96 replies to this topic

[BSLChrisStoner]

MASN: Hyde has reminder of unpleasant pitching problems that no longer exist

https://www.masnspor...no-longer-exist

[dude]

Yes, good problem to have.  This roster is better than that one.

 

...but comparing anything to a Team that didn't want to compete seems dumb.  That roster wasn't required to be that bad, it was done intentionally and the roster today has almost nothing to do with those years.

[mikezpen]

I think those teams-the players-wanted to compete. They just weren't good enough.

 

Elias was gaming the system by finishing at or near the bottom every year, but it never bothered me. I could see where he was going with it, and the talent growing in the minors was undeniably franchise-changing.You could see it.

 

And what the heck. Guys who w/never have gotten a chance in the Majors played as regulars for awhile.

[CantonJester]

I think those teams-the players-wanted to compete. They just weren't good enough.

 

Elias was gaming the system by finishing at or near the bottom every year, but it never bothered me. I could see where he was going with it, and the talent growing in the minors was undeniably franchise-changing.You could see it.

 

And what the heck. Guys who w/never have gotten a chance in the Majors played as regulars for awhile.

 

A single game nets them health coverage for life, and something like a month and a half in the bigs = you start at a $34k annual pension, and I think it goes up to something like $200k based on years played. 

 

It's not a bad gig if you can swing it. 

[BSLSteveBirrer]

A bit of a misleading piece. Yes those problems no longer exist. But the expectations are much higher now and we have new problems to deal with. 

[RShack]

When they had that situation before, it was during Elias's plan which turned this lifelong Orioles fan into barely just a fair-weather-only fan who checks the standings once every week or two.  So, I'm not impressed with progress when it's baseline is when they were throwing entire seasons...  not just throwing individual games, but throwing *multiple whole seasons*.

 

I'm glad you guys are enjoying this... I truly am. 

 

But I'm disheartened that many give Elias positive credit for doing such a thing... which is another thing that keeps me at arms length from this whole enterprise.

 

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to say that *you* aren't s'posed to enjoy it... just saying how it's changed what it means to me, that's all.

[BobPhelan]

What a fake fan.

[You Play to Win the Game]

When they had that situation before, it was during Elias's plan which turned this lifelong Orioles fan into barely just a fair-weather-only fan who checks the standings once every week or two. So, I'm not impressed with progress when it's baseline is when they were throwing entire seasons... not just throwing individual games, but throwing *multiple whole seasons*.

I'm glad you guys are enjoying this... I truly am.

But I'm disheartened that many give Elias positive credit for doing such a thing... which is another thing that keeps me at arms length from this whole enterprise.

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to say that *you* aren't s'posed to enjoy it... just saying how it's changed what it means to me, that's all.

I honestly get where you’re coming from. I think what Trust Fund Baby showed us these past couple years only further buoys Elias’s plan here. He wasn’t ever going to spend a dime on anything better. It takes conviction to literally toss multiple seasons to get to this place, but here we are. It will never make those lost seasons easier to accept, but as a fan who never in my lifetime did I think we’d be a force like this that hasn’t even reached their peek yet, I can respect the guy taking the long view. It’s not like Trust Fund Baby gave him a choice ($125M big league budget or rebuild). There was only one choice. And I realize I’ve flipped flop on this entirely. I own that.

Even if you can’t accept the throwing away of multiple seasons (it is an indisputable fact they did this), you have to respect the chops when it comes to scouting and development. Truly second to none. It’s mind blowing how insanely good they are at both.

So are you truly throwing away seasons, when the work being done org wide is the stuff of legend? When you master a bunch of the little things, big things become possible.

[TwentyThirtyFive]

IM baffled how people could remain fans under this ownership for so long but get to the 2019-21 Elias regime and that somehow be the breaking point. Especially now when we are on the other side and see all the positive results of the work they did under the hood during those years. Most importantly the club has new ownership. But I'd rather more people walk away and not rain on the parade like Shack has done vs   letting everyone know how miserable you are watching the team all the time.

[Mackus]

I abhorred the tanking.

Glad we're where we are now and I am able to enjoy it, but I don't think the tanking needed to happen to get here and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.

[TwentyThirtyFive]

I honestly get where you’re coming from. I think what Trust Fund Baby showed us these past couple years only further buoys Elias’s plan here. He wasn’t ever going to spend a dime on anything better. It takes conviction to literally toss multiple seasons to get to this place, but here we are. It will never make those lost seasons easier to accept, but as a fan who never in my lifetime did I think we’d be a force like this that hasn’t even reached their peek yet, I can respect the guy taking the long view. It’s not like Trust Fund Baby gave him a choice ($125M big league budget or rebuild). There was only one choice. And I realize I’ve flipped flop on this entirely. I own that.

Even if you can’t accept the throwing away of multiple seasons (it is an indisputable fact they did this), you have to respect the chops when it comes to scouting and development. Truly second to none. It’s mind blowing how insanely good they are at both.

So are you truly throwing away seasons, when the work being done org wide is the stuff of legend? When you master a bunch of the little things, big things become possible.

Exactly. Whoever was brought in by Angelos was going to slash the payroll way down, tank, and have a rebuild program put in place. Elias was def on board with that but DD wouldve been happy to stay on and try his hand at it. So would a bunch of other people. So even if you hate the direction ownership has ordered I dont understand disliking the man who made the best lemonade you could make after being given the lemons.

[RichardZ]

Whatever.

[RShack]

Exactly. Whoever was brought in by Angelos was going to slash the payroll way down, tank, and have a rebuild program put in place. Elias was def on board with that but DD wouldve been happy to stay on and try his hand at it. So would a bunch of other people. So even if you hate the direction ownership has ordered I dont understand disliking the man who made the best lemonade you could make after being given the lemons.

 

I'm not saying anybody is s'posed to look at like I do.  If you're happy with it, then I'm happy for you.

 

To me, if you throw a single game that's cheating.  Any player who is caught doing it would be banned, probably for life.

 

To me, if it's wrong to throw a single game, then it's wrong to intentionally throw multiple seasons.  It's the same damn thing, just a lot bigger.  

 

I'm not aiming any of this at Elias.  He had his orders, and he did what he was hired to do. I'm not aiming it at anybody.

 

But for me, the Orioles, my team, dishonored the game by throwing games whole seasons at a time, season after season.  That affected me. Here's what you need to understand: I didn't choose to take any stance about it.  Rather, it made me sick. 

 

I'm not saying I won't watch some games if I get them for free.  I might even pay a few bucks to watch some if I can do it for cheap.  I click on highlights when they come up, which means I see a lot of dingers and maybe a few K's.  When I get back to BAL, I might even go to a game if my brother wants to. But the Baltimore Orioles will never mean the same thing to me that they did for about 60 years. What they did goes against everything I was taught about the integrity of the game. 

 

I grew up on Brooks, not on what devolved into an outfit that decided to throw a couple hundred ballgames.  I didn't choose to have that reaction to what they did.  In my personal experience, it happened to me. Simple as that. 

 

Like I said, if you're happy, then I'm happy for you.  Honest, I am.  But I just doesn't matter to me the way it always did before.  That's just how it is.  Like I said, I didn't choose that, it happened to me.

 

EDIT: I'm not trying to bum you out.  I know it's special for everybody here.   I'll just shut up now and let you get on with enjoying it. I hope you have fun all the way thru to a happy ending.

[TwentyThirtyFive]

 If tanking should get you banned then there are a lot of owners/ executives across all of pro sports that would be banned. The one thing I'll never really understand is why for some there is such a big difference between this  tanking and what they did for numerous years under McPhail. The payroll may not have been slashed at the same rate but there was no effort to contend for a 3 or 4 year stretch in the late 2000s- early 2010s. 

 

 

 

To each their own. Im sorry that the passion went away for some Os fans  and they won't be able to enjoy a run that should be, and hopefully will be, close to what we saw from this franchise in the '70s

[BSLSteveBirrer]

There is, IMO, a clear distinction between tanking and throwing games. They went out and played to the best of their ability every night. It's just that their abilities were woefully inadequate.

But it's a super easy fix if baseball wanted to do so. Salary wins and true caps. And I only support a min with a max.

As an owner why force me to spend X amount of dollars when X is just not going to win against the mega payrolls. I get Mackus' point about being more competitive but the reality is that winning 70 games does you no more than winning 60 games and in fact might make you worse off long term.

[BSLRoseKatz]

I abhorred the tanking.

Glad we're where we are now and I am able to enjoy it, but I don't think the tanking needed to happen to get here and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.

 

Yeah I've found the idea of tanking kind of funny because if the premise is "I, as the GM, need to make the draft as easy possible for multiple years" then shouldn't really be a GM in the first place if you can't successfully rebuild if you end up with the #5 pick instead of the #1 pick. Gunnar, Mayo, Westburg, etc have proven that the Elias front office can find major leaguers (Mayo isn't yet, but you get the point) without needing the #1 pick where I think it's both a credit to their scouting/development and makes the insistence of needing to be that bad for that long look more suspect with the hindsight of what the non-top 5 picks have become  

[BSLRoseKatz]

There is, IMO, a clear distinction between tanking and throwing games. They went out and played to the best of their ability every night. It's just that their abilities were woefully inadequate.

But it's a super easy fix if baseball wanted to do so. Salary wins and true caps. And I only support a min with a max.

As an owner why force me to spend X amount of dollars when X is just not going to win against the mega payrolls. I get Mackus' point about being more competitive but the reality is that winning 70 games does you no more than winning 60 games and in fact might make you worse off long term.

 

As the 2022 Orioles will show you, the argument is you should always spend at least a little bit in case your 60-win roster is actually an 80-win roster that could be a playoff roster if the free agent additions weren't Rougned Odor and Jordan Lyles and if it's actually a 60-win roster then they, flip the competent veterans on 1-year deals for more prospect depth 

[CantonJester]

There is, IMO, a clear distinction between tanking and throwing games. They went out and played to the best of their ability every night. It's just that their abilities were woefully inadequate.

But it's a super easy fix if baseball wanted to do so. Salary wins and true caps. And I only support a min with a max.

As an owner why force me to spend X amount of dollars when X is just not going to win against the mega payrolls. I get Mackus' point about being more competitive but the reality is that winning 70 games does you no more than winning 60 games and in fact might make you worse off long term.

 

Eh. Throwing games is where the players go out and pooch a key play or three to lose games. 

 

Tanking is where an owner sends an edict down to the front office to field a non-competitive team in order to procure a great draft position.

 

Two sides of the same coin, really, but the latter is allowed / tacitly encouraged in today's game while the former is obviously forbidden. 

[BSLRoseKatz]

Eh. Throwing games is where the players go out and pooch a key play or three to lose games. 

 

Tanking is where an owner sends an edict down to the front office to field a non-competitive team in order to procure a great draft position.

 

Two sides of the same coin, really, but the latter is allowed / tacitly encouraged in today's game while the former is obviously forbidden. 

 

Just for fun, the 1919 Black Sox had a better winning percentage in the WS than the 2019 or 2021 Orioles lol

[You Play to Win the Game]

I'm not saying anybody is s'posed to look at like I do. If you're happy with it, then I'm happy for you.

To me, if you throw a single game that's cheating. Any player who is caught doing it would be banned, probably for life.

To me, if it's wrong to throw a single game, then it's wrong to intentionally throw multiple seasons. It's the same damn thing, just a lot bigger.

I'm not aiming any of this at Elias. He had his orders, and he did what he was hired to do. I'm not aiming it at anybody.

But for me, the Orioles, my team, dishonored the game by throwing games whole seasons at a time, season after season. That affected me. Here's what you need to understand: I didn't choose to take any stance about it. Rather, it made me sick.

I'm not saying I won't watch some games if I get them for free. I might even pay a few bucks to watch some if I can do it for cheap. I click on highlights when they come up, which means I see a lot of dingers and maybe a few K's. When I get back to BAL, I might even go to a game if my brother wants to. But the Baltimore Orioles will never mean the same thing to me that they did for about 60 years. What they did goes against everything I was taught about the integrity of the game.

I grew up on Brooks, not on what devolved into an outfit that decided to throw a couple hundred ballgames. I didn't choose to have that reaction to what they did. In my personal experience, it happened to me. Simple as that.

Like I said, if you're happy, then I'm happy for you. Honest, I am. But I just doesn't matter to me the way it always did before. That's just how it is. Like I said, I didn't choose that, it happened to me.

EDIT: I'm not trying to bum you out. I know it's special for everybody here. I'll just shut up now and let you get on with enjoying it. I hope you have fun all the way thru to a happy ending.

I’ll take you to a game. Don’t let it rely on your brothers. You deserve to feel this fully. Your points aren’t invalid. I’ve just chosen to let it go. Life is too short. You know damn well at the time it made me livid. But here we are. You deserve to enjoy this. Unfortunately, there’s a precedent for this kind of team building and, well, it works. I’m dead serious, I’ll take you to a game. I’ll buy your beer too. You’re good peeps, Shack. 2035, you can come too. You too Pedro.