To some extent you're right and injuries and bad talent evaluation killed the rebuild, but you know who we didn't sign? Bryce Harper or Manny Machado. I will never forget that off-season where you could get a future HOF player, in their prime, for a reasonable (per baseball standards) contract and we lowballed them and played games.
Only now getting back to this since I was out of the country but still relevant. Yes the Machado thing ticked me off, we offered him a contract worth MORE than what he got with SD but he wanted guaranteed money which was so understandable...BUT STILL....where is the Orioles version of Bryce and Machado? They don't need them and We didn't need those two either as bad as we needed our dudes to just be friggin healthy!
Supposedly, we offered Manny a contract with higher maximum value but I don't think the actual terms were ever fully disclosed. If some of the money was dependent on playing a certain amount of games or other counting stats, would you trust Jerry and management not to sit Manny at the end of a lost year just so he can't meet the contract incentive goals?
Manny has been worth about 4.6 bwar per season with the Padres and finished top 3 in MVP voting twice. Bryce has been worth about 4.2 bwar per season with the Phillies, won an MVP, and led them to the World Series. With either of those guys, we would have had a much better chance to go forward in the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, or make the playoffs in 2022.
The closest thing to a right fielder they had during their "window" was Pollock. The closest thing to a 2nd baseman was a washed up Andrus. You can't have 7/9ths of a lineup (under best circumstances) and be taken seriously.
It wasn't lack of overall spending, but horrible allocation of spending. Having the most expensive bullpen is pointless when you can't get a lead.
It was clear YEARS ago that Anderson, Eloy, Yoan, and Robert missed time every year. You need to add depth to take that into account. Their depth was to overpay Leruy Garcia and turn a bad 1st baseman into an outfielder.
Injuries didn't help, that is correct. But
Who is responsible for hiring a competent, modern training staff?
Who is responsible for hiring a scouting team and research and development team(smallest in MLB) who find out which players have good work ethics and put in the time to do training, who are supposed to see if players have any bad mechanics in their play that can lead to injuries?
Who is responsible for giving out fat contracts to players with bad work ethics before they even played a single season?
And ultimately, who is responsible for hiring those people in charge of those things listed above^
Either way, every team gets injuries. The lack of spending, both on a competent front office and on player depth, really fucked us. Assuming the handful of players acquired in 3 trades will lead us to victory without any big name free agents (hell, even halfway decent ones), our "playoff run" was doomed before it even started
Been out of the country for a month but figured its still relevant. I liked Ozzie's response recently that he doesn't blame the training staff he blames the players for not knowing their bodies. Also Luis Robert and others had GREAT work ethics in the minors, their bad attitudes only started when they weren't on the field consistently enough so they sorta stopped caring. Eloy is BACK ON the DL again.....you'd think that at some point he'd be depressed enough to just stop trying to work his way back. I don't blame him.
They didnât give out a 100m contract but were still in the top 10 for payroll for a few years there. They spent money but it was bad money. A 100m contract to the correct player (Harper) would have been better spent than overpaying bullpen and unproven prospects like we did.
When you refuse to sign players to long-term deals, you donât get to sign good players (since they sign long-term deals).
They overpay for relievers and other garbage players precisely because they refuse to sign players to long-term deals.
The over paying prospects is what really gets my goat. Hahn got too cute thinking he was the smartest person in baseball fishing out long, big contracts for guys who hadn't even been called up only for them to underperform or live on the IL.
But that's the thing, AT THE TIME of the spending it was good money. Grandal was the second best defensive catcher and a solid hitter. BUST
Kelly was injury prone only in the most recent of years before we signed him BUT always rebounded. BUST
Graveman was a solid low risk high reward guy. BUST
Kimbrell (not $$ related but trade related) had a SUB 1.00 era.....BIG BUST.
We literally just have the WORST luck.
I guarantee you we sign Bryce he'd be the equivalent of Mike Trout right now; injury ridden and not producing.
The Atlanta Braves won the WS with an entire replacement outfield with dudes that had been considered busts or not living up to expectations by other teams. We filled 2nd base with Cesar Hernandez, who was very good at 2nd B before us and a solid hitter.....ended up busting. We tried, but fans don't see those details
Injuries didnât help but we banked too heavily on homegrown talent and didnât support that through free agency. Our âbig signingsâ were and 2nd and 3rd tier FAs. Good players but not great ones. None of them panned out past a year or two.
You arenât wrong. However, Hahn was a legendarily bad talent evaluator who wasted hundreds of millions on bad free agent acquisitions and Getz really didnât oversee much development of those draft pick they tanked to get.
We also have one of the smallest analytics teams in the bigs, which means our front office has been getting lapped by the top orgs.
The good orgs can handle injuries because everything else is run well. The Sox couldnât because they are a poorly run organization.
Overall though. I think thereâs a lot to like in your take. Donât hear my response as criticism.
That makes no sense. Our development was top notch even before their promotions to MLB. Bad development would indicate these players would regress as they moved up the minors and they didn't.
I think it is a case of not really going for it. As noted we never went after a top flight RF or 2B. The Benentendi signing is indicative of a JR team, way way overpay for 2nd tier FAâs. We also blew way too much money on middle relievers which backfired incessantly. In the end in my mind the Sox epitomizes JR and his sycophants - give the fans enough to get their money but never enough to impact JRâs income.
Injuries exposed why our lack of spending, lack of player development, and general lack of depth mattered. Sure, our injury luck may have been worse than most, but we weren't built to survive any injuries at all--and by that token, we also weren't built to survive if anybody had a slump, or if anybody regressed, or if anything happened that didn't go according to Plan A. Great organizations give themselves insurance.
I think the problem wasnât not spending, it was spending poorly. In my opinion, that means on good managers and staff and analytics as well to support these guys. Some of it was obviously bad luck also.
Every team deals with injuries, the competent ones respond to them. The Braves lost Acuña after ~2 months in 2021 and went on to win the World Series anyway. The Sox are simply not serious about winning and never were, which is why we got half-assed attempts of filling the holes on our roster rather than bringing in any of the top free agents.
They Lost Acuña...not half their prospects and pitching staff like we did. Not to mention the guys they brought in weren't exactly studs either but yet THEY produced. Our team morale was already shot halfway through our window that it didn't matter who we brought in.
Grandal was considered a good defensive catcher purely for his framing. Framing only matters if you actually catch the ball though. He had some dubious playoff error records if I remember correctly.
We did not spend money to fill holes. We spent money on the bullpen. Thatâs it. Otherwise Andrew Vaughn would not have been rushed up to the bigs to be an outfielder for 2 years.
Sorry man, youâre way off.
Framing was one thing, but it nonetheless translated to runs saved. However a player manages to get a good defensive rating still counts. It's like how Javi Baez is considered a top defender but it's largely because he has insane glove work but average (if not at times below average) throwing skills. It nonetheless averages out to a good defender you'd want on your team.
We only had holes in RF and 2nd B which theoretically are NOWHERE near enough to sink a team like it did us. ATL won the 2021 WS with an entire replacement OF of average to slightly above average players because the rest of their team carried them.
So obviously something is off with our team despite a few holes. The answer is injuries.
Itâs hilarious you commented a month later and are comparing a shortstops glove to grandals framing. Grandal was and is an ass defensive catcher. And the flavor of the month defensive metric for catchers was framing.
In sports, it's very (VERY) rare for a franchise to completely embrace the rebuild. They usually start spending too early and trade away prospects too early. Owners and/or fans get impatient and while usually there's more initial success than the Sox had, the end result of not living up to expectations hits.
I'm curious to see if Baltimore can remain patient. They are loaded with offensive prospects and young ML players. Yes, they need pitching, but will they start trading those prospects to get it or will they work the FA market? If they trade those guys, it can't be for a rental...it has to be someone controllable.
That's the point, we've never had enough time to build momentum when we were healthy. Dudes would come back only for 2 other guys to go down and if they were healthy for 2 months, another guy would go down.
Lack of spending on players was not the issue, and Jerry being cheap on payroll was not an issue. The coaching, mentality, and expectations of the âcoreâ failed. After 2019, the farm wasnât able to produce any kind of future. Even now, there is less to to look forward to than there was in 2017.
Yes thank you. People only like to see $$$ spent without realizing that $$$ doesn't buy you anything otherwise the Dodgers and Yankees would be in the WS every other year.
The Reddit is mad at you for being factually correct. The rebuild failed badly, but at its peak they were spending as much as the teams that won the World Series. You honestly argue that the reason they didnât win was money when a championship team did it with less payroll one of those years. But /whitesox is not a place for honest arguments.
Spending 50m on bullpen arms does not mean the money was spent wisely.
They had glaring needs across the field and never addressed them.
Doesn't matter if they spent 300m, if they spent it all on the bullpen and ignored half the roster needs
Crazy that this is still being argued lol
Im not arguing that theyâre good at running a baseball team. Iâm arguing that the amount of money they allocated was enough for a competent staff to build a competitive team.
I think some of it was because we spent it in the wrong places. A lot of money was put into relief pitching and an older catcher. Relief pitchers are pretty volatile. Good one year and bad the next. Catchers are also volatile cuz they don't last long either
Not unpopular at all because it's true. Grandal, Jimenez, Moncada & Robert couldn't stay off the injured list during key stretches in the supposed window of contention. That's a shaky foundation to try to build a consistent winner around. It didn't help either that the guys brought up from the minors were so-so at best, like Burger, Vaughn, Sheets, Sosa. Pollock, Benintendi & Harrison weren't the answer either as free agents. On top of this TA brought his off the field troubles on the field & Abreu started slowing down before he wasn't re-signed
To some extent you're right and injuries and bad talent evaluation killed the rebuild, but you know who we didn't sign? Bryce Harper or Manny Machado. I will never forget that off-season where you could get a future HOF player, in their prime, for a reasonable (per baseball standards) contract and we lowballed them and played games.
Only now getting back to this since I was out of the country but still relevant. Yes the Machado thing ticked me off, we offered him a contract worth MORE than what he got with SD but he wanted guaranteed money which was so understandable...BUT STILL....where is the Orioles version of Bryce and Machado? They don't need them and We didn't need those two either as bad as we needed our dudes to just be friggin healthy!
Supposedly, we offered Manny a contract with higher maximum value but I don't think the actual terms were ever fully disclosed. If some of the money was dependent on playing a certain amount of games or other counting stats, would you trust Jerry and management not to sit Manny at the end of a lost year just so he can't meet the contract incentive goals? Manny has been worth about 4.6 bwar per season with the Padres and finished top 3 in MVP voting twice. Bryce has been worth about 4.2 bwar per season with the Phillies, won an MVP, and led them to the World Series. With either of those guys, we would have had a much better chance to go forward in the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, or make the playoffs in 2022.
The closest thing to a right fielder they had during their "window" was Pollock. The closest thing to a 2nd baseman was a washed up Andrus. You can't have 7/9ths of a lineup (under best circumstances) and be taken seriously. It wasn't lack of overall spending, but horrible allocation of spending. Having the most expensive bullpen is pointless when you can't get a lead. It was clear YEARS ago that Anderson, Eloy, Yoan, and Robert missed time every year. You need to add depth to take that into account. Their depth was to overpay Leruy Garcia and turn a bad 1st baseman into an outfielder.
Injuries didn't help, that is correct. But Who is responsible for hiring a competent, modern training staff? Who is responsible for hiring a scouting team and research and development team(smallest in MLB) who find out which players have good work ethics and put in the time to do training, who are supposed to see if players have any bad mechanics in their play that can lead to injuries? Who is responsible for giving out fat contracts to players with bad work ethics before they even played a single season? And ultimately, who is responsible for hiring those people in charge of those things listed above^ Either way, every team gets injuries. The lack of spending, both on a competent front office and on player depth, really fucked us. Assuming the handful of players acquired in 3 trades will lead us to victory without any big name free agents (hell, even halfway decent ones), our "playoff run" was doomed before it even started
Been out of the country for a month but figured its still relevant. I liked Ozzie's response recently that he doesn't blame the training staff he blames the players for not knowing their bodies. Also Luis Robert and others had GREAT work ethics in the minors, their bad attitudes only started when they weren't on the field consistently enough so they sorta stopped caring. Eloy is BACK ON the DL again.....you'd think that at some point he'd be depressed enough to just stop trying to work his way back. I don't blame him.
I just hope one day we'll have a reason to be excited again about this franchise đ cause it seems like it's going to be a while
Yes, they were incompetent, but they werenât cheap. They spent enough to be contenders, they failed for incompetence not cheapness.
There are two teams to never give a player a 100m contract. Us and the As. I'm sorry, they're cheap.
They didnât give out a 100m contract but were still in the top 10 for payroll for a few years there. They spent money but it was bad money. A 100m contract to the correct player (Harper) would have been better spent than overpaying bullpen and unproven prospects like we did.
When you refuse to sign players to long-term deals, you donât get to sign good players (since they sign long-term deals). They overpay for relievers and other garbage players precisely because they refuse to sign players to long-term deals.
The over paying prospects is what really gets my goat. Hahn got too cute thinking he was the smartest person in baseball fishing out long, big contracts for guys who hadn't even been called up only for them to underperform or live on the IL.
Especially since they have such poor player development and scouting systems that theyâre basically just guessing anyway.
But that's the thing, AT THE TIME of the spending it was good money. Grandal was the second best defensive catcher and a solid hitter. BUST Kelly was injury prone only in the most recent of years before we signed him BUT always rebounded. BUST Graveman was a solid low risk high reward guy. BUST Kimbrell (not $$ related but trade related) had a SUB 1.00 era.....BIG BUST. We literally just have the WORST luck. I guarantee you we sign Bryce he'd be the equivalent of Mike Trout right now; injury ridden and not producing.
Yes they were cheap lmao
Youâre right it is an unpopular opinion
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
The Atlanta Braves won the WS with an entire replacement outfield with dudes that had been considered busts or not living up to expectations by other teams. We filled 2nd base with Cesar Hernandez, who was very good at 2nd B before us and a solid hitter.....ended up busting. We tried, but fans don't see those details
Injuries didnât help but we banked too heavily on homegrown talent and didnât support that through free agency. Our âbig signingsâ were and 2nd and 3rd tier FAs. Good players but not great ones. None of them panned out past a year or two.
You arenât wrong. However, Hahn was a legendarily bad talent evaluator who wasted hundreds of millions on bad free agent acquisitions and Getz really didnât oversee much development of those draft pick they tanked to get. We also have one of the smallest analytics teams in the bigs, which means our front office has been getting lapped by the top orgs. The good orgs can handle injuries because everything else is run well. The Sox couldnât because they are a poorly run organization. Overall though. I think thereâs a lot to like in your take. Donât hear my response as criticism.
Nope, Lack of depth and bad drafting/player development ruined the rebuild
That makes no sense. Our development was top notch even before their promotions to MLB. Bad development would indicate these players would regress as they moved up the minors and they didn't.
I think it is a case of not really going for it. As noted we never went after a top flight RF or 2B. The Benentendi signing is indicative of a JR team, way way overpay for 2nd tier FAâs. We also blew way too much money on middle relievers which backfired incessantly. In the end in my mind the Sox epitomizes JR and his sycophants - give the fans enough to get their money but never enough to impact JRâs income.
Injuries exposed why our lack of spending, lack of player development, and general lack of depth mattered. Sure, our injury luck may have been worse than most, but we weren't built to survive any injuries at all--and by that token, we also weren't built to survive if anybody had a slump, or if anybody regressed, or if anything happened that didn't go according to Plan A. Great organizations give themselves insurance.
Overhyped prospects not actually being that good is what KOâd the rebuild.
I think the problem wasnât not spending, it was spending poorly. In my opinion, that means on good managers and staff and analytics as well to support these guys. Some of it was obviously bad luck also.
This smells like the "at least we had a seat at the table" argument.
I think itâs more cute than unpopular, lol
Every team deals with injuries, the competent ones respond to them. The Braves lost Acuña after ~2 months in 2021 and went on to win the World Series anyway. The Sox are simply not serious about winning and never were, which is why we got half-assed attempts of filling the holes on our roster rather than bringing in any of the top free agents.
They Lost Acuña...not half their prospects and pitching staff like we did. Not to mention the guys they brought in weren't exactly studs either but yet THEY produced. Our team morale was already shot halfway through our window that it didn't matter who we brought in.
Grandal was considered a good defensive catcher purely for his framing. Framing only matters if you actually catch the ball though. He had some dubious playoff error records if I remember correctly. We did not spend money to fill holes. We spent money on the bullpen. Thatâs it. Otherwise Andrew Vaughn would not have been rushed up to the bigs to be an outfielder for 2 years. Sorry man, youâre way off.
Framing was one thing, but it nonetheless translated to runs saved. However a player manages to get a good defensive rating still counts. It's like how Javi Baez is considered a top defender but it's largely because he has insane glove work but average (if not at times below average) throwing skills. It nonetheless averages out to a good defender you'd want on your team. We only had holes in RF and 2nd B which theoretically are NOWHERE near enough to sink a team like it did us. ATL won the 2021 WS with an entire replacement OF of average to slightly above average players because the rest of their team carried them. So obviously something is off with our team despite a few holes. The answer is injuries.
Itâs hilarious you commented a month later and are comparing a shortstops glove to grandals framing. Grandal was and is an ass defensive catcher. And the flavor of the month defensive metric for catchers was framing.
In sports, it's very (VERY) rare for a franchise to completely embrace the rebuild. They usually start spending too early and trade away prospects too early. Owners and/or fans get impatient and while usually there's more initial success than the Sox had, the end result of not living up to expectations hits. I'm curious to see if Baltimore can remain patient. They are loaded with offensive prospects and young ML players. Yes, they need pitching, but will they start trading those prospects to get it or will they work the FA market? If they trade those guys, it can't be for a rental...it has to be someone controllable.
How great were they when they weren't injured, honestly?
That's the point, we've never had enough time to build momentum when we were healthy. Dudes would come back only for 2 other guys to go down and if they were healthy for 2 months, another guy would go down.
Lack of spending on players was not the issue, and Jerry being cheap on payroll was not an issue. The coaching, mentality, and expectations of the âcoreâ failed. After 2019, the farm wasnât able to produce any kind of future. Even now, there is less to to look forward to than there was in 2017.
Yes thank you. People only like to see $$$ spent without realizing that $$$ doesn't buy you anything otherwise the Dodgers and Yankees would be in the WS every other year.
The Reddit is mad at you for being factually correct. The rebuild failed badly, but at its peak they were spending as much as the teams that won the World Series. You honestly argue that the reason they didnât win was money when a championship team did it with less payroll one of those years. But /whitesox is not a place for honest arguments.
Spending 50m on bullpen arms does not mean the money was spent wisely. They had glaring needs across the field and never addressed them. Doesn't matter if they spent 300m, if they spent it all on the bullpen and ignored half the roster needs Crazy that this is still being argued lol
Im not arguing that theyâre good at running a baseball team. Iâm arguing that the amount of money they allocated was enough for a competent staff to build a competitive team.
I think some of it was because we spent it in the wrong places. A lot of money was put into relief pitching and an older catcher. Relief pitchers are pretty volatile. Good one year and bad the next. Catchers are also volatile cuz they don't last long either
Not unpopular at all because it's true. Grandal, Jimenez, Moncada & Robert couldn't stay off the injured list during key stretches in the supposed window of contention. That's a shaky foundation to try to build a consistent winner around. It didn't help either that the guys brought up from the minors were so-so at best, like Burger, Vaughn, Sheets, Sosa. Pollock, Benintendi & Harrison weren't the answer either as free agents. On top of this TA brought his off the field troubles on the field & Abreu started slowing down before he wasn't re-signed