I'm a little disappointed in AM

[Hank Scorpio]

Sure ... But it doesnt preclude them from adding premium talent.

It shouldn't, that's correct.

It's a question of getting the most bang for your buck. The Orioles need to do that in free agency. They can't afford bad contracts that take up 20% or 25% of their payroll.

[Moose Milligan]

If you told me right now the O's would get two playoff years to take a shot at a title, but the cost would be 4 sub .500 years following because of bad contracts, I would sign up for that in a minute!

Are you serious with this?

[Hank Scorpio]

If you told me right now the O's would get two playoff years to take a shot at a title, but the cost would be 4 sub .500 years following because of bad contracts, I would sign up for that in a minute!

The idea is to sustain, not to stab.

The Rays are a much better team than given credit for. They will be sustainably good for awhile (5-6 years barring catastrophic injuries to their pitching.) Whether they are in competition for the division is debatable, and it obviously depends on how successful their young pitching is... but they are doing it the right way.

The only way.

[osfan83]

The idea is to sustain, not to stab.

The Rays are a much better team than given credit for. They will be sustainably good for awhile (5-6 years barring catastrophic injuries to their pitching.) Whether they are in competition for the division is debatable, and it obviously depends on how successful their young pitching is... but they are doing it the right way.

The only way.

I don't beleive given the current economics of baseball and the division we reside in, that long term (playoff) sustainablity is possible. I think the Florida Marlins formula is the best way to compete with teams that can spend 3x, 4x or 5x your payroll. Put togther a good young core, spend of some big FA's and go for it for a couple of years. If that fails, tear it down, and rebuild again. I think using this formula we can have a REAL shot at a ring 3 or so years a decade.

The O's will not be able to afford to sign Wieters, Jones, Reimiold, Matusz, Tillman to long term contracts AND sign a few big time FA's. Pick a couple of years, really go for it...then return to step one.

[Hank Scorpio]

I don't beleive given the current economics of baseball and the division we reside in, that long term (playoff) sustainablity is possible. I think the Florida Marlins formula is the best way to compete with teams that can spend 3x, 4x or 5x your payroll. Put togther a good young core, spend of some big FA's and go for it for a couple of years. If that fails, tear it down, and rebuild again. I think using this formula we can have a REAL shot at a ring 3 or so years a decade.

The O's will not be able to afford to sign Wieters, Jones, Reimiold, Matusz, Tillman to long term contracts AND sign a few big time FA's. Pick a couple of years, really go for it...then return to step one.

If all those guys pan out, who cares about signing a few "big time FA's?" They can be your big time players and you supplement them with your homegrowns.

[TXOriole]

The Marlins and Rays seem to be the prime examples of how to properly do things, but in reality...how many teams have the quality of managment that these two teams have from ownership down through coaching.

[LookinUp]

The O's minor league teams had terrible records for years. Then they got talent and magically began to win more.

Talent = wins.

You can't point me to teams with talent that don't win at a decent clip. You can't point me to teams without talent that do win at a decent clip. 162 games has a way of separating the good from the bad.

[osfan83]

The O's minor league teams had terrible records for years. Then they got talent and magically began to win more.

Talent = wins.

You can't point me to teams with talent that don't win at a decent clip. You can't point me to teams without talent that do win at a decent clip. 162 games has a way of separating the good from the bad.

Exactly..and talent costs money as it matures. I do beleive the O's can't spend with NY and Bos...so we need to depend on frequent short periods of greatness built on good young talent, and complemented to high caliber FA's. But we can only afford to do this when our good young talent is cheap...like right now. Once that talent gets expensive, time to tear it down and rebuild. If done right the rebuild will only take 3 or so years because we are trading away good players.

4 or so years from now, think about the haul we can get for Wieters/Jones/Matusz/Tillman/Riemold! This means we have to go for it before we have to trade a majority of those guys off.

[ledzepp8]

And uh, guess what uh, "dude" every young player doesn't make it either now do they? In fact, I bet if you thought a bit more about it (don't give yourself a headache though, "dude") you might realize that the percentage of failure at the major league level is uh, fairly high right "dude?":laughlol:

Well clearly none of this has anything to do with the point you were trying to make which was that "For example, you are "banking" on the young talent developing to the maximum. Yet in reality this rarely happens."

It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that this argument is not true.

Tex, Pujols, Arod, Jeter, Howard, Rollins, Pedroia, Youkilis, Vlad, etc. Were they not young at one point?

And really why is it so hard for you to make an argument and then go back and address that argument when someone calls you on it, instead of going off on another completely unrelated tangent?

Can you not even keep up with the crap that you try and argue or are you purposefully ignoring any argument that proves you wrong? Methinks it's the latter, DUDE.

[birrman54]

Is your argument that excellent baseball players aren't rare? And you prove it by listing some of the best players alive? This is classic observation bias - you see and remember the talent that made it and forget those who didn't. In this case OldFan doesn't need to be right for you to be wrong.

By definition those players ARE rare, or else they wouldn't be the most desired and sought after commodities. It's much more likely for young players to end up in the Erik Byrnes and Corey Patterson mold - not Arod or Pujols - or we'd have more players like the latter, not the former. For the dozens of excellent baseball players you can list, there are 10-50x as many minor leaguers who will never sniff the Bigs.

That's not to say that we should trade young players for "established talent" because young players aren't 'sure things'. The stock market is volatile also - it's difficult to predict whether in a given year a stock will be a winner or loser - this isn't a reason to avoid ALL investments, it's a reason to diversify risk and invest cautiously.

Nassim Taleb wrote a book called the Black Swan, it's about the impact of randomness and our inability to perceive and predict it. In it he talks about negative and positive 'black swans'. The difference between the two is how the failure potential is shaped. A negative swan has a high upfront cost, and an upperbound on potential return. A positive swan has a lower upfront cost and a high potential return.

The negative swan's positive return is more LIKELY, but it's ROI potential is lower. A baseball example of this is AJ Burnett; he required an expensive salary and long contract. There's no denying he's a talented pitcher, but his salary ASSUMES that talent level. Best case scenario; he stays healthy and performs EXACTLY as the Yankees hoped he would. You can imagine any number of bad scenarios where he is injured, underperforming, etc.

A positive swan example might be someone like Felix Pie. He required a very low initial investment (Garret Olson and other guy) and his potential ceiling is very high. Obviously the likelihood of him reaching his peak is fairly low relative to the likelihood of AJ Burnett performing to his contract levels, but the potential return is orders of magnitude greater when you look at the comparatively diminutive initial investment.

I hope some of that made some sense.

[Old#5fan]

Well clearly none of this has anything to do with the point you were trying to make which was that "For example, you are "banking" on the young talent developing to the maximum. Yet in reality this rarely happens."

It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that this argument is not true.

Tex, Pujols, Arod, Jeter, Howard, Rollins, Pedroia, Youkilis, Vlad, etc. Were they not young at one point?

And really why is it so hard for you to make an argument and then go back and address that argument when someone calls you on it, instead of going off on another completely unrelated tangent?

Can you not even keep up with the crap that you try and argue or are you purposefully ignoring any argument that proves you wrong? Methinks it's the latter, DUDE.

And for every one of those top of the line players you name there are hundreds of Larry Bigbie/Billy Rowell types. If you think I don't know what I am speaking how many Eddie Murray types have the Orioles drafted or developed during their history at firstbase? I will tell you, exactly two. Boog Powell and Eddie. (Jim Gentile doesn't count as I believe they got him in a trade). Even so, since 1954 they have found two top of the line first baseman and develped them through the system. So what does that tell you about the odds Mr. Genius? Do you even think about the history of the team before you post or did you just start following them a year or two ago?

[Old#5fan]

Is your argument that excellent baseball players aren't rare? And you prove it by listing some of the best players alive? This is classic observation bias - you see and remember the talent that made it and forget those who didn't. In this case OldFan doesn't need to be right for you to be wrong.

By definition those players ARE rare, or else they wouldn't be the most desired and sought after commodities. It's much more likely for young players to end up in the Erik Byrnes and Corey Patterson mold - not Arod or Pujols - or we'd have more players like the latter, not the former. For the dozens of excellent baseball players you can list, there are 10-50x as many minor leaguers who will never sniff the Bigs.

That's not to say that we should trade young players for "established talent" because young players aren't 'sure things'. The stock market is volatile also - it's difficult to predict whether in a given year a stock will be a winner or loser - this isn't a reason to avoid ALL investments, it's a reason to diversify risk and invest cautiously.

Nassim Taleb wrote a book called the Black Swan, it's about the impact of randomness and our inability to perceive and predict it. In it he talks about negative and positive 'black swans'. The difference between the two is how the failure potential is shaped. A negative swan has a high upfront cost, and an upperbound on potential return. A positive swan has a lower upfront cost and a high potential return.

The negative swan's positive return is more LIKELY, but it's ROI potential is lower. A baseball example of this is AJ Burnett; he required an expensive salary and long contract. There's no denying he's a talented pitcher, but his salary ASSUMES that talent level. Best case scenario; he stays healthy and performs EXACTLY as the Yankees hoped he would. You can imagine any number of bad scenarios where he is injured, underperforming, etc.

A positive swan example might be someone like Felix Pie. He required a very low initial investment (Garret Olson and other guy) and his potential ceiling is very high. Obviously the likelihood of him reaching his peak is fairly low relative to the likelihood of AJ Burnett performing to his contract levels, but the potential return is orders of magnitude greater when you look at the comparatively diminutive initial investment.

I hope some of that made some sense.

I doubt it. He apparently thinks HOFers fall off trees like ripe apples waiting to be plucked! He has probably been following baseball since he was about 10 years old which was two years ago!:laughlol:

[ledzepp8]

Is your argument that excellent baseball players aren't rare? And you prove it by listing some of the best players alive? This is classic observation bias - you see and remember the talent that made it and forget those who didn't. In this case OldFan doesn't need to be right for you to be wrong.

By definition those players ARE rare, or else they wouldn't be the most desired and sought after commodities. It's much more likely for young players to end up in the Erik Byrnes and Corey Patterson mold - not Arod or Pujols - or we'd have more players like the latter, not the former. For the dozens of excellent baseball players you can list, there are 10-50x as many minor leaguers who will never sniff the Bigs.

No this isn't my argument. I'm not the one trying to make an argument. This is what Oldfan is trying to change his argument to. Look if you or Oldfan want to make the argument that not all prospects pan out, then that is fine...but that is not what he was saying. He was saying that "For example, you are "banking" on the young talent developing to the maximum. Yet in reality this rarely happens."

Clearly there is a difference between saying that not all prospects pan out and that young talent rarely develops "to the maximum". All talent that "developed to the maximum" was young at one point.

[Lucky Jim]

No this isn't my argument. I'm not the one trying to make an argument. This is what Oldfan is trying to change his argument to. Look if you or Oldfan want to make the argument that not all prospects pan out, then that is fine...but that is not what he was saying. He was saying that "For example, you are "banking" on the young talent developing to the maximum. Yet in reality this rarely happens."

Clearly there is a difference between saying that not all prospects pan out and that young talent rarely develops "to the maximum". All talent that "developed to the maximum" was young at one point.

Hmmmm, Zepp. While I definitely side with you and the forces of light in your epic battle against 05F and the forces of darkness, I'm not sure about your logic here. There are three different statements:

1. Not all prospects pan out.

2. Young talent rarely develops to the maximum.

3. All superstars were once young.

1. is clearly right. The other two are problematic. 2. is problematic because it seems to imply that there is some "true talent" level that prospects don't live up to - i.e., they leave something on the table. But who's to say that failed prospects aren't living up to their talent but they're just not talented enough? 3., on the other hand, doesn't really operate as rebuttal. While all superstars were once young, that doesn't mean that we can say that it's not rare for prospects to develop to superstar levels, right?

Am I missing something?

[ledzepp8]

Hmmmm, Zepp. While I definitely side with you and the forces of light in your epic battle against 05F and the forces of darkness, I'm not sure about your logic here. There are three different statements:

1. Not all prospects pan out.

2. Young talent rarely develops to the maximum.

3. All superstars were once young.

1. is clearly right. The other two are problematic. 2. is problematic because it seems to imply that there is some "true talent" level that prospects don't live up to - i.e., they leave something on the table. But who's to say that failed prospects aren't living up to their talent but they're just not talented enough? 3., on the other hand, doesn't really operate as rebuttal. While all superstars were once young, that doesn't mean that we can say that it's not rare for prospects to develop to superstar levels, right?

Am I missing something?

I think my point was that I took O#5F's argument to mean that young players rarely develop into established/great players and that means we shouldn't count on ours and just go get premium free agents. My main point, and admittedly it was just to take a shot at one of O#5F's many ridiculous arguments, was that those premium free agents were once young players too. I guess what I was trying to get at in a round about way was that while not all young prospects pan out, all superstars were once young prospects.

Perhaps I'm interpreting that wrong but who knows. I really just took a little issue with the whole "young players rarely develop" argument.