Grow the Bats? Grow the Arms? Both? Neither?

[Can_of_corn]

7 hours ago, Il BuonO said:

I’m pretty sure older than him and I’m still up!

I spent the whole day at the VA hospital, I was wiped.

[Flash- bd]

11 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Heh, that's some fair criteria you set. 

Fairer than comparing us with half a season of Cleveland where they have outperformed us by .04 percentage pts, surely?

Open it up to the last 30-40 years and you won't find many examples, if any. Maybe TB and KC in a cherry-picked frame of time. Thing is, let's see in 3-4 years if there's much like it. What's amazing about this is that it looks sustainable for an important span of time. 

11 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I don't see anyone doing it better (over an 18 month window, with lower payroll and only using the last five years)!

You should be posting about historic stats on Twitter.

There are a thousand ways to skin a cat.

Elias has done a great job, that doesn't diminish what some other people in the industry have accomplished.

I think Elias gets tons of flowers on this site, a huge amount.  I think we hear daily about it. 

I think the National media has given him his flowers.

I think it's nonsense to think he is somehow being overlooked by anyone.

How much more look at me do you want?

 

I don't know if it's more look at me that I want, but not having our own fans questioning his methods when the results speak for themselves, and are worthy of massive praise, would be a start.  

[Too Tall]

In less than the last 12 months, we have lost FIVE really good to excellent major league pitchers. Doubt we'd be having this conversation if that hadn't happened. It's been obvious for several years, Elias & Co. valued drafting position players and using that asset plus waiver wire to get pitching. Of the five lost, only one was drafted by us. The trade deadline will be a hard time to make up for the loss of those five. Hopefully we can do enough betwween now and August to continue our trajectory. IMO, the next 8 months will tell a lot about Elias & Co. and our new ownership.

Re the OP. IMO, there is no fool proof strategy. To many variables with each. It's almost whatever works and gets you there. Elias & Co. have gotten this far with an Angelos' ownership. I'm anxious to see what changes if any occur in the next eight months. Come next February, I'll have a better feel for our direction and how we are going to handle pitching in general going forward. What we enter 2025 with re pitching will be the telling time for me. But sometimes even the best of plans do not work out because of circumstances beyond your control. Such is life and baseball.

[jabba72]

15 minutes ago, Too Tall said:

In less than the last 12 months, we have lost FIVE really to excellent major league pitchers. Doubt we'd be having this conversation if that hadn't happened. It's been obvious for several years, Elias & Co. valued drafting position players and using that asset plus waiver wire to get pitching. Of the five lost, only one was drafted by us. The trade deadline will be a hard time to make up for the loss of those five. Hopefully we can do enough betwween now and August to continue our trajectory. IMO, the next 8 months will tell a lot about Elias & Co. and our new ownership.

Re the OP. IMO, there is no fool proof strategy. To many variables with each. It's almost whatever works and gets you there. Elias & Co. have gotten this far with an Angelos' ownership. I'm anxious to see what changes if any occur in the next eight months. Come next February, I'll have a better feel for our direction and how we are going to handle pitching in general going forward. What we enter 2025 with re pitching will be the telling time for me. But sometimes even the best of plans do not work out because of circumstances beyond your control. Such is life and baseball.

Im thinking this might make Elias gun-shy about moving A grade prospects for pitching. And how can you blame him? The shelf life of pitching is very unpredictable, usually in a bad way.

[Il BuonO]

5 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

You’re not as grumpy

Better looking too. 

[baltfan]

6 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

We are talking selections teams make.

Harper and Machado were both top 5 picks, no team could have picked both of them.

If the Phillies had picked Realmuto you might be on to something but that was the Marlins.

I thought you were talking about possible selections a team could have made.  For example, the Nats could have taken Harper and Realmuto.  Or the Orioles could have had Machado and Realmuto. 

Now I see what you are saying though.  You are saying the Orioles had the best draft of the past 20 years and that draft was heavy in good position players so it was smart for them to take that tact.  At first, I thought you were arguing the Orioles got lucky because the 2019 draft was particularly strong and in no draft of the past 20 years could one team have gotten two players of the caliber of Adley and Gunnar at the positions that the Orioles chose.  

[EddeeEddee]

15 hours ago, Il BuonO said:

That was the meddling owner’s decision. 

Yes it must have been his decision, though I'm not sure you can call choosing not to invest a huge amount of money in something "meddling".  All owners are involved in big money contracts and  investments.

[Explosivo]

21 hours ago, DocJJ said:

A previous GM for the O's (I forgot who) once said the plan was to grow the arms and buy the bats.   This seemed like a good strategy at first.  Pitching is extremely expensive especially if you are trying to sign them as free agents.  I think this strategy failed, however, because of the rate of attrition of major league pitchers.  Many get injured.  Some never develop their secondary pitches or good control and command.  

 

The new MO seems to be to grow the bats and use surplus to acquire pitching.   So far, the results seem promising...  Thoughts?

When you’re thinking of building a statistical model to project success of a major league player, one thing you want to avoid is uncertainty. You need your variables to be predictable and applicable across a swath of data. When you look at pitching, the top arms today, don’t think of the outliers like Paul Skenes, instead look at what round they were drafted related to their current talent level. You will see a great number drafted not in the first three rounds. 
 

Frankly, there are too many uncontrollable variables on the the road to pitcher success at the major league level. Theres injuries, there’s incorrect coaching, there’s incorrect application on the player to adequate coaching, etc. 

A smarter team, which we thankfully are, realizes that not striking out on any of your draft picks is much more of a positive than drafting for a need, specifically pitching.

Just look at Carter Baumler for example. He was drafted ahead of Mayo, has already incurred injury and no realistic timetable to be a viable major league pitcher.

In short, it’s best to have the trade pieces of viable players to go out and pitchers that need a small change in stance, or coaching or environment to be truly great. We’ve seen that time and time again with Coulombe, Cano, Perez, the mountain, etc.

Let the other teams take the gamble and strike out/give up on players, then sweep them up and strike gold.

[Il BuonO]

2 hours ago, EddeeEddee said:

Yes it must have been his decision, though I'm not sure you can call choosing not to invest a huge amount of money in something "meddling".  All owners are involved in big money contracts and  investments.

Great, an argument on semantics. It was meddling to not allow McPhail and Duquette to try and mine that talent field when every other team had that option. And I know that all owners are involved with big money contacts. Is that the same thing???

[justD]

3 hours ago, EddeeEddee said:

Yes it must have been his decision, though I'm not sure you can call choosing not to invest a huge amount of money in something "meddling".  All owners are involved in big money contracts and  investments.

It was a philosophical mandate he handed down to his employees that they not invest in the international market at the time. He didn't believe in what he considered to be an exploitation of the families. So, as @Il BuonO points out, he meddled by simply preventing those who would normally want to from doing so. I don't think that's the same as saying he chose not to invest in it, from some kind of financial motivation. It was his personal beliefs imposed on his staff. 

And I'm not saying those beliefs were wrong or right, but in my opinion imposing them would definitely be considered meddling. 

[EddeeEddee]

1 hour ago, Il BuonO said:

Great, an argument on semantics. It was meddling to not allow McPhail and Duquette to try and mine that talent field when every other team had that option. And I know that all owners are involved with big money contacts. Is that the same thing???

Would it be meddling if, say, the Steve Cohen said no to an $800 million deal for Ohtani?  I don't think that's meddling and it's not semantics.  That's an owner stating what the club's limits are in spending.

When it comes to the O's not setting up shop in the Caribbean, I just assumed Angelos felt the O's couldn't afford it, though I may be wrong.  I assume it was mostly Angelos' decision, but again I don't know if MacPhail really pushed hard for it anything.  I guess it could be seen as meddling by the time most teams were spending money in the DR while the O's still were not.

To me meddling is more along the lines of individual personnel moves, like Angelos nixing trades, -- I'm thinking of the one that would have sent Brian Roberts to Atlanta.  Or Angelos insisting the O's give Chris Davis that ridiculous contract.  

[EddeeEddee]

1 hour ago, justD said:

It was a philosophical mandate he handed down to his employees that they not invest in the international market at the time. He didn't believe in what he considered to be an exploitation of the families. So, as @Il BuonO points out, he meddled by simply preventing those who would normally want to from doing so. I don't think that's the same as saying he chose not to invest in it, from some kind of financial motivation. It was his personal beliefs imposed on his staff. 

And I'm not saying those beliefs were wrong or right, but in my opinion imposing them would definitely be considered meddling. 

Really?  I did not know he refused to invest in the Caribbean because he saw it as exploitation.  I find that hard to believe, but if that's what he said then so be it.  To me it sounds more like an excuse than a reason.  

Being a big shot lawyer of the ambulance chaser variety he may have had some legal pov on the issue as well.  Either way it does sound like he was meddling if there was not any serious kind of financial reasoning behind it -- unless there was a strong legal argument not to.

[Il BuonO]

8 minutes ago, EddeeEddee said:

Really?  I did not know he refused to invest in the Caribbean because he saw it as exploitation.  I find that hard to believe, but if that's what he said then so be it.  To me it sounds more like an excuse than a reason.  

Being a big shot lawyer of the ambulance chaser variety he may have had some legal pov on the issue as well.  Either way it does sound like he was meddling if there was not any serious kind of financial reasoning behind it -- unless there was a strong legal argument not to.

Would it be a straw man argument to bring up something I never did?

Edited Tuesday at 23:32 by Il BuonO

[Il BuonO]

4 hours ago, EddeeEddee said:

Really?  I did not know he refused to invest in the Caribbean because he saw it as exploitation.  I find that hard to believe, but if that's what he said then so be it.  To me it sounds more like an excuse than a reason.  

Being a big shot lawyer of the ambulance chaser variety he may have had some legal pov on the issue as well.  Either way it does sound like he was meddling if there was not any serious kind of financial reasoning behind it -- unless there was a strong legal argument not to.

And as justD said he stated his reasons. Meddling.

Edited Wednesday at 03:37 by Il BuonO

[EddeeEddee]

2 hours ago, Il BuonO said:

Would it be a straw man argument to bring up something I never did?

You're just rambling now.  No clue wtf you're talking about.