Little Slide Rooter

I'd argue the problem for the Orioles right now is a) Some of their young arms have really faltered and have serious concerns (Matusz/Tillman). They had four young arms they were looking forward to ... right now, of that foursome (the aforementioned duo and Britton/Arrieta), they look to have 1 good starter, 1 inconsistent starter, and 2 gigantic question marks. No team should ever realistically hope that 4/4 top prospect arms should hit, but it sure feel like they expected 3 of them to. b) A relatively weak system. A couple stud guys in Dylan Bundy and Manny Machado, but really, this system is pretty bad right now. There's Schoop, a whole bunch of folks from this draft class (which doesn't look that great), Bobby Bundy. c) (and why I responded) A lack of quality trade chips/trade chips they over-value. I'm not sure too many teams are going to fork over the quality assets that the Orioles believe they should get for Nick Markakis and Jeremy Guthrie, but the Orioles aren't moving them unless it's a quality return. Markakis' power decline has a lot of folks alarmed, and he's signed down for fairly big money (3/42 left with an additional option year at 17.5 or a 3 mil buyout). Guthrie's a Randy Wells/Chris Volstad/Travis Wood level pitcher masquerading as an ace and not exactly cheap. Brian Roberts is an injury prone 2nd baseman now, past his prime, and still locked down for 2/20. Reynolds is Mark Reynolds, a poor fieldng slugger. One of the few guys they should trade (only 2 years until FA) is Adam Jones. Jones, though, is a tough guy to value. Orioles look at him as an emerging stud, while a lot of folks look at his as a poor fielding, questionable discipline guy. They want elite chips ... I'm not sure teams are going to give elite chips for him. Good, perhaps. One guy I would move, if I were them, is JJ Hardy, but I doubt they'll do so. I don't know if he can replicate the offensive season he just had, so this might be peak sell time. In regards to C, its somewhat of a testemet to why our front office team is so valuable. It could be said that we have our own share of players we over value and lack of good trade chips. However, aside from Garza who has real value our guys are willing to move guys for packages that might not look wins at the time but are best for us. Sometimes when a trade is made its OK to let the other guy walking away feeling like they won as long as you get something you really need in return for May something that doesn't fit in with your plans. For example, acquiring Volstad and minimal salary relief for Zambrano may have seemed like a win for the Marlins, especially if Ozzie can keep Z in line and get a great back end starter out of him, and that's what he'd be there with JJ, Buehrle, Sanchez, and Nolasco in the rotation. Volstad may have seen like junk to most of us, but Theo loves these former top prospects who are still young enough that theres a glimmer of hope that he can be useful for us long after Big Z would be gone anyway.

The amount of time it would take would probably only cut your 80 daily posts to about 75. But then people would stop criticizing my spelling and grammar which might give me incentive to post more and the plan would blow up in your face.

Please. stop. posting. Seriously David? You want to associate yourself with the pathetic losers on here that think that schtick is funny? i doubt it was trying to be funny so much as a serious request. speaking of which, please stop posting. Well that's just it though. While there are many posters who might not care for each other or one another's opinions, spelling, persona, point of view, or whatever, more posters than not are respectful enough to get over that. If they really have a problem with someone, there's that for button in their control panel. On the other hand, there is a smaller group that prefer to attack others and cononsider themselves to be "everyone". None of their user names are in green, though they do seem to think they have the authority to make other posters come and go as they please. I'm sure they're all swell guys in real life, but who can be sure. They often seem to pack together to pile on others in hopes of chasing them off, and it might work on new posters, but when in comes to long timers they don't desire, if it hasn't worked yet, I don't think it's going to. I doubt that's going to stop them from trying because again, if it was it would have by now.

I always thought of blackout as just that. Passing out and not remembering what happened in the morning. or at least claiming you don't remember because of the stupid [expletive] you did.

Hasn't been painful at all.

I really wish the Dodgers didn't lock up Kemp. Selfish bastards. I wonder if the ship for BJ Upton ever being a heart of the lineup bat has sailed away for good. He's a decent defender, isn't he?

You know what? Damn, you're right. Now, I have been all in on trading Garza, but extending him for 4 or 5 years could really work. Looking at your squad, I'd replace Sappelt with Cespedes. And it's at least plausible one of Stewart or LaHair makes it. I'm still dealing Marmol though. Still, a lineup including Soto, Castro, Rizzo, Brett, and Cespedes with those 3 in the rotation and a bullpen, minus Marmol is only going to cost us around 65 million INCLUDING Soriano. Leaving us 65 to 70 mill to fill a couple of spots in the lineup and a couple of very nice pitchers. And, since my guess is we'll have built the system up quite a bit by then, a couple of trades for more lower priced super productive guys seems reasonable. I hadn't really looked at how a team full of what we've acquired looks like with what's left, because I've been thinking everything's gone, other than Castro. Doesn't have to be that way though at all, it's certainly doable. And sustainable, on top of that. Are we talking '12 or '13 here? It's hard to have any hope for '12 other than getting as much for the guys who don't figure into the future as we can. As for '13, even if Stewart doesn't work out there's still hope for Josh Vitters, although 2012 will be a crucial year for him in regards to offense and defense. Maybe give Lake 2nd base at whichever level he ends up. Castillo could also push Soto into trade bait with a strong future. I agree whole heartededly that the future is bright. Just not the immediate future. Cubs fans are just going to have to drop the mentality that a season is a failure if it doesn't end in a World Series win. I'm not saying that people here feel that way but there's a good portion of Cubs fans that do. I gett the feeling that even when we have our ducks in a row, it will still be a few years before that happens. It's hard to jump from bad to great without stopping at good.

I guess I'm not feeling the Sappelt love that some feel. Seems like a useful enough guy to have around at a low cost but nobody to get excited about. He certainly doesn't seem to have the bat of a corner outfielder and seems like a younger Reed Johnson, which make the signing of the older, broken down version more puzzling.

yes, if he hit like he did when he was a few years younger in his prime, playing half his games in the best offensive environment in baseball, during an era where offense was significantly easier to come by, and the past two years of bad production are not a signal that he's no longer good, then it could be a huge win. assuming that his defense is not too wretched to give away most of those positive offensive contributions. That's why you give him a minor league deal with invite. Looks like you kind of, sort of, but don't really agree with me but I'll take what I can get.

he's a kid, though. he goes out and gets drunk, some drunk comes home with him and blacks out after who knows what happened. is the lesson here not to go out and drink and pick up chicks? that seems a bit limiting since that's one of the huge perks of being a pro athlete. That's one of the huge perks of being alive. Well, there's a difference between getting drunk and drinking until you black out. The former is fun, while the latter can lead to all sorts of...unfortunate things. More often than not, if you black out the most unfortunate thing that happens is your buddies drawing on your face and/or taking embarrassing pictures. When people are simply drunk, especially when they're more drunk than they realize that's when these unfortunate things are likely to occur. I'd be willing to bet that most people who have been in a drunk driving accident, given a DUI were not too drunk to make it home safely in their mind. When a night out ends in a fight leaving someone dead or hospitalized, I'd be willing to bet that they weren't blacked out and were simply drunk. It takes a particularly sick individual to take advantage of a woman when she's blacked out.

The Orioles are not better than us. At the big league level? The have Wieters, Jones, Markakis, Hardy, Reynolds and Roberts. May not be a murderers row, but certainly better than any lineup we could put together at this time. They also have some young pitchers that may or may not make it in the big leagues but if we do trade Garza our rotation won't be better than theirs. Might not be anyway depending on what becomes of Britton, Matusz, and Hunter. And didn't they just sign a decent Japanese pitcher or were they just talking about doing so?

Oh, a Curb Your Enthusiasm reference. My bad. As a Seinfeld fan I tried to get into it but just couldn't because it always felt like it was just Larry David trying to continue Seinfeld starring himself.

No doubt. I'm pretty damn sure that heading into 2013, we'll all be excited with what's been done and what the outlook is. But, I don't think playoffs is probably realistic(assuming we dismantle this thing completely) until 2014, barring some luck or unforeseen circumstances. The scenario I brought up a few posts ago just seem too unrealistic to actually happen. My prediction is that by 2013 even if we're not contending just yet, we'll have an exciting young team to watch as opposed to some band aid covered Frankensteins monster. I'd love to sign Cespedes now and Cain or Hamels next year and see what holes need to be filled from there, and we should have plenty of money to fill them.

The problem with dealing with the Orioles is while they are better than us, it's hard for them to be viewed as a contender when they share a time zone with 3 of the best teams in baseball and a 4th that's getting there. For this reason, unless it's at a price that heavily benefits them theres not much use for a guy like Soriano there and they should be more focused on moving their own veterans for young players, and they do have some moveable assets Markakis, Reynolds, Guthrie, and Roberts that would generate some degree of interest as well as Wieters and Jones who they could either build around or move for huge hauls.

It seems like they plan to try out as many low risk acquisitions and internal options as they can even if it seems like they're adding guys they don't need. After a year or two, they should have a pretty good idea of what positions are held down and what they need, at which point they'll fill those holes with higher priced free agents. Kind of the opposite of what Theo did in Boston. He had his star players already there and built around them with good, affordable players. If things go as planned, he'll have his good, affordable players lined up and add some established stars where he needs them. The key to this is hoping that by the time everything's lined up, the affordable players that work out remain affordable.

Disobeying the CCP is not wise. Sorry, I couldn't help it.

Keep in mind that he also suffered from non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2008. Part of the increase in stats is moving to the PCL. Part of it is maturing as a player. Part of it is also getting further away from his disease. but that's the good hodgkins, right? I wasn't aware that there were good forms of cancer. This dude will dish out the hackiest jokes this side of the Borscht Belt but has no [expletive] clue about the good/bad Hodgkins thing. I know that cancer is cancer and there is no good cancer. I know that Hodgkins, or good lymphoma, as I'll admit I've never heard it called is far more common and and the treatments have a higher succes rate.

Not quite sure why people even get so annoyed at such things. I guess I mineswell learn to spell.

Yeah, but his kingpin brother avenged his death. Awesome and under rated movie.

Is that a rhetorical question, because the closest thing to an answer that I have is that my spell check doesn't catch such errors. Fair enough... on this one. There's no excuse, however, at this point for not knowing that Jorge Soler's last name is NOT spelled Solar That is all P.S. You're not the only one who does that with Soler Dammit, you beat me to the edit. I like my second answer better. Pray to god we don't acquire Kila Kalahuii or JP Arrenciaba. Go to Google. Type in the player's name as you think it's spelled. Let Google correct it for you. Copy and paste and learn. Seems like an awful lot of hassle to spell a baseball players name, especially posting from a phone. I'd just as soon wing it and if someone correct me that's OK.

Is that a rhetorical question, because the closest thing to an answer that I have is that my spell check doesn't catch such errors. Fair enough... on this one. There's no excuse, however, at this point for not knowing that Jorge Soler's last name is NOT spelled Solar That is all P.S. You're not the only one who does that with Soler Dammit, you beat me to the edit. I like my second answer better. Pray to god we don't acquire Kila Kalahuii or JP Arrenciaba.

Because I don't know how to spell them properly.

What about Jake Ariatta? He was a top prospect at one point but never as highly rated as Matusz or Britton. He was #67 in '09 and #99 in '10 but hasnt made out so well in his 2 big league stints.

Come on now, even I have more sense not to joke about that type of thing.

nah. http://images.wikia.com/muppet/images/4/44/Rizzo1.jpg Lol, this. Showing my age, but I think of Rizzo from MASH. Can't forget Grease.