury prone outfielder Luis Robert!

Does Westburg have the arm to be an outfielder? 

[Too Tall]

While having a healthy Robert in the outfield would be great, I think Elias and the Orioles will pass. More importantly, I think Chicago will too.

We have less than three weeks to go. I hope our starting pitching and bull pen can hold up over the next 19 games. I want the benefit of winning the East. This team will need that rest. Hence, it's my opinion, Elias needs to spend this winter acquiring pitching/building a deeper bull pen anyway he can. That's priority one.

[btdart20]

Bautista will probably have surgery and miss 2024.  I suspect we'll be putting new flooring and raising the BP roof.  Probably new flooring in the SP as well.  

[vab]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

You can do both.

Maybe but pitching is the priority

[Sports Guy]

37 minutes ago, vab said:

Maybe but pitching is the priority

Talent is the priority.

[Osornot]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

You can do both.

even better

 

[Roll Tide]

4 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

The Orioles have drafted a lot of OFers over the last few years and the idea of trading for one may sound a little crazy. 
 

The idea of trading for Robert, who may be a guy that the White Sox don’t even want to trade, is for several reasons.

First of all, he is obviously a great player who just turned 26. He is signed cheaply through 2025 and has a team option in 2026 and 2027 for 20M each year. So, assuming you pick up those options, you have him for 4/59.5.

Another benefit is that we are a very left handed hitting team and that figures to get more prevalent in the upcoming years.
 

And while it would be nice to think that we could field a team made up of entirely home grown players, the reality is that it’s not very likely that will happen. Even the Braves, a team loaded with homegrown guys, has traded for Olson and Murphy.

Robert isn’t without his risks. Besides what you would have to give up for him, he has an injury history and, prior to this season, had never played in 100 games in his previous 3 big league seasons (although  he did play in most of the shortened 2020 season).

There is a limit on the players I would deal for him but I would offer them a package deal that allows them to choose one of Cowser or Kjerstad, one of Ortiz or Westburg and then I would allow them to choose 2 players from a group of guys that would including Mounty, Kremer, Hall, McDermott, Povich and probably several other prospects that would be outside of our top 10 but all guys that most teams would probably covet/value and would be top 10 guys in most organizations.

I would stop short at offering our top 3 prospects…Holliday, Mayo and Basallo..but lots of other players and combos are on the table.

Is this a guy you would want the Os to go after?  Or would you rather not give up a lot of talent for a player with his injury history?

You’d offer them Kremer out of our starting rotation. That makes 0 sense in my opinion. I think Kremer, Bradish, and Rodriquez are guys that aren’t going to be dealt. 

[Roll Tide]

1 hour ago, Too Tall said:

While having a healthy Robert in the outfield would be great, I think Elias and the Orioles will pass. More importantly, I think Chicago will too.

We have less than three weeks to go. I hope our starting pitching and bull pen can hold up over the next 19 games. I want the benefit of winning the East. This team will need that rest. Hence, it's my opinion, Elias needs to spend this winter acquiring pitching/building a deeper bull pen anyway he can. That's priority one.

As long as an Angelos is making the financial decisions there is very little chance he’s even approving a middling SP expenditure (3-5 years 15-20 per year)….So you have to replace Gibson/Lyles type with a similar guy that they are hoping for a better performance from. 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Roll Tide

[Sports Guy]

15 minutes ago, Roll Tide said:

You’d offer them Kremer out of our starting rotation. That makes 0 sense in my opinion. I think Kremer, Bradish, and Rodriquez are guys that aren’t going to be dealt. 

I don’t think Kremer is that good. His peripherals and batted ball data aren’t good and scream regression. Would rather trade him and upgrade that spot.

[CaptainRedbeard]

I do think the Orioles need to consider consolidating some of their considerable depth and prospect capital into a trade for an elite player, and that player doesn’t have to be a SP. This team has overflowing position player depth but lacks some true superstars, so that’s really the only way to measurably improve the team beyond adding a SP.

Elite players seldom become available trades, particularly if they have many years of control. Robert is likely to be the top of the list of potentially available big names this off-season. 

However, Robert is in some ways completely antithetical to the Orioles’ mindset. He’s a hacker at the plate with bottom of the barrel K, BB, chase and whiff rates. I can’t find the source now (maybe during one of the broadcasts against the White Sox?), but I recall hearing how he is not big on scouting reports/analytics.

He’s the type of player that will drive you crazy and the Orioles have been moving away from in their player development under Elias.  I don’t think he’s going to check every box for them like they would want out of a star player that you cash in a lot of chips for. That said, he has tremendous talent and is certainly a max exit velo darling and an elite defender, traits the Orioles are big on, so it’s a possibility. 

[CaptainRedbeard]

Along similar lines, the Padres are at a crossroads. They only have one more year of Soto and have sunk an absolutely massive amount of money into some mega contracts that look horrible now. Snell and Hader are free agents. They are up against the luxury tax with not much of a farm system. There’s a decent chance they fire their GM.

There’s a possibility that they will choose to move Soto while they can still get something for him, or even Tatis as one of their few mega contracts that is not underwater. More likely they decide to run it back and hope for better luck in 2024, but there’s a possible scenario where Soto or Tatis are trade targets.

In a world where John Angelos wasn’t the owner, the Orioles have the prospects and long term payroll flexibility to trade for and extend Soto. And Tatis is on a very affordable long term deal. 

[vab]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Talent is the priority.

Agreed, pitching talent.