AM, Penn/Andino and Eaton

[Malike]

You're way off base. SG never suggested he was being incompetent. He simply questions why Eaton was a target in the first place given his horrible historical performance over the past couple of year and the fact that AM has made so many wonderful decisions over that same span.

It makes no sense. It makes even less sense that Trembley would bend over backwards to say how wonderful Eaton's pitching has been despite mountains of evidence (and hits and runs) to the contrary.

The whole Eaton situation is just bizarre.

From the OP

I like a lot of what AM has accomplished but this whole situation was a joke....The stupidity behind it is mind boggling to me.

Reading comprehension has always been my strong point. Perhaps I'm off base because I read this statement, and it interpreted it for what it is? Perhaps you can clarify how the whole situation being a joke, and mind boggling in stupidity, doesn't augur incompetence? In my world, it surely would.

Seriously, do you expect Trembley to say "Eaton is garbage, I can't wait until AM gives me Berg or someone else so I can get rid of this bum"? Really? You think he should say what he really feels? Really?

[Scrat1]

This concerns me as well. AM has been so good about everything else. This love affair with horrible veteran pitchers who have no upside (Trachsel and now Eaton) disturbs me.

What disturbs me even more is Trembley and AM constantly apologizing for Eaton each time he goes and fails to get the job done. Every time he pitches they make excuses for him. At some point you simply need to say "he didn't get the job done today and hasn't gotten the job done at any point this season" and you need to move on to someone else.

If Eaton gets lit up in his next start and we get another dose of excuses from Trembley, I'm going to really lose confidence in the man. Last year he never called Hernandez to task for his lack of hustle and poor decision making. If he fails to hold Eaton responsible for chronic ineffectiveness, then I'm going to really doubt whether Trembley has the chops to manage at this level.

Part of building a winning organization is holding players accountable for their performance. At some point Eaton needs to be held accountable and Trembley needs to make it clear that veteran or no, 4 inning, 100 pitch performances and a 7.00+ ERA are not acceptable from our starters.

While I agree with most of this, I don't think the bolded part is entirely true. In fact I remember a specific time, although I don't remember when, where Trembley told Hernandez that he knows he's a good player, but if he keeps playing like he is [lack of hustle; attitude], he can't send him out there. Now, obviously, he didn't have a whole lot of leverage in the situation, but he did call him out at least once publicly.

[Sports Guy]

First of all, with all due respect to yourself, we don't have a single direct quote here from AM, but rather your remembrance of an interview he gave on TV, during a game you admittedly weren't watching closely. So forgive me if I don't take it as Biblical revelation.

.

? I'm not trying to do anything. I'm sorry I said TV instead of radio. That doesn't change the fact that this is a lot of hearsay on your part. This is second-hand information and can easily be biased by your own personal interperatation.

Get over it; I don't know if I've ever seen somebody as sensitive as yourself heap out so much abuse to others. I didn't call you a liar or even insinuate that. If you notice, there was mention of the injuries to the other pitchers in that article, so I still maintain that has something to do with it. Secondly, looking at somebody as one of several potential solutions to a problem is hardly "targeting" a guy, in the sense you're trying to stretch it to mean.

The fact is, our 5th starter was always going to suck or he wouldn't have been available for what we wanted:Minimum money and minimum committment. Adam Eaton fits that profile and so do other guys that I'm sure AM looked at. I just don't see the big difference and the outrage over the difference between Waters and Eaton.

As I showed, yea you did.

Look, I posted what AM said...This is just further confirmation of it.

Nothing else was pointed out except for the stuff you tried to drum up.

My point is and was that targeting Eaton, then giving him a spot after 2 straight poor years and a poor spring is a dumb decision.

And, furthering that decision, saying that you want him over Penn makes little sense as well, especially in a season where you have readily admitted that it is a rebuilding season and that you need to see guys.

Penn is very similar to Pie...Once highly rated(Pie higher though), rough time in a short stint in the majors, poor springs..Pie is given the job, as he should have been but Penn is going to get cut for 20K...Its not a consistent thought process there.

[bumblebee]

I don't have an issue with AM's logic at all. It's smart to try and get some veteran presence to hold the fort until the cavalry comes. My issue is AM has set the bar too low on what defines acceptable veteran presence. If he's actively targeting scrap heap material, that's discouraging.

[Gurgi]

I don't have an issue with AM's logic at all. It's smart to try and get some veteran presence to hold the fort until the cavalry comes. My issue is AM has set the bar too low on what defines acceptable veteran presence. If he's actively targeting scrap heap material, that's discouraging.

Do any of you remember the articles that MacPhail was the highest bidder on several better FA choices? They didnt want to come here even for better money. I think Eaton is just who he could get. I think he is really hoping for a Trax like 07. Smoke and Mirrors.

With our starters in the minors we probably wouldnt have a spot available for Eaton or Penn or Waters. I see these guys all being out of baseball in two /three years.

[Pickles]

As I showed, yea you did.

Look, I posted what AM said...This is just further confirmation of it.

Nothing else was pointed out except for the stuff you tried to drum up.

Like I've said, if you think pointing out the fact that your personal remembrance can be biased is calling you a liar, then you need some help.

If I said Luis Hernandez was the greatest defensive ss ever, because I saw him make a great play in the hole once, I'm pretty sure you'd say my personal remembrance is biased. That isn't calling someone a liar. The only person who's called anybody a liar in this thread is YOU, when you called ME a liar. Not to mention the fact that you also said you have no respect for me as a human being. You wouldn't say that to my face I can guarantee you that- and if you did it would be the last thing you said for a while.

My point is and was that targeting Eaton, then giving him a spot after 2 straight poor years and a poor spring is a dumb decision.

And like I've said, it wasn't their first choice. I'm sure it was much nearer the last choice but things played out that way. It isn't nearly as dumb a decision as the Phillies made when they doled out a 3 year contract to the man worth big-time money. Of course, they overcame that to win the World Series last year. I'm sure we can overcome giving Eaton 5 starts this year.

And, furthering that decision, saying that you want him over Penn makes little sense as well, especially in a season where you have readily admitted that it is a rebuilding season and that you need to see guys.

I'd make the case that Eaton will be better than Penn this year, and in lieu of Penn we got Adino. I'd rather have Eaton/Adino than Penn. The O's saw plenty of Penn over the last six years; they've made a decision on him, and I got to say I agree with that decision.

Penn is very similar to Pie...Once highly rated(Pie higher though), rough time in a short stint in the majors, poor springs..Pie is given the job, as he should have been but Penn is going to get cut for 20K...Its not a consistent thought process there.

This is disingenous at best.

Pie was always MUCH higher rated than Penn.

Pie failed to impress in his ML time; Penn embarressed himself, for the most part.

Penn had more than a poor spring. Penn has had a poor two+ years. He was pretty abysmal in AAA last year; Pie was merely decent.

Penn and Pie aren't that comparable at all. Pie's been stagnant for a year- a lot of which could be blamed on the way he's been handled. Penn's been nosediving for 2+ years and had every oppurtunity- still- to make this club this year. To expect them to be handled them same isn't realistic, imo.

[Sports Guy]

This is disingenous at best.

Pie was always MUCH higher rated than Penn.

Pie failed to impress in his ML time; Penn embarressed himself, for the most part.

Penn had more than a poor spring. Penn has had a poor two+ years. He was pretty abysmal in AAA last year; Pie was merely decent.

Penn and Pie aren't that comparable at all. Pie's been stagnant for a year- a lot of which could be blamed on the way he's been handled. Penn's been nosediving for 2+ years and had every oppurtunity- still- to make this club this year. To expect them to be handled them same isn't realistic, imo.

Penn was ranked in the top 80 or so..Yes, Pie got into the top 20 but when you are the high, you are very highly regarded.

Pie has pretty much embarrassed himself as well...Very poor OPS.

Either way, the point is that you have 2 guys that were very highly rated, that were very good at young ages in the upper minors, that were both very poor in their small sample size in the majors and that both deserve an extended look to find out if they can make it or not.

That's where they are similar and those are all facts.

That being said, I would say that Pie deserves the chance moreso but still, Penn deserves it as well and I think he deserves it over many of the guys that made the team.

[RShack]

It seems to me that two things have been said here, about AM and DT respectively, that just don't hold water based on the info available to us, to the point where they are blatantly absurd.

1. The claim that DT somehow rolls over for vets, and says he cares about one thing while blithely tolerating the opposite, as is supposedly evidenced by his treatment of Ramon. This is very rash and groundless judgment to make. It is based on ignorance of many things that we cannot possibly know, and is fraught with arbitrary assumptions about the best way to handle the Ramon situation. I don't have any backstage info either, so it's not like I know anything that everybody else doesn't know, but to me it seems more plausible to conclude that DT simply handled that matter in a respectful and non-inflammatory way as befits a successful organization. What he did was this: he arranged to get Ramon off the team and out of Dodge. While some people might like the idea of airing dirty laundry in public, that is not how good organizations operate. It's not how AM's father operated, and it's not how other successful organizations like Schuerholz's Braves operated. They never treated anybody like dirt in public. Instead, certain players managed to get themselves traded. We may have a different opinion about the best way to handle things, but slamming DT for that is just flat-out ridiculous... unless of course you think you are master of the universe about how to handle a ballclub. And let's face it: anybody who is master of the universe at that has way better things to do than make posts here.

2. The claim that AM's interest in Eaton reflects some kind of brain-dead insistence in ignoring stats, and instead reflects an arbitrary man-crush on veteran SP's he takes a hankering to based on nothing rational or well-informed. This is just standard BS from somebody who thinks there are only 2 opinions: his opinion and the wrong one. Most recently, his opinion was that Baez is trash who didn't deserve a roster spot but, wonder of wonders, that seems to have been a grossly ill-formed opinion. Imagine that. Now, with respect to Eaton, there is zero reason to conclude that AM ignored stat info, or that he got a crush on Eaton based on nothing. It is more plausible to assume that, methodical dude that he is reputed to be, he had somebody on staff tell him what the stats said, had some scouts go watch Eaton or film of Eaton, and had RK and God-knows-who-else consider the *combination* of the stat evidence, the scouting evidence, and the video evidence and offer their opinions about whether this guy had the ability to be a functional spare part who had the ability to get big league hitters out for a few months. Apparently, the decision was made that, for $400K, it was worth a shot to see. It is completely goofy to conclude that (a) AM would be lazy rather than methodical, (b) consider one form of evidence rather than several, and © base his decision on arbitrary attachments to random vet SP's rather than take informed gambles to look for pleasant surprises among low-cost temp solutions. How that decision turns out is one thing, but saying a lot of crazy stuff about how the decision was made is something else.

The fact that people here use this kind of so-called thinking makes me cringe when people suggest that people in the O's org actually read the ridiculous nonsense that gets posted around here. It's embarrassing, especially when it's folks pretending to be know-it-alls, when they're mainly just endlessly repeating their personal biases and, in cases such as this, "thinking" with their glands instead of their brain. Their main point seems to be that they are oh-so-much smarter than everybody else, and their main pleasure seems to come from making posts which make 100% unsupported claims, asserting that AM and DT each have insisted on acting stupidly and/or hypocritically.

[Sports Guy]

The claim that AM's interest in Eaton reflects some kind of brain-dead insistence in ignoring stats, and instead reflects an arbitrary man-crush on veteran SP's he takes a hankering to based on nothing rational or well-informed. This is just standard BS from somebody who thinks there are only 2 opinions: his opinion and the wrong one. Most recently, his opinion was that Baez is trash who didn't deserve a roster spot but, wonder of wonders, that seems to have been a grossly ill-formed opinion. Imagine that. Now, with respect to Eaton, there is zero reason to conclude that AM ignored stat info, or that he got a crush on Eaton based on nothing. It is more plausible to assume that, methodical dude that he is, he had somebody on staff tell him what the stats said, had some scouts go watch Eaton or film of Eaton, and had RK and God-knows-who-else consider the *combination* of the stat evidence, the scouting evidence, and the video evidence and offer their opinions about whether this guy had the ability to be a functional spare part who had the ability to get big league hitters out. Apparently, the decision was made that, for $400K, it was worth a shot to see. It is completely goofy to conclude that (a) AM would be lazy rather than methodical, (b) consider one form of evidence rather than several, and © base his decision on arbitrary attachments to random vet SP's rather than take informed gambles to look for pleasant surprises among low-cost temp solutions.

I am curious...How many innings did Eaton throw in November and December in front of scouts?

And as for the film...He has been very bad the last 2 years..Don't really know what they could be seeing.

AM pointed to one stat..Quality Starts...Had he looked at all the other predictors and things like that, no way he comes up with the conclusion that Eaton would be a good idea.

AM DEFINITELY(because HE said so) wanted Eaton because he was vet that had had previous success and he felt he could eat innings until the young guys came up.

That was his reasoning...If Joe Schmoe AAAA pitcher was available and could do the same thing as Eaton, I have no doubt that Eaton is the one they pick because he is a vet presence..whatever that means.

[Sports Guy]

Pickles...Just to end this....

I 100% agree with you about the idea that at the end of the day, it is much ado about nothing...That being said, on a discussion board, I am going to discuss these things and I just disagree with AM here and think it was a poor decision.

For years on this site, there have been tons of arguments about guys that mean virtually nothing long term.

Its just like the argument over the 25th man, a managerial decision, etc...end of the day, it only matters so much and in the big picture, it doesn't at all...but that doesn't mean it won't and shouldn't be discussed on a site such as this one.

You happen to agree with this decision and that's fine..As this thread shows, you aren't alone.

But as many of the Eaton threads have showed, more people are against him being here(hell, i am not sure you even want him here yourself to be honest).

This thread was supposed to be more about the thought process of AM here and the idea of losing Penn to keep around a guy like Eaton.

I was very surprised to hear AM say some of the stuff today that he did.

[Pickles]

I am curious...How many innings did Eaton throw in November and December in front of scouts?

And as for the film...He has been very bad the last 2 years..Don't really know what they could be seeing.

AM pointed to one stat..Quality Starts...Had he looked at all the other predictors and things like that, no way he comes up with the conclusion that Eaton would be a good idea.

AM DEFINITELY(because HE said so) wanted Eaton because he was vet that had had previous success and he felt he could eat innings until the young guys came up.

That was his reasoning...If Joe Schmoe AAAA pitcher was available and could do the same thing as Eaton, I have no doubt that Eaton is the one they pick because he is a vet presence..whatever that means.

Joe Schmoe AAAA pitcher was available; in fact, the O's had two of them: David Pauley and Hayden Penn. From everything I saw this spring, Eaton out-performed both of them. Maybe they went with Eaton because he's better than Penn and Pauley?

[Sports Guy]

Joe Schmoe AAAA pitcher was available; in fact, the O's had two of them: David Pauley and Hayden Penn. From everything I saw this spring, Eaton out-performed both of them. Maybe they went with Eaton because he's better than Penn and Pauley?

Let's say that Eaton is better than those 2...I don't agree with that but let's go with that thought.

In this year, a year where it has been told to the fans that winning isn't the main goal, what makes more sense...See the younger pitcher who is at least close to the vet(and has more upside/possible long term spot on team) or throw the vet out there that has no future and no upside?

[RShack]

This thread was supposed to be more about the thought process of AM here ...

I was very surprised to hear AM say some of the stuff today that he did.

You don't know beans about his thought process. All you know is what he said in a couple brief off-the-cuff comments over the air. Don't you know the difference between that and a report about the various things he considered? Did the interview include questions about what else the stats showed and how AM interpreted them and weighed them? Did it cover what input the scouting department had?

According to the kind of logic you're using, we should start evaluating Nick's approach to hitting based on whatever he mumbles about his AB's to Amber after the game...

[GnatsFan]

I don't have any backstage info either, so it's not like I know anything that everybody else doesn't know, but to me it seems more plausible to conclude that DT simply handled that matter in a respectful and non-inflammatory way as befits a successful organization. What he did was this: he arranged to get Ramon off the team and out of Dodge.

I'm under the impression that the only reason Fatty McFat Fat is no longer our everyday catcher had less to do with Trembley dropping the hammer, but rather Wieters forcing the issue. If Wieters didn't exist I have a feeling Ramon "Pastball" Hernandez would be playing out the remainder of his contract as our starting catcher.

As someone else mentioned... you don't have to publicly criticize the guy to get a point across... you do it the baseball way: When Ramon was lolly-gagging and admiring his "Homeruns" that weren't really homeruns he should have been benched for a game.

[RShack]

I'm under the impression that the only reason Fatty McFat Fat is no longer our everyday catcher had less to do with Trembley dropping the hammer, but rather Wieters forcing the issue. If Wieters didn't exist I have a feeling Ramon "Pastball" Hernandez would be playing out the remainder of his contract as our starting catcher.

As someone else mentioned... you don't have to publicly criticize the guy to get a point across... you do it the baseball way: When Ramon was lolly-gagging and admiring his "Homeruns" that weren't really homeruns he should have been benched for a game.

I understand that some favor using the punitive approach to enforcing disciplined behavior and attitude. I don't recall many good organizations using it. Nor can I think of cases where it actually accomplished anything. However I do recall good organizations "disappearing" players who didn't fit with the ethic. Nobody says anything out loud but, ooops, all the sudden they're traded.

As for the impression you're under vs. the one I'm under, according to my impression we'll never know the answer simply because the club won't publicly bad mouth anybody. Doing that is below the standards of a good organization.