The Orioles Should Not Be Buyers

“Our future is now,” Dan Duquette told Fox Sports on Wednesday of last week.  This is one of many articles linking the Orioles to acquiring players at the trade deadline in order to make a run at a playoff spot this year.  On Orioles fan sites, there are running commentaries on who the Orioles should trade for this month.  The Orioles have been mentioned in numerous trade rumors by national news outlets because the fans aren't the only ones who think the Orioles should be buyers at the trade deadline.  The GM does too.

“We’re going to try to do everything we can to get into the playoffs this year,” Duquette said. “I just think it’s important to the fans that they know we’re trying to put a good team on the field and have a good season.”  The Orioles have been linked to Chase Headley, Jason Vargas, and Juan Pierre in this article.  They've been linked to Clayton Richard in this one. 

Is the Orioles trading prospects for veterans to try to win now the right strategy for the organization to take?  I would definitely say no.

The Orioles record at the moment is 52-47.  The team is in second place in the AL East 7.5 games behind the Yankees.  They're also 1.5 games out of the second wild card spot with 3 teams ahead of them in the wild card standings.  There are 4 other teams within 3 games of them in the wild card standings.  At best, the Orioles have a small chance at a wild card spot and would have to fight off 7 other teams in order to win one.  Baseball Prospectus gives the Orioles just a 3.7% chance of making the playoffs.

There are many reasons to believe that the Orioles have gotten lucky in order to achieve their 52-47 record.  One of them is their staggeringly bad run differential.  The Orioles have been outscored by a total of 53 runs this season, which is the 3rd worst run differential in the American League.  While it can't be used as definitive because there are other factors that go into a team's won-loss record, their pythagorean record is just 44-55.  8 games worse than their actual record.  Some have pointed to the Orioles record in 1 run games (19-6) as a measure of the strength of the team's bullpen.  General sabermetric wisdom would say that there was a lot of luck involved in compiling that record, and the team is bound to regress and start losing more of these 1 run games going forward.  Thanks to some great work by Andrew on Camden Chat, we can see that the Orioles bullpen really didn't do anything special in all those 1 run games.  They were good about the same number of total times that they were ok or bad, but the O's won games when the bullpen pitched well and when it didn't.  That could mean that regression in those games is coming.

Jeff Sullivan of SB Nation just wrote a great article, which generally stated that the Orioles aren't that good of a team but they're in a wild card chase so they should make small upgrades to try to win a playoff spot.  In the post, he states:

The Orioles have had the second-worst team offense in the American League, between the A's and the Mariners.

By defense-independent statistics, the Orioles have had the fifth- or sixth-worst starting rotation in the American League. Their 4.41 FIP ranks between the Indians and the Red Sox. They've also had a lower-half bullpen, with a 4.00 FIP that's better than the Angels but worse than the Indians.

The Orioles presently have the American League's worst UZR, which is a measure of team defense. They're also the worst in the American League in Defensive Runs Saved.

That pretty much covers the three phases of the game: hitting, pitching and defense.  The Orioles are close to the bottom of the American League in all three.  Now after going through all that, I'm not sure how he gets to the conclusion that the Orioles should be buyers at the deadline, but he does. 

The new Collective Bargaining Agreement that was put in place during this past off season added a second wild card to the playoffs in each league.  These two wild cards will now meet in a "play-in" game to determine which wild card team gets the right to advance to the division series.  Dave Cameron of Fangraphs recently examined how the new wild card format should affect team's trading deadline decisions.  It's definitely worth a read.  If the Orioles do somehow manage to win one of the two wild card spots, in all likelihood, they will face a much more talented Angels ball club that will probably have the chance to line up Jered Weaver to start the game.  It's doubtful that the Orioles would have the opportunity to line up their rotation as they will be in a dog fight just to win the wild card, so the Orioles would have to pitch whoever's turn is up in the rotation.  The Orioles would be huge underdogs in that one game playoff, which at best would be a 50/50 proposition.  Should the Orioles be trading prospects that have a chance to help the ball club in the future for the chance to play in this game?

It would be extremely misguided for the Orioles front office to even consider trading Manny Machado or Dylan Bundy, so we should all be thankful that neither of them is on the table.  However, I have to believe that guys like Jonathan Schoop, Xavier Avery, Nicky Delmonico and others would be on the table.  The team has also been rumored to be thinking about trading from the group of young pitchers that have struggled on the major league team this season such as Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta, and Chris Tillman.  If they traded one of them at this point, the value they would receive would be much less than the upside each of them possess. 

The Orioles should be focusing on the the next few seasons when they will still have their current core in place, but will also have Bundy, Machado and Schoop on the team to supplement the current talent.  At that point, the team will hopefully be ready to compete for the division title which is much more valuable under the new playoff format.  They shouldn't be trading anyone away that has a chance to help them when they are truly ready to compete.  The team is just not at the point yet where they are a real contender.

The Orioles have been a great story so far and it's exciting for the fans to get to watch the team in a playoff race, but that doesn't mean the Orioles should trade pieces that could help them in the future to try to win this year.  Do they owe it to the fans to try to compete after 14 straight losing seasons?  I'd say they owe it to the fans to try to be competitive over the long term, not just this season.  Their best pitcher so far this season, Jason Hammel is out until at least mid-August and we don't know how he's going to pitch when he comes back.  That's not going to make winning down the stretch any easier.  While this season has been fun to watch and I'd love to see them fighting for a wild card spot in September, the team shouldn't mortgage the future in order to do it.  If I was running the team, I'd actually be in favor of trying to sell a few pieces in order to load up for the next few seasons.  I'll be fine if the Orioles stand pat at the deadline to take a shot at the 50/50 wild card spot.  Just don't sell the farm, please.

Orioles Scouts Banned in Korea

This is not a new story, but I wanted to update it with the fact that Orioles Scouts were in fact banned from all Korean Baseball Association (KBA) sanctioned games, which include the national high school and college tournaments as well as pro games.  The picture above is actually hanging outside stadiums in Korea right now.  I don't know why they needed an exclamation point for the Korean version of the message, but not the English version.  From the version that I can understand, it's certainly clear enough without it.  I guess they really wanted to make their point to any Orioles scouts that could maybe speak some Korean.

Let's take a step back here and talk about what actually happened to lead to the scouts being banned.  On January 17th, the Orioles reached an agreement with 17 year old Seong-Min Kim to sign with the team for $550,000.  Almost immediately, the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) protested the signing.  The KBO filed an official protest to Major League Baseball saying that the Orioles didn't follow the proper protocol in signing the player.  Their protest was successful, and MLB ended up not approving the contract.  The KBA also suspended Kim from playing and coaching in Korea indefinitely for making contact with a pro team before his final year of high school.

Apparently, if a major league team wants to sign a Korean player, the team has to submit a status check on the player to MLB, which would then forward the request to the KBO.  The KBO would determine whether the team can contact the player, and tell MLB whether the team has it's permission.  Then, MLB would tell the team whether they could in fact get in contact with the player and sign him.

The Orioles did not follow this protocol.  They signed Kim with out going through the proper channels.  Reportedly, Kim didn't even have an agent and the team worked out a contract directly with Kim's parents.  Dan Duquette was known for signing many Asian players during his tenure with the Red Sox.  The fact that he didn't know and/or didn't follow the proper protocol in this case is troubling.  The international market was supposed to be one of Duquette's strengths. 

Duquette issued an official apology during February.  From Roch Kubatko of MASN: 

"On behalf of the Orioles organization, I offer a sincere apology to the Korea Baseball Organization and the Korea Baseball Association for the club's unintentional breach of protocol in failing to tender a status check in the process of signing Seong-Min Kim. The Orioles respect Major League Baseball's recruiting policies and the governing bodies and people that contribute to the growth of baseball around the world."

I am troubled by the Orioles front office's lack of knowledge in the way the international signing game is played. However, there's another aspect to this story that's just as troubling. Baseball America reported that the player the Orioles tried to sign, Seong-Min Kim was considered a non-prospect by the other organizations they spoke with. From Baseball America: 

Baseball America surveyed 11 other teams that scout Asia (two of which did not have a report on him on file) and could not find any organization that had interest in signing Kim or had a similarly glowing scouting report. While scouts often disagree about the futures of international teenage prospects, most of the other teams' reports on Kim's present ability and future potential were consistent with each other.

According to the other teams, Kim's fastball ranged from 78-85 mph. The maximum velocity another team had on Kim was 87 mph. Other scouts called his breaking ball a slurvy curveball in the mid- to high 60s and graded it from 20-30 on the 20-80 scouting scale, which rates as well below average. Scouts say he's likely an inch or two shorter than his listed height of 5-feet-11, has little projection and some funkiness in his arm action.

Many believed the Orioles were the only team interested in Kim. Several teams turned him in as a non-prospect.

This is the part of the story where I become really concerned. Are we supposed to believe that the Orioles scouts saw a different player than the scouts from other organizations that Baseball America talked to? According to reports, Orioles scouts recorded Kim throwing 88-90 mph with a plus curveball. Obviously, there's a big difference between a kid throwing 78-85 mph and 88-90 mph. The Orioles did a lot of shuffling around in their front office this winter. This makes you question how successful they were in getting the right people in the right spots.

Reportedly, the Orioles will again attempt to sign Kim once they are allowed to. It isn't clear when that is going to be. In the meantime, Kim is going back to high school in South Korea and is banned indefinitely from the Korean Baseball Organization so he can't play professional baseball in Korea. That severely limits his options as a 17 year old. I'm not familiar with how often Korean players go play in Japanese or Taiwanese leagues, but I doubt it would be his first choice.

The Orioles are left with a lot of egg on their face in this debacle. The sign outside Korean baseball stadiums is just an ugly reminder of this episode. The KBO doesn't strike me as an organization that forgives and forgets easily so this ban could last for quite some time. This wasn't the start to his Orioles tenure that Dan Duquette was hoping for. Let's hope it gets better from here.