The flaw to "grow the arms."

[Lucky Jim]

Toronto's rotation averages 25.4 years old, and will probably get a bit younger now that they have cut 26 yo Dana Eveland; not sure who will replace him but they don't have any older replacements that appear likely.

Our rotation averages 27 years old.

Our starting lineup has 3 guys under 30 in it (would be 4 if Reimold was up).

Toronto's starting lineup has 6 guys under 30.

Yeah, we are such a young team, we have to suffer these "growing pains". Perfectling f---ing normal.

And in a year, what will it average?

[Sports Guy]

And in a year, what will it average?

Well, we will still that vet presence, so who knows.

[SteveA]

And in a year, what will it average?

Probably about 25. Either Guthrie or Millwood will be gone, which will shave about 8/5 of a year off the average, but the guys there will each be one year older. So it will go down a bit. Obviiously a lot more of both Guthrie and Millwood are gone and no veteran is added.

My point was, however, that RZNJ is excusing this crap play we have seen as normal, to-be-expected "growing pains" due to our being a young team. And I am pointing out that we are NOT that young a team. Whether we are younger next year or not is pretty much irrelevant to my argument.

[Lucky Jim]

1) Toronto's offense is playing over its head...Not sure about the pitching though...They have been consistently good, pitching wise, over the last few years..their pens have been especially good...They seem to understand how to put one together.

2) I don't think anyone is saying to abandon things, at least those who supported it before...But their is more to the plan than just the players you are acquiring.

If you go by the Jay's advanced stats (FIP and xFIP) they've actually been unlucky. But that's not much of a sample.

[OregonBird]

Yes...they need to have SOMETHING.

All they seem to have now is chaos.

People say we don't know...yea, there is some truth to that.

But we know what we see...We know we see Toronto have little offensive talent and trade the best pitcher in the world, but yet they still win.

We know we see the Orioles continue to bring up guys that look lost...that aren't developed.

We hear from people on here that rome wasn't built in a day...You know what other teams fans probably say that? Pitt and KC...you know, the "other 2" pathetic franchises.

This is the most frustrating thing IMO. If you've already thrown in the towel on acquiring impact FAs the least you could do is to have an organizational philosophy. I mean, developing selective hitters or developing pitchers to pound the strikezone isn't that hard.

[Lucky Jim]

Probably about 25. Either Guthrie or Millwood will be gone, which will shave about 8/5 of a year off the average, but the guys there will each be one year older. So it will go down a bit. Obviiously a lot more of both Guthrie and Millwood are gone and no veteran is added.

My point was, however, that RZNJ is excusing this crap play we have seen as normal, to-be-expected "growing pains" due to our being a young team. And I am pointing out that we are NOT that young a team. Whether we are younger next year or not is pretty much irrelevant to my argument.

Let's take a different approach: our "true talent" is young. Unfortunately, we're fielding a team that doesn't, yet, have most of its "true talent" on the field. In other words, we're not young because we have stop-gaps in place of our youth, while we wait patiently. Stop-gaps are never going to be particularly good.

In other words, you're both right. We're not "young," in the literal sense. But our emphasis on waiting on our youth is the reason for our slow start.

[Sports Guy]

Probably about 25. Either Guthrie or Millwood will be gone, which will shave about 8/5 of a year off the average, but the guys there will each be one year older. So it will go down a bit. Obviiously a lot more of both Guthrie and Millwood are gone and no veteran is added.

My point was, however, that RZNJ is excusing this crap play we have seen as normal, to-be-expected "growing pains" due to our being a young team. And I am pointing out that we are NOT that young a team. Whether we are younger next year or not is pretty much irrelevant to my argument.

Not only are they young but they just traded their Bedard.

We traded ours a few years ago, have more talent than Toronto, play in the same division, have more resources and yet, we are miles behind them right now.

How does that get explained?

[SteveA]

Let's take a different approach: our "true talent" is young. Unfortunately, we're fielding a team that doesn't, yet, have most of its "true talent" on the field. In other words, we're not young because we have stop-gaps in place of our youth, while we wait patiently. Stop-gaps are never going to be particularly good.

In other words, you're both right. We're not "young," in the literal sense. But our emphasis on waiting on our youth is the reason for our slow start.

Of course some of the talent that we are "waiting on" is beginning to appear to be not as strong as we had hoped. As recently as a year ago, Arrietta was one of "the big 3", now a lot of people see him as a potential bullpen arm. Yes, valuable, but you don't rebuild around bullpen arms. Brandon Snyder does not appear to be a long term solution at 1B, nor do we appear to have one in the system. Bell may never field his position well enough to play third in the majors and he also may be at best a platoon player due to his inability to hit lefties. Maybe we can fool the Yankees into taking him as a fulltime player like the Tigers did with platoon-player Granderson, do the Yankees have another Austin Jackson and Ian Kennedy they want to rid themselves of?

And we could have done a heck of a lot better on some of our "stopgap" moves than we did. This is not just 20/20 hindsight, the Atkins and Gonzalez signings were both strongly questioned on this board at the time they happened.

No, I'm not ready to abandon MacPhail or the "plan". But as the early election returns begin to come in, they are starting to look very disappointing. It's early enough on election night that we are just looking at a few exit polls and key precincts and extrapolating the results, so I realize a lot can change, but the picture being painted so far is that my candidate is not doing very well. Maybe too early to be working on a concession speech, but I don't think there's a lot of happy music being played in campaign headquarters right now.

[SrMeowMeow]

Not only are they young but they just traded their Bedard.

We traded ours a few years ago, have more talent than Toronto, play in the same division, have more resources and yet, we are miles behind them right now.

How does that get explained?

In what way are we miles behind them? Seeing as you agree that we have more talent and more resources.

[Shopay]

Jones, Pie, Reimold, Wieters, Markakis are 5 guys under 30 who are expected to be part of the future. Pie is hurt and Reimold is temporarily a mental mess. Our rotation is still in the process of being formed. The chances of 4/5 of the rotation being 25 or less next year is pretty strong, with Bergesen, Matusz, Tillman, and maybe Arrieta or Britton. It's a work in progress. When the tough gets going, GIVE UP THE PLAN!!

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor! All kidding aside, I agree, this would be the worst time to give up on the plan. Yeah it sucks right now, but I hope AM guts it out. I hope he doesn't get pressured into some rash and, in the long term, bad decisions by this year's performance. He's overall approach is correct. There may need to be some tweaking, but the approach is sound.

[SteveA]

Don't put words in my mouth, Stevey. I never said I excused the play of this team or it's record entirely on it's youth. However, one of the main reasons it is underperforming is because of the "growing pains" of that youthful core. Obviously, Wieters, Jones, Reimold, Pie, Matusz, have not played their best or hit their stride yet. If they were performing up to expectations we'd be in a lot better shape. Injuries have certainly been a factor as well. Even that doesn't excuse some of the sloppy play. In the end, that falls on the manager.

Sorry if I overstated your case. I was responding to this:

Toronto is clearly playing over their head. If you want to use them as a comparison, be my guest. Going with young guys means going through the pain before you gain.

But don't put words in my mouth either. I have never said I am giving up on the plan or abandoning it, as you implied in another post. I am disappointed with the progress that has been made so far. The date for potential contending keepds receding in the distance.... let's face it, 2011 is probably out, as the record we put on the field this year would probably require a once-in-a-lifetime 30 game turnaround to be able to contend in 2011, and the Orioles had that once-in-a-lifetime turnaround in 1989. So now we are talking about maybe contending in 2012. And that is IF our minor league system produces guys to fill the holes currently filled with "stopgaps" and I don't see a lot of evidence that that is in progress. Maybe 2013? Oh wait, when do we start losing our "nucleus" as free agents (or even have them become arbitration eligible; by 2012 our attendance trend probably means we will have about 5,000 season tickets sold and will be drawing less than a million, we probably will have to trade all our arb-eligible players because we won't be able to afford them. Unless the Nats are 3 time defending World Champs and Angelos is raking in enough MASN money from them to keep a couple of arb-eligible guys).

[Lucky Jim]

Of course some of the talent that we are "waiting on" is beginning to appear to be not as strong as we had hoped. As recently as a year ago, Arrietta was one of "the big 3", now a lot of people see him as a potential bullpen arm. Yes, valuable, but you don't rebuild around bullpen arms. Brandon Snyder does not appear to be a long term solution at 1B, nor do we appear to have one in the system. Bell may never field his position well enough to play third in the majors and he also may be at best a platoon player due to his inability to hit lefties. Maybe we can fool the Yankees into taking him as a fulltime player like the Tigers did with platoon-player Granderson, do the Yankees have another Austin Jackson and Ian Kennedy they want to rid themselves of?

And we could have done a heck of a lot better on some of our "stopgap" moves than we did. This is not just 20/20 hindsight, the Atkins and Gonzalez signings were both strongly questioned on this board at the time they happened.

No, I'm not ready to abandon MacPhail or the "plan". But as the early election returns begin to come in, they are starting to look very disappointing. It's early enough on election night that we are just looking at a few exit polls and key precincts and extrapolating the results, so I realize a lot can change, but the picture being painted so far is that my candidate is not doing very well. Maybe too early to be working on a concession speech, but I don't think there's a lot of happy music being played in campaign headquarters right now.

I think Snyder is the only thing that's really changed: everyone else is simply giving us more information. And let's not start pretending that 40 games by Bell at 3B in Norfolk has really changed anything. There are questions with every prospect generally. But clearly, stopgaps were the right call, until more information was available. I don't think Bell stops us from signing anyone, nor will Snyder. We would have preferred if they asserted themselves. Now we know.

I always assumed we'd need to sing a 1B long-term, or trade for one. My guess is we package a veteran and a prospect arm or two to unlodge one as the season goes on. Just a guess. Doing this cuts into our avenues for finding a long-term SS, though. And that's painful.

That said, Arrieta is actually, in some ways, a better prospect now than he was last year, so I'm not sure how you note that as a "decline" in value. His real decline in value has been relative: Britton has surpassed him. I'm not surprised with that, myself, as I was bullish on Britton early - the improving K-rates and high GB% are the two most important metrics for me. We have a bounty of young arms behind Matusz, Tillman, Arietta, and Britton. Including Bergesen. In two years, pitching will be the least of our concerns, and our rotation will likely average about 25 years old and cost, in total, less than Millwood does this year.

Atkins was a terrible signing. We'll see if Gonzalez is, but clearly no production through 40 games and injury is annoying at best.

In sum: we need a decent Jones, a good Wieters, a good Markakis, a good Reimold or Felix, a decent Bell/Snyder. And from there we go to work. It's not going to be easy, of course. It rarely is. Ideally, two of those (odds to me say Wieters and Jones) will produce way above "good." If they do, then the pressure to find outside, high-value talent diminishes. If they don't, it's going to be very expensive.

Nothing has gone well this year, in any way. So it's no surprise that things look bleak. But that kind of trend - missing on every prospect - isn't likely to continue. It will look better by end-of-year.

[SteveA]

I think Snyder is the only thing that's really changed: everyone else is simply giving us more information. And let's not start pretending that 40 games by Bell at 3B in Norfolk has really changed anything. There are questions with every prospect generally. But clearly, stopgaps were the right call, until more information was available. I don't think Bell stops us from signing anyone, nor will Snyder. We would have preferred if they asserted themselves. Now we know.

I always assumed we'd need to sing a 1B long-term, or trade for one. My guess is we package a veteran and a prospect arm or two to unlodge one as the season goes on. Just a guess. Doing this cuts into our avenues for finding a long-term SS, though. And that's painful.

That said, Arrieta is actually, in some ways, a better prospect now than he was last year, so I'm not sure how you note that as a "decline" in value. His real decline in value has been relative: Britton has surpassed him. I'm not surprised with that, myself, as I was bullish on Britton early - the improving K-rates and high GB% are the two most important metrics for me. We have a bounty of young arms behind Matusz, Tillman, Arietta, and Britton. Including Bergesen. In two years, pitching will be the least of our concerns, and our rotation will likely average about 25 years old and cost, in total, less than Millwood does this year.

Atkins was a terrible signing. We'll see if Gonzalez is, but clearly no production through 40 games and injury is annoying at best.

In sum: we need a decent Jones, a good Wieters, a good Markakis, a good Reimold or Felix, a decent Bell/Snyder. And from there we go to work. It's not going to be easy, of course. It rarely is. Ideally, two of those (odds to me say Wieters and Jones) will produce way above "good." If they do, then the pressure to find outside, high-value talent diminishes. If they don't, it's going to be very expensive.

Nothing has gone well this year, in any way. So it's no surprise that things look bleak. But that kind of trend - missing on every prospect - isn't likely to continue. It will look better by end-of-year.

I truly respect your ability to watch this team daily and remain optomistic.

Three weeks ago, we looked at the 19 game span that ended today, against a bunch of teams that were .500-ish or below, and said, let's see if maybe the team can go 10-9 in that streatch against lesser competition. Most people agreed that 9-10 or 10-9 was a reasonable goal to shoot for. After all, our early schedule was brutal and that was used to excuse some of our record to that point.

Well, we went 6-13.

[SrMeowMeow]

I truly respect your ability to watch this team daily and remain optomistic.

Three weeks ago, we looked at the 19 game span that ended today, against a bunch of teams that were .500-ish or below, and said, let's see if maybe the team can go 10-9 in that streatch against lesser competition. Most people agreed that 9-10 or 10-9 was a reasonable goal to shoot for. After all, our early schedule was brutal and that was used to excuse some of our record to that point.

Well, we went 6-13.

I don't think it's optimism.

[Sports Guy]

In what way are we miles behind them? Seeing as you agree that we have more talent and more resources.

1) Standings

2) Development/coaching

3) Structure

4) International

5) Scouting