Bullpen acquisition/investment is the FO’s responsibility

[foxfield]

There is some interesting commentary in this thread.  It is quite possible that until the post above "screaming from the mountaintop", that I don't really disagree with any posts here.  I mean the results at this point are totally on Elias.  That really isn't debatable.

However, you can't just white wash the injuries to fit a narrative. And in my opinion, breaking the Starters and BP up here does that.  The injury to Bautista was known and the roll of the dice for Kimbrel was made before ownership changed. It has worked until it hasn't, but that has been the story of the season.

If every starter was healthy someone would be carrying the BP with multi inning outings.  Instead, we are reduced to picking up waiver claims for any arm who might be able to throw an inning.  Rumors abound that Clancy will serve beers Friday and Saturday but will be in the bull pen for long relief by Sunday.

We haven't paid the price for top talent other than Burnes.  No doubt ownership influenced that but couldn't we have gotten an 8th inning guy relatively cheaply?  At the end of the day, the overwhelming injuries don't change the fact that not that long ago, this team was on pace to win 100+ again.  That it now is not, is surely due to injuries and Mike Elias will have to wear it.  I think he and the rest of the team will.  But I will excuse them completely if they don't wallow in the failure of this terrible season and get up and go at it again tomorrow to try and win the g d AL East.

[bpilktree67]

17 minutes ago, Jagwar said:

O's have 8 pitchers on the IL and another on paternity leave and some want to rip into Elias for not having a good bullpen.

Gotta love the hangout.

Yeah they say he should have added two more high leverage guys in the off season but like I have said where would they have put them early in the year.  I have no idea where they would put them unless we had a waiver to carry 15 pitchers.  Elias and organization said Bradish, and Means would be back end of April early May along with Perez which they were. On May 1st this was our roster with ERA.  

1.  Burnes 2.36 

2. Bradish just coming back 

3. Grod 3.71

4. Kremer 3.57

5. Means just coming back

6. Kimbrel 2.92

7. Cano 2.08

8. Webb 1.84

9. Coulumbe 3.00

10. Irvin 2.83

11. Tate 2.84

12 Aiken 3.2

13. Perez 9 in 2 appearances 

14. Baumann 5.06

15. Suarez 2.04 

Baumann got released and Tate got sent down to make room for Bradish and Means.  To keep us at 13.  Wells got transferred to 60 man now if we had 2 more free agent guys who would they have released.  It most likely would have been Suarez and Akin or Perez.  So basically we would have the same team except one of our best starters and a very good bullpen guy when the injuries to Means, Bradish, and Coulumbe happened.  

[Frobby]

38 minutes ago, milbest77 said:

I will scream this from the mountain tops. Elias was not brought here to win championships. He was brought to slash payroll. Hired by Angelos. Remember all the “moving to Nashville” talk? IMO, Elias is not the guy to get this team to the next level. He’s not a Dombrowski type that will go all-in for a WS. I have a feeling the new owners will bring in their own guys sooner than later, which may or may not be a good thing. 
 

Ok, commence the stone-throwing!

You are literally cutting and pasting something you recently posted elsewhere.  I don’t agree with your take.  Elias was hired to rebuild a terrible team on a limited budget.  He did it successfully.  Now we think his budget will be less limited, though it remains to be seen.  Can Elias take the team to the next level?  It remains to be seen.  But Rubenstein is going to give him every opportunity to do it. It will be 2-3 years beyond this one AT LEAST before Rubenstein makes any judgments.  

[Sports Guy]

20 minutes ago, foxfield said:

There is some interesting commentary in this thread.  It is quite possible that until the post above "screaming from the mountaintop", that I don't really disagree with any posts here.  I mean the results at this point are totally on Elias.  That really isn't debatable.

However, you can't just white wash the injuries to fit a narrative. And in my opinion, breaking the Starters and BP up here does that.  The injury to Bautista was known and the roll of the dice for Kimbrel was made before ownership changed. It has worked until it hasn't, but that has been the story of the season.

If every starter was healthy someone would be carrying the BP with multi inning outings.  Instead, we are reduced to picking up waiver claims for any arm who might be able to throw an inning.  Rumors abound that Clancy will serve beers Friday and Saturday but will be in the bull pen for long relief by Sunday.

We haven't paid the price for top talent other than Burnes.  No doubt ownership influenced that but couldn't we have gotten an 8th inning guy relatively cheaply?  At the end of the day, the overwhelming injuries don't change the fact that not that long ago, this team was on pace to win 100+ again.  That it now is not, is surely due to injuries and Mike Elias will have to wear it.  I think he and the rest of the team will.  But I will excuse them completely if they don't wallow in the failure of this terrible season and get up and go at it again tomorrow to try and win the g d AL East.

Adding Kimbrel was fine…not doing more on top of that was not.

It was always obvious we needed at least one more high leverage reliever. 

[bpilktree67]

The same people complaining about Elias and saying it was clear we needed more high leverage are the same guys that were the ones that wanted us to sign Robert Stephenson in the offseason.  They won’t admit that though.   lol

[Ohfan67]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Adding Kimbrel was fine…not doing more on top of that was not.

It was always obvious we needed at least one more high leverage reliever. 

I agree. I was fine with Kimbrel because I expected a better reliever would also be acquired. 

[oriolediehard]

There is no reason that Elias won't trade or spend the market price, because Angelos are out of the picture. Rubinstein says he will do whats needed to win.

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, oriolediehard said:

There is no reason that Elias won't trade or spend the market price, because Angelos are out of the picture. Rubinstein says he will do whats needed to win.

Spending market price isn’t the only way to get relievers…in fact, it’s the worst way to do it. Doesn’t mean you don’t but exploring other avenues first makes sense.

[Rbiggs2525]

I’ll be glass half full. The Orioles have the capable guys to get it done. I’d rather this be happening now than in October. The Rangers biggest unknown last year was their BP. Then a few pitchers with 4 and 5 ERA pitched lights out like Sborz and Leclerc.

[Grt 2BA FL Gator]

2 hours ago, OriolesUpAndDowns said:

This is where the lack of even developing a reliever through the draft hurts.  There is no quality controllable options

 

This. At first we were spoiled with Bautista, Cano, Perez, Jorge Lopez as wipe out reclamation guys. They’ve been harder to come by and we aren’t developing any through the draft, like you said. 

[Grt 2BA FL Gator]

18 minutes ago, Rbiggs2525 said:

I’ll be glass half full. The Orioles have the capable guys to get it done. I’d rather this be happening now than in October. The Rangers biggest unknown last year was their BP. Then a few pitchers with 4 and 5 ERA pitched lights out like Sborz and Leclerc.

I keep telling myself that it is August, there’s some reinforcements coming, and like you said, better to slump now than October, if we can snap out of it. 

[milbest77]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

You are literally cutting and pasting something you recently posted elsewhere.  I don’t agree with your take.  Elias was hired to rebuild a terrible team on a limited budget.  He did it successfully.  Now we think his budget will be less limited, though it remains to be seen.  Can Elias take the team to the next level?  It remains to be seen.  But Rubenstein is going to give him every opportunity to do it. It will be 2-3 years beyond this one AT LEAST before Rubenstein makes any judgments.  

Guilty, but it is the hill on which I will die!

[OriolesMagic83]

3 hours ago, milbest77 said:

I will scream this from the mountain tops. Elias was not brought here to win championships. He was brought to slash payroll. Hired by Angelos. Remember all the “moving to Nashville” talk? IMO, Elias is not the guy to get this team to the next level. He’s not a Dombrowski type that will go all-in for a WS. I have a feeling the new owners will bring in their own guys sooner than later, which may or may not be a good thing. 
 

Ok, commence the stone-throwing!

A lot of guys can build a division winning team w/ a $250 million -300 million payroll.  It takes some hard work and ingenuity to win it with the 28th or 29th highest payroll or whatever the O's had last year.  When's the last time the Phillies won 101 games w/ their massive payroll?

[wildcard]

11 hours ago, Pat Kelly said:

Somehow the FO got this wrong.  Elias refuses to overpay or pay market rate for BP arms.   At times it seems Hyde may not seem to manage the BP well but the BP issues are really not his fault - they are on Elias. 

When Diaz went down last year after the WBC injury the Met's were cooked.  Seems the Os have had a delayed impact to Bautista injury impacting things, but incredible that Elias' did not solve this 3x.  First Time - end of last season but hard to do when the injury occurred and in the end Cano and others stepped up.   2nd time offseason - Kimbrel was not a solution but a high risk, reasonable cost option.  3rd time - the trade deadline when there is ample evidence about Kimbrell and BP issues combined with significant issues to the pitching staff and no farm system BP arms.   Unfortunate that Elias is still going to have to learn how to become not just a rebuild GM but a championship GM.  

Its a little early for a post mortem on the Elias and the 2024 season.

Elias signed a 9 time All-Star closer this off season.   He is 36  but the last time he was an All Star was last year (2023).   To this point in the season the O's are a half game out of first and  Kimbrel has 23 saves.  On August 22nd.  The season is not over.

At the deadline  Elias added a 2 time All Star closer.   Gregory Soto was an All-Star in 2021 and 2022. He saved 30 games in 2022.  He is 29 years old.   This year he  is averaging 97.5 mph with in sinker  that has a .302 avg and  a 86.2 mph slider that has a .250 avg.

Last year these same two pitches were 98.1 mph sinker with .209 avg and an 87.9 mph slider with a .160 avg.

Soto has pitched in 7 games for the O's.  2 were bad.  5 were scoreless.  The last 4 have been scoreless.

The O's analytics department and pitching coaches are supposed to be pretty good.  How about if we wait to see what happens before we bury Elias and the 2024 season.

 

[sportsfan8703]

13 hours ago, Pat Kelly said:

Somehow the FO got this wrong.  Elias refuses to overpay or pay market rate for BP arms.   At times it seems Hyde may not seem to manage the BP well but the BP issues are really not his fault - they are on Elias. 

When Diaz went down last year after the WBC injury the Met's were cooked.  Seems the Os have had a delayed impact to Bautista injury impacting things, but incredible that Elias' did not solve this 3x.  First Time - end of last season but hard to do when the injury occurred and in the end Cano and others stepped up.   2nd time offseason - Kimbrel was not a solution but a high risk, reasonable cost option.  3rd time - the trade deadline when there is ample evidence about Kimbrell and BP issues combined with significant issues to the pitching staff and no farm system BP arms.   Unfortunate that Elias is still going to have to learn how to become not just a rebuild GM but a championship GM.  

Would we have gotten it right by giving Robert Stephenson that contract?

There’s pros/cons. 

Obviously, just like real life… money doesn’t buy happiness… but it buys your way out of issues that arise.