On Windows, Free Agents, and Going Big or Going Home

Recently there’s been a lot of discussion on a myriad of topics that all generally relate to one thing: how do teams capitalize on their opportunities to compete? The Orioles are, as we’re all well aware, in an interesting situation when it comes to their roster construction, window for competition, payroll limitations, and opportunities to augment the roster. The goal of this article isn’t to discuss why things such as payroll limitations may or may not exist, or what the economics of the organization are. Those things have been chronicled in depth by both the national media, and right here on Baltimore Sports and Life. The goal of this article is to simply examine the remaining moves on the board, and give pros and cons to a particular course of action.

Discuss this post and the Orioles’ organizational direction on the BSL forums here.

Let’s get something out of the way up front. The 2014 Orioles will have the highest payroll of any Oriole team in club history. Last season, was the team’s second highest payroll ever. The club has relatively low payroll obligations for 2015 on, but that’s largely because they have a good number of players who will be arbitration eligible throughout those seasons. We’ll make the assumption for the arguments to follow that this season’s payroll will land around $100 million for this season, with marginal increases in the following seasons.

The roster is currently constructed following the stars and scrubs model, which means that the core takes up a big chunk of the payroll. Dave Cameron discussed the roster construction on Fangraphs, and stated:

Whether you go by ZIPS or Steamer, the Orioles have exactly five good position players. In Adam Jones, Chris Davis, Manny Machado, Matt Wieters, andJ.J. Hardy, the Orioles have a core of talent that projects for roughly +15 WAR, meaning that they’d only need to get about +25 WAR from the other 20 spots on the roster in order to project as a legitimate contender for 2014. +25 WAR across 20 roster spots is not a particularly high bar, and with the head start that their Big Five give them, the Orioles should be a good team next year.

But right now, they don’t project as a particularly good team. Our forecasted standings based on the Steamer data (ZIPS will be included once all the team projections are finished) have the Orioles as a 78 win team, 10 wins behind the Red Sox and in last place in the AL East. Steamer thinks the Orioles are approximately as good as the Mets. The Orioles, as currently constructed, are a perfect example of why roster spots #6-#30 matter quite a bit, and why the Stars and Scrubs model of building a baseball team isn’t always all its cracked up to be.

I’ll take the liberty of including a few more players in the core, but the thought remains the same. Below is a graphic showing how the O’s payroll is allocated among the core players. If we assume that the total payroll will be $100 million in 2014, a little over 60% of that payroll will go to 9 players who I consider to be the core of the team.

As you can see there is roughly $60,585,333 allocated to these 9 players (estimates are made for pre-arbitration players: Chris Tillman & Mann Machado). One thing you may notice is that the vast majority of that payroll allotment is going to position players. 97% of the core payroll is going to position players, with Chris Tillman ($535,000 estimated) and Dylan Bundy ($1,245,000) representing the pitchers. You could also make the argument that Miguel Gonzalez belongs in this group, but his salary is pre-arb as well, and his $500K pay wouldn’t make a dent in the overall point here.

One thing that is important to understand is a team’s window for contention, and how it can change given roster construction. Grant Brisbee of SB Nation recently addressed all 30 MLB teams’ windows. A graphic that sums up Brisbee’s analysis is included below:

The Orioles are hanging out close to both axes in quadrant 4, the ideal location for any MLB franchise. The team is relatively young, and figures to contend to one degree or another as they have over the past two seasons. They’re not in the same territory as a Pittsburgh or Oakland, but they could be in a much worse place to be sure.

Brisbee summarizes where the Orioles find themselves very accurately in my estimation, describing the teams in the middle of the graphic as being in “the damned-if-you-do-or-don’t zone, where teams are juggling, juggling to make their teams better, but in a sustainable way”. Brisbee continues by saying:

This is why it’s frustrating for fans to watch teams like the Reds, Blue Jays, and Orioles sit the offseason out. They’re not in a position to overpay for a near-40 guy like Beltran or trade away their top prospects, but they should have room to do something to push the team closer to the right-hand side.

Ultimately, this is the crux of the arguments among Orioles fans this offseason. There are essentially two ways for this franchise to go, and those two directions are seemingly juxtaposed against one another.

There are those who believe that the team should move along the X-axis of Brisbee’s graphic into “win now” mode, and there are those who believe they should slide down the Y-axis and get younger. These two arguments aren’t necessarily polar opposites, but for the most part one side will have to make concessions to the other.

First a hypothetical to illustrate this point: the Orioles sign Ubaldo Jimenez for 4/$60 million.

This move would easily shift the Orioles closer to the “win now” teams, and make them a serious contender for at least the wild card spots in the playoffs. It also requires forfeiting their first round draft pick, which means giving up some potential youth down the line. It also likely means that a large chunk of payroll will be allocated to one player, which further stretches the budget.

The Orioles are very much in the predicament that Brisbee describes in his assessment of the team and its window for contention. The O’s are painfully close to seriously competing, and competing in a way that means they won’t need a handful of things to break their way in order to get a wild card. However, any moves they make could hurt their ability to compete a few years down the road. The question facing the team is this:

Is the best chance at winning a world series going to come now, or a few years from now?

Win Now, Tomorrow is Never Guaranteed

This is very much a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush way of looking at things. Recently we got a perfect example of why you should always try to win now when the Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg during a promising 2012 campaign. The Nationals won 98 games and seemed primed to make a World Series run. However, late in the season the team decided to shut down ace Stephen Strasburg in order to keep him healthy coming off Tommy John Surgery. The Nationals ended up losing in 5 games to the St. Louis Cardinals despite being arguably the best team in baseball during the regular season.

The idea was that the team would save Strasburg’s bullets and they’d be a dynasty for many years to come. However an 86 win, playoff-less campaign in 2013 made it clear that nothing is ever guaranteed. 16 of ESPN’s 41 MLB experts picked the Nationals to win the 2013 World Series, and yet they failed to even reach the playoffs with their ace back.

There are a lot of ways the Orioles could attempt to win now. Nearly all of them involve doing at least one of the following three things:

1. Forfeiting draft picks
2. Trading prospects
3. Taking on a lot of money

The team can do a few things, like trade a player for prospects AND sign someone with the savings (GM For A Day), but any set of moves will end up being more win now or more win later.

Rumor has it that the Orioles aren’t going to let draft pick compensation keep them from signing a free agent that rejected a qualifying offer. In fact, Dan Duquette made a remark, noted by Ken Rosenthal, that makes it seem that if the O’s decide to go that route they would consider doubling down:

While such a twofer probably is a long shot, Duquette said, “If you do one, I think that makes the second one easier, frankly.”

This would be the epitome of a win now philosophy, as forfeiting a first AND second round draft pick to improve today’s club would make the June draft a crap-shoot. One might argue that in a deep draft this makes sense as there will still be good players available later, but the opposite could be true. Passing up on impact players in the first two rounds limits the impact a deep draft can have on the farm system.

Many have called for the O’s to trade for players like Andre Ethier or Matt Kemp, both of which would require significant investments of money and prospects. While these moves would no doubt increase the team’s chances of winning in 2014, and maybe even 2015 or 2016, they would make it more difficult to continue putting a winning team on the field in 2016 and beyond. Then again, this core of players is ready and talented enough to win now, and tomorrow is never promised. So perhaps it would behoove the team to strike while the iron is hot and really take a shot at the playoffs. After all, anything can happen in a short series in October. This essential team was only 3 runs away from going to the ALCS in 2012, and a few upgrades could get them back to that point.

Sustainable Winning Should be the Goal

Presently the Orioles’ farm system is very solid, but it has taken many years for them to get back into the top 15. It’s not all sunshine and roses though, as the team’s farm is very top heavy with 5 impact prospects at the top and not much else behind them. Keith Law noted about the system, “[The Orioles’] depth is improving, though it’s still behind where it’ll need to be to keep the club competitive in the AL East, and more investment in intriguing international amateurs like Olelky Peralta will help bolster the system.”

Law’s assessment is bittersweet, but there are reasons for excitement there. The team’s run of successful draft picks recently has been a huge boon for the club. Their last three first round picks have all been excellent with Dylan Bundy, Kevin Gausman, and Hunter Harvey representing guys with ace potential. In 2014 the Orioles will draft 17th, 5 spots ahead of where they snagged Hunter Harvey, who has shot up prospect lists all summer and fall.

Giving away draft picks after proving to be quite adept at identifying and signing talent through the draft would seem an odd move for a team that wants to compete now and for years to come. Even if 2014 isn’t the team’s best chance to win with the roster as it’s currently constructed, it’s silly to think that we need to win before Wieters and Davis become free agents.

For one the team could re-sign one of them. Additionally, their production and spot in the core could easily be replaced by Gausman, Bundy, Harvey, or Eduardo Rodriguez. Generally impact pitching is more difficult to acquire on the free agent market, so it would make sense to grow the arms and buy the bats (if necessary) here.

There’s a sentiment that the Orioles should tank in 2014 in order to improve their draft position, and play for 2016 and beyond. That’s a little hyperbolic, but there’s certainly something to be said for making smart plays. For example, trading Matt Wieters make sense for a team who wants to elongate its window for contention. There is plenty of cheap catching available on the free agent market, and the team has plenty of catchers with long term potential at various levels of the farm system. There’s going to be demand for a catcher of Wieters’ caliber, and the O’s would likely get a pretty good prospect haul back in exchange for him.

On the other hand, power hitting first basemen are not readily available, and there are few prospects that could be had who could be the next first baseman for the Orioles. As such they can explore re-signing Chris Davis so that he can lock down first base throughout the team’s window of contention. Would it be a surprise to anyone if the next Orioles team to make a deep playoff run featured a core of Machado, Bundy, Gausman, Rodriguez, and Schoop with guys like Adam Jones and Chris Davis on the back half of their contracts? I don’t think so.

There is an obvious downside here though. The Orioles have really shown that they can compete presently, and even if the roster isn’t going to be a perennial World Series threat, the playoffs are well within their reach. Some of the moves that might be necessary to compete for fully a few years down the road would have a negative impact on the team’s ability to compete now. Some of the goodwill among fans might be lost, and attendance could decline after it’s come back in the past few seasons.

At a Crossroads

This Orioles club is most certainly at a crossroad. It’s time for them to decide which direction to go, and hope that they can do their best to keep the club competitive regardless of the decision that is made.

It should be known however, that no choice is without its downside. Signing a player or two that require draft pick compensation would be disastrous to the team’s 2016 (and beyond) hopes. However, it could put the club squarely in the playoff race in 2014. There are seemingly twodistinct approaches available, and the team needs to decide which way they want to move. They can be like the Astros and attempt to build through youth and a sustainable model for success. They can also be like the Yankees, and hope that plugging holes will allow an aging roster to stay consistently competitive.

What the Oriols can not afford to do is play the middle. They can’t afford to trade legitimate prospects like Nick Delmonico for relievers in the hopes that they can add enough wins to get the team into the playoffs. They can’t sign a player just to pacify the fans, and they can’t try to win both right now and down the road. The roster isn’t constructed in such a way that they do both, but it can be one day. The Cardinals were able to do this, and even improved after letting Albert Pujols, one of the best players in MLB, walk away from them after a World Series run.

The difficulty is that the baseball lifespan for a GM or Manager is too short to easily plan ahead like this. Jeff Luhnow can do it because he has the blessing of a new owner and a stocked farm to work with. It’s not the same situation here as it is in Houston, but the longevity of management like in St. Louis, Tampa Bay, or Boston makes them teams that can easily build for the future without fear of short term losses impacting their job status. As a result, those three teams take a prominent place in the bottom right section of the windows graphic above.

Those teams have figured it out and made a commitment to building a sustainable and winning team. The Orioles have a chance to win now while they still have a chance OR build for years down the road. Neither route is foolproof, and neither one promises success. It’s time though, for the Orioles to decide which direction they want to move in, because staying in the middle of the road will not bring long term success to the club.