Another very good article from Brit

[Jim'sKid26]

https://theathletic.com/4943661/2023/10/08/orioles-alds-game-2-loss/

"At this year’s trade deadline, the Orioles and Rangers were contending teams with solid lineups and questions about the playoff viability of their pitching staffs. One team pushed all its chips to the middle of the poker table days before the deadline. The other hoarded most of its own, unwilling to match the risk, before playing the nickel slots."

"The Orioles believe they can win three in a row. They’ve believed in themselves all year. But no matter what ends up happening from here, the message is clear: If they want to compete on baseball’s biggest stage, the Orioles are going to have to make some bigger moves."

I think she makes a rather compelling case. Say what you want about the playoffs being a crapshoot, but this team lacks playoff experience and impact players at several key positions. I hope I'm wrong, but I see 3 and out.

[glenn__davis]

Lot of respect for Britt.  But the article is wrong.

It's a crapshoot.  It will always be a crapshoot.  

The one thing I will say that I said at the time, they should have fortified the bullpen more at the deadline.  There were moves to be had, that didn't cost much in the way of prospects.

[schittenden]

13 minutes ago, Jim'sKid26 said:

https://theathletic.com/4943661/2023/10/08/orioles-alds-game-2-loss/

"At this year’s trade deadline, the Orioles and Rangers were contending teams with solid lineups and questions about the playoff viability of their pitching staffs. One team pushed all its chips to the middle of the poker table days before the deadline. The other hoarded most of its own, unwilling to match the risk, before playing the nickel slots."

"The Orioles believe they can win three in a row. They’ve believed in themselves all year. But no matter what ends up happening from here, the message is clear: If they want to compete on baseball’s biggest stage, the Orioles are going to have to make some bigger moves."

I think she makes a rather compelling case. Say what you want about the playoffs being a crapshoot, but this team lacks playoff experience and impact players at several key positions. I hope I'm wrong, but I see 3 and out.

This seems like a weird argument. As I recall, the Rangers acquired three pitchers at the deadline. One is injured and not on the roster. One hasn’t appeared in a game this series. One started yesterday, lasted four innings and gave up five runs, granted, one wasn’t earned. I’m going to bet, that’s not what the Rangers were going for. 
 

While Eovaldi looked great against Tampa, let’s not forget Seattle tagged him for five runs in five innings and 7 runs in 3 1/3 innings in late September. So, he can be vulnerable. 

[Moshagge3]

If the Rangers win their first World Series and Aroldis Chapman is a contributor then their fans will look past it, but Chapman for Cole Ragans sure looks like an absolute fleecing of Texas by the Royals.

[Jagwar]

The Rangers picked up Jordan Montgomery, Max Scherzer (injured) and Aroldis Chapman. The Orioles acquired Flaherty and Fuji , and hoped John Means (injured) would be like a trade acquisition.

Scherzer and Means are basically a wash. Would you rather have picked up for Montgomery/Chapman or  Flaherty/Fuji?

[dystopia]

4 minutes ago, Jagwar said:

The Rangers picked up Jordan Montgomery, Max Scherzer (injured) and Aroldis Chapman. The Orioles acquired Flaherty and Fuji , and hoped John Means (injured) would be like a trade acquisition.

Scherzer and Means are basically a wash. Would you rather have picked up for Montgomery/Chapman or  Flaherty/Fuji?

Montgomery and Chapman

[clapdiddy]

7 minutes ago, dystopia said:

Montgomery and Chapman

Of course...not even close...but what would we have given up for them?

[glenn__davis]

16 minutes ago, Jagwar said:

The Rangers picked up Jordan Montgomery, Max Scherzer (injured) and Aroldis Chapman. The Orioles acquired Flaherty and Fuji , and hoped John Means (injured) would be like a trade acquisition.

Scherzer and Means are basically a wash. Would you rather have picked up for Montgomery/Chapman or  Flaherty/Fuji?

Montgomery was a good pickup for them.  But as schittenden mentioned, he didn't pitch well yesterday.  Scherzer is injured.  DeGrom is injured.  Most of their "big" pickups this year aren't the reason they won the 1st games.   They won because they happen to be playing well right now and we are not.

I'm not opposed to making moves, you should always try to be better.  I'm opposed to creating narratives from a postseason baseball series.  There are no narratives.  The winners are random.  I know people don't like to hear that, as it takes away a lot of the romanticism, but that's the way it works.  

[Flash- bd]

Bla bla bla narrative fallacy and ex post facto fallacy bla bla bla bla. 

It's what @glenn__davis says, playoffs are a crapshoot. This argument only would've made sense if we didn't win the division. We did. Comfortably. 

[Frobby]

I’m completely at peace with how Elias chose to handle the deadline.  Is it possible that we could have picked up somebody who would have helped?  Yes.  We don’t know for sure, and we don’t know what we would have had to give up.  Elias is playing the long game and that’s fine with me.   No matter what, we probably would have started Grayson in game two and he would have done what he did.   

[Porky]

35 minutes ago, Flash- bd said:

Bla bla bla narrative fallacy and ex post facto fallacy bla bla bla bla. 

It's what @glenn__davis says, playoffs are a crapshoot. This argument only would've made sense if we didn't win the division. We did. Comfortably. 

Sure, there's plenty of luck involved in who gets hot at the right time and what ball drops in the gap and which one doesn't.

But, in the last five/six years, the Astros have made four World Series. The Dodgers have made three. Shortly before that, the Giants won 3 in five years.

If the playoffs were a complete crapshoot, there would be different teams in the World Series every year. There hasn't been.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Porky said:

Sure, there's plenty of luck involved in who gets hot at the right time and what ball drops in the gap and which one doesn't.

But, in the last five/six years, the Astros have made four World Series. The Dodgers have made three. Shortly before that, the Giants won 3 in five years.

If the playoffs were a complete crapshoot, there would be different teams in the World Series every year. There hasn't been.

No, it isn’t a complete crapshoot.  But the better team has only maybe a 60/40 chance of winning a short playoff series.  The fact that some teams have won or made it to the WS more than once in the last few years doesn’t change that.  That ‘s going to happen sometimes.  

[TopGunnar]

2 hours ago, Jagwar said:

The Rangers picked up Jordan Montgomery, Max Scherzer (injured) and Aroldis Chapman. The Orioles acquired Flaherty and Fuji , and hoped John Means (injured) would be like a trade acquisition.

Scherzer and Means are basically a wash. Would you rather have picked up for Montgomery/Chapman or  Flaherty/Fuji?

I would take the guys without 8+ eras since joining the club 

[osfan83]

The playoffs are a crapshoot, the regular season is not. The Giants, Dodgers, Astros are all good teams that went to the playoffs multiple times in a row, giving them a number of shots at the crapshoot playoffs. If the O's make the post season 6 seasons in a row, the odds they win the crapshoot part of the season, increases. 

Edited October 9, 2023 by osfan83

[Bemorewins]

While there is a lot of randomness to the extremely small sample size of the playoffs, all we have to do it look to our own Jorge Mateo’s performance yesterday, I have to agree with Ms. Britt to a degree. What has happened to us is what I feared would happen. Rarely do teams with as little experience as we have go all the way. I know some fans have expressed their satisfaction and are just “proud” of our good regular season, but I hope the threshold of expectations is raised from this point to put enough pressure of JA to support serious investing into the own field product. I’m just not a believer in the go as cheap as possible approach when you have a legit shot. Scanning the waiver wire or acquiring spare parts is not going to get us to the next level IMO. Yes we have Holliday coming to hopefully provide another elite bat next year and hopefully Gunnar will continue his assent as a superstar, but we will not have Bautista to save our bacon like he did so many times this year. I hope we don’t rest on our laurels, do nothing and punt away another offseason.