Will The Orioles Be Underrated Again Next Spring?

With Monday night’s win over the Colorado Rockies, the Baltimore Orioles improved to 18 games over .500. For many, the 2016 O’s qualify as a surprise.

It’s been a familiar script over the last 5 years. The prognosticators set the bar low before the season. The O’s exceed the minimal expectations during the season.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

During the Winter, the O’s are skewered by the Media and their fans for their general lack of activity. A crescendo of noise is reached during the Winter Meetings when most of baseball is visibly active trying to improve, and the average O’s fan scoffs that Baltimore’s big addition will be during the Rule 5 Draft.

Baltimore leads the American League East. They’ve had the best overall record in the division since 2012. The O’s currently seem destined to win 81+ games for the 5th straight season. They currently seem likely to win 90+, and reach the post-season for the 3rd time in these last 5 years.

Despite that, there are those who would try and convince you that this has all been smoke and mirrors or ‘Buck Magic.’

Other than the O’s record in 1 run games in ’12, nothing in this run has been a fluke.
It’s certainly not a 5 year fluke at this point.

What we have seen, is that the O’s talent has been consistently underrated, and what they’ve regularly been strong with – slugging, good defense (at-least infield again this year), their bullpen – are attributes which are not properly weighted by FanGraphs, or Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA, or by people in-general.

We at Baltimore Sports and Life (BSL) surveyed 30 Analysts across the game (including several of our own) prior to this season. 27 of the 30 (90%) predicted the O’s to win 85 games or less. 50% predicted the O’s to win 80 games or less.

I didn’t participate in the survey, but as I said in the comments on the article here, “I think the O’s profile fairly similar to what they’ve been the past 4 years. Plus power, plus defense, plus bullpen. Mediocre starting pitching. Mediocre to below average on-base skills. I see the O’s as an 85 win team. At 85 wins, it shouldn’t be surprising if the O’s play-up and win the 90-92 games likely necessary to reach the post-season.

(As an aside, PECOTA treats the team projection as the sum of individuals. I’d like to see PECOTA used to compile the individual forecasts, and that be part of the evaluation… then have BP’s staff have their own anecdotal observed knowledge / scouting of the overall roster added to the model, at-least as a percentage thereof.)”  

So, I’m no different. I thought this team had the chance to play up, but I didn’t anticipate the O’s being 18 games over .500 here at the end of July either.

This year the on-base % (11th overall) is in the upper 1/3 vs. the lower-half, lower-third it’s been. That’s a bit of a difference.

This year they are 3rd in slugging, 8th overall in runs, 1st in WPA (indication of the bullpen’s excellence), and 4th in Defensive Efficiency.

These numbers are a continuation of who they have been.

Showalter absolutely deserves credit for his part in the O’s success this year, and during this run. For my money, his biggest success has been building and fostering the culture. That’s been vitally important. I don’t think he should be regarded as a Wizard though, that tactically finds ways to get his group of hard-working / little-talent guys to compete. That’s just not accurate. He hasn’t had complete teams to Manage, but he has had plenty of talent to utilize.

Duquette deserves credit as well. Nicknamed ‘Dumpster Diving Dan Duquette’ by many O’s posters on the BSL Board; one senses that many think he is an empty suit. It’s true that Andy MacPhail left a structure in-place that was ready to improve. That’s a credit to MacPhail, not a slight to Duquette.

While there were past rumors of disharmony between Buck and Dan over Rick Peterson, and when Toronto showed interest in naming Duquette their President; the working relationship between Buck and Dan can only be classified as good.

They’ve figured how how to work with each other. In past years they’ve had more options to use, to extend the roster… but they’ve made it work again this year.

There are things to pick at with Duquette, but there are also moves which have helped. If you don’t expect the GM (or Executive VP of Baseball Operations) to bat 1.000, all-in-all you have to be relatively pleased with his tenure.

The primary reason for pleasure with Duquette is that he’s found ways to effectively operate under O’s Majority Owner Peter Angelos in ways that Frank Wren, Syd Thrift, Jim Beattie, Jim Duquette, Mike Flanagan, and MacPhail (overall) did not.

The primary negative I have with Duquette was well articulated yesterday on the BSL board, by the poster ‘Mackus’:

Just going to point out here that the Red Sox acquired Pomeranz in return for a guy signed Internationally two years earlier for $2M and the Cubs are on the verge of acquiring Chapman for a guy signed Internationally three years earlier for $1.7M.
 
The Orioles continuing to completely stay out of the upper end of the International market is an absolutely unacceptable decision by Duquette and those above him (I’d certainly listen to an argument that the decision comes from above Duke’s head).  It’s not just the players you can develop, but it’s the highly sought after talent that you then have to be able to use as trade chips to help your team.  And it wouldn’t cost us anything but money to do this.
 
Any questions about the future direction of the team from reporters should constantly be pointing this out.  Angelos has committed a ton of money to the MLB payroll in recent years, and that’s to be commended as it’s something I never expected to see from him again.  But it wouldn’t take very much more at all to put ourselves in position to build something even greater and more long-lasting, and very well may be less expensive for him in the long run if we can develop and leverage some serious talent.  $5-10M spent a year Internationally probably returns itself down the road as several times that in value if you find one useful player and can perhaps trade some of the others before the shine is off them.

This is a very legitimate issue to have with the O’s. If they did more Internationally, the MiL system would be improved. If the MiL system was improved, and produced more cost-controlled talent, you would have more options to not only plug and play at the ML level; but commodities available for trade.

If you’ve regularly laughed at the value of prospects, don’t cry if Boston uses theirs to obtain Chris Sale.

That all said, I am completely of the opinion that Duquette would like to do more Internationally. It would be insulting to Duquette, to act like he isn’t aware of the benefits (including financial) to generating more talent internally.

He is operating within the parameters set from above. He has found ways to keep the O’s consistently competitive, despite having to maneuver with one arm regularly tied behind his back.

He deserves credit for that. Not every Executive would be as effective.

It is fair to say though (at-least imo) that the limitations the O’s have (and had) are still things likely to prevent the O’s from winning the franchises 4th World Championship this year; but to be fair, only 1 team wins it all each season, and overall I’ll take a team which is consistently in the hunt for the post-season. You get to the Playoffs, and you take your chances once there.

For 5 years now, Baltimore has been a team with a chance.

For 5 years now, Baltimore has been consistently underrated.

Will this circle be repeated this coming Winter, with the O’s again underrated next Spring?

History says yes. 

(One can already envision the headlines at our board and elsewhere if Wieters and Trumbo leave, and the O’s fail to acquire an impact starter… “70 wins, here we come!”)

History also says if you continue to underrate the O’s at this point, that’s on you.