Erceg vs Seranthony Dominguez

[Tony-OH]

Around the trading deadline, the Royals went and got Lucas Erceg from the A's for P Mason Barnett (minors), Jared Dickey (minors) and P Will Klein. 

Looking at those three prospects, two were pitchers with Barrett being the best prospect of them all but was more on the 4th/5th starter level. 

Elias went cheap and went for Dominguez by trading away Hays.

Erceg immediate became the closer and pitched well:

Notice the no home runs allowed and all top it all he's never allowed a stolen base while on the mound. Only one guy even attempted it and was caught. Seems like the perfect match to be a closer, no home runs, he misses bats, throw 99 MPH, and you can't steal off him. 

Elias went out and got Seranthony Dominguez who was then made closer, then lost it. 

Dominguez, who has always had a homer problem, allowed 6 in just 22.2 innings, and base runners are 21 for 23 in their career running off him.  He did only blow one save opportunity but allowed two walk off home runs.

There are two points I'd like to make. One, it took pitching prospects to get a good relief pitcher and two, Erceg was the kind of reliever the Orioles should have been targeting at the trade deadline. 

 

[webbrick2010]

14 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Around the trading deadline, the Royals went and got Lucas Erceg from the A's for P Mason Barnett (minors), Jared Dickey (minors) and P Will Klein. 

Looking at those three prospects, two were pitchers with Barrett being the best prospect of them all but was more on the 4th/5th starter level. 

Elias went cheap and went for Dominguez by trading away Hays.

Erceg immediate became the closer and pitched well:

Notice the no home runs allowed and all top it all he's never allowed a stolen base while on the mound. Only one guy even attempted it and was caught. Seems like the perfect match to be a closer, no home runs, he misses bats, throw 99 MPH, and you can't steal off him. 

Elias went out and got Seranthony Dominguez who was then made closer, then lost it. 

Dominguez, who has always had a homer problem, allowed 6 in just 22.2 innings, and base runners are 21 for 23 in their career running off him.  He did only blow one save opportunity but allowed two walk off home runs.

There are two points I'd like to make. One, it took pitching prospects to get a good relief pitcher and two, Erceg was the kind of reliever the Orioles should have been targeting at the trade deadline. 

 

Hmm, I will eventually bump my release Elias thread, after pundits and OH are both appreciate his major shortcomings.

[HowAboutThat]

16 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Around the trading deadline, the Royals went and got Lucas Erceg from the A's for P Mason Barnett (minors), Jared Dickey (minors) and P Will Klein. 

Looking at those three prospects, two were pitchers with Barrett being the best prospect of them all but was more on the 4th/5th starter level. 

Elias went cheap and went for Dominguez by trading away Hays.

Erceg immediate became the closer and pitched well:

Notice the no home runs allowed and all top it all he's never allowed a stolen base while on the mound. Only one guy even attempted it and was caught. Seems like the perfect match to be a closer, no home runs, he misses bats, throw 99 MPH, and you can't steal off him. 

Elias went out and got Seranthony Dominguez who was then made closer, then lost it. 

Dominguez, who has always had a homer problem, allowed 6 in just 22.2 innings, and base runners are 21 for 23 in their career running off him.  He did only blow one save opportunity but allowed two walk off home runs.

There are two points I'd like to make. One, it took pitching prospects to get a good relief pitcher and two, Erceg was the kind of reliever the Orioles should have been targeting at the trade deadline. 

 

Elfin was a great pickup.

Every other trade was a bust for the moment. Soto may have come around, but that remains to be seen.

Unless Elias tried and failed to get the ones we missed, which is a possibility, he had a miserable and self-inflicted deadline.

[HowAboutThat]

1 minute ago, webbrick2010 said:

Hmm, I will eventually bump my release Elias thread, after pundits and OH are both appreciate his major shortcomings.

Too soon to dump Elias. He needs the opportunity to evolve.

Not too soon to replace Hyde.

[sportsfan8703]

I hope we don't see Erceg the rest of the series.  Also, I don't know what Salvador Perez said to him when he walked to the mound, but it sure as heck worked.  

[Fiver6565]

How would having Erceg instead of Dominguez have put us in a better - or even different - position than we are currently in?  I don't get criticizing Elias in this case.

[Tony-OH]

9 minutes ago, webbrick2010 said:

Hmm, I will eventually bump my release Elias thread, after pundits and OH are both appreciate his major shortcomings.

I completely understand his shortcomings, but I'm far from ready to say Elias should go. 

[gtman55]

Elias is clearly a guy that knows how to build a franchise back to prominence. It's unclear on everything else. I didn't like his excessive drafting of a slew of redundant position players prospects. And I think overall his trade deadline moves since he's been here overall have been a D grade. Having said that, THIS is the big offseason to really judge him. 

[Tony-OH]

2 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

How would having Erceg instead of Dominguez have put us in a better - or even different - position than we are currently in?  I don't get criticizing Elias in this case.

Did you see the points I made at the end? 

In this game, the fact the Royals have Erceg hurt us because he came in and shut the door. 

But this thread is not about how things would have been different, but rather to show that one, Elias needs to start drafting pitchers higher, and two, he targeted the wrong kind of guy for the back of the bullpen. 

[Moose Milligan]

16 minutes ago, HowAboutThat said:

Elfin was a great pickup.

Every other trade was a bust for the moment. Soto may have come around, but that remains to be seen.

Unless Elias tried and failed to get the ones we missed, which is a possibility, he had a miserable and self-inflicted deadline.

Eflin was a great pickup, yet he had a miserable deadline, eh?

Anyway, would have been nice to have Erceg.

[Emory Eagle]

Just seems inevitable that the draft strategy needs to be adjusted.

[Fiver6565]

6 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Did you see the points I made at the end? 

In this game, the fact the Royals have Erceg hurt us because he came in and shut the door. 

But this thread is not about how things would have been different, but rather to show that one, Elias needs to start drafting pitchers higher, and two, he targeted the wrong kind of guy for the back of the bullpen. 

I get your point on drafting pitchers, and I believe that we'll start to see more of that.  I think the strategy in place was in place for a reason during that period of his tenure, and I don't think Elias is so rigid that he intends to use that strategy evermore.

I don't agree re the back of the bullpen.  We'd be exactly where we are right now if we had Erceg or any other reliever - sure Dominguez gave up some homers, but how many saves did he blow, one?  So that's one more win we would have had if we had someone better than him - and we'd have probably given up more than Austin Hays to get whoever that person would be.  And lets face it -  some other KC pitcher would have shut us down in the ninth if they didn't have Erceg and we did - two other relievers I've literally never even heard of already had prior to that.  Pretty much anyone they pulled out of that BP would have gotten the save yesterday against Hack and Co.  So if we had traded for Erceg or if we had targeted the 'right' kind of guy, we'd have maybe one more (meaningless) regular season win, and we'd be down 1-0 in the WC series.

Meanwhile, Dominguez got a big out yesterday to keep it at 1-0, Hays has kept on getting injured w/ the Phillies, and Elias' main trade acquisition was good enough that he is absolutely being counted on to save our season later today.  I don't see complaining about the deadline, frankly.

[Bemorewins]

38 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Around the trading deadline, the Royals went and got Lucas Erceg from the A's for P Mason Barnett (minors), Jared Dickey (minors) and P Will Klein. 

Looking at those three prospects, two were pitchers with Barrett being the best prospect of them all but was more on the 4th/5th starter level. 

Elias went cheap and went for Dominguez by trading away Hays.

Erceg immediate became the closer and pitched well:

Notice the no home runs allowed and all top it all he's never allowed a stolen base while on the mound. Only one guy even attempted it and was caught. Seems like the perfect match to be a closer, no home runs, he misses bats, throw 99 MPH, and you can't steal off him. 

Elias went out and got Seranthony Dominguez who was then made closer, then lost it. 

Dominguez, who has always had a homer problem, allowed 6 in just 22.2 innings, and base runners are 21 for 23 in their career running off him.  He did only blow one save opportunity but allowed two walk off home runs.

There are two points I'd like to make. One, it took pitching prospects to get a good relief pitcher and two, Erceg was the kind of reliever the Orioles should have been targeting at the trade deadline. 

 

I believe that your comparison perfectly highlights a legitimate concern/question that I have: What is the bar/expectation that the organization/Elias has for this team? Are we trying to be good enough to be a playoff team? Or is the bar a World Series title and are we willing to do whatever it takes to pursue that goal?

The handling of the bullpen, the Rodgers acquisition, the Jiminez move when we needed a real RH bat to help us with our weakness against LHP, the Flaherty and Koji acquisitions from 23' all pointed to hedging type of moves that were very reticent to accept any kind of risk or make a serious commitment.

I would like to see Elias begin to flip a switch and move away from this approach. We should no longer be surfing the waiver wire or in the midst of a pennant race take on reclamation projects midseason. Those things are not congruent with the approach necessary for a serious championship contender.

IMO we are not going to cautiously tip-toe our way to a World Series by tripping over a very low bar. We are going to have to make real, serious, big boy moves.

[Bemorewins]

13 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Eflin was a great pickup, yet he had a miserable deadline, eh?

Anyway, would have been nice to have Erceg.

Eflin was a wonderful addition. But I would argue that we needed more (especially given the state of the pen all season) AND we had the ammunition to do so.

Yes Elias got us an Eflin (which again was an amazing acquisition that really helped us). But then he turned around and brought in a bunch of nothings like Jimenez, Rodgers, Soto, Dominguez. And it's not like those guys flopped. They largely sucked before they arrived. 

IMO we need to be a little more humble as an org as we approach this offseason. We need to get away from this "smartest guys in the room" mentality in believing that we can fix everyone else's broken or spare parts and that our homegrown talent is the only meaningful talent that we need.

[Sports Guy]

In the offseason, Erceg was a player I targeted as someone to trade for. Hard to believe Oakland would trade him at the deadline but wouldn’t have entertained trading him in the offseason but maybe that’s the case.

I think you do the Hays/Dominguez deal 100 times out of 100 and I don’t think this is the right comp to make.

The Os should have traded for both…and Soto. 
 

The problem isn’t that they chose Dominguez over Erceg, it’s that Elias doesn’t put enough emphasis on the pen.