TwistedLogic

I should correct myself by saying that anyone who isn't a complete f***ing baboon idiot would have been okay with just Hoffman. We all saw you ask for Hoffman and Donaldson already. Even for a fanbase as dumb as that of the Orioles, you are the absolute bottom of the barrel. If I make a general statement about O's fans, just do yourself and your comrades a favor and assume you weren't considered in that generalization.

I know you probably won't admit it, but doesn't it embarrass yourself that this is what you do with your free time?

To be fair, the very obvious answer to your question was WAR, lol. If the guy's positive offense outweighs his negative defense, or his positive defense outweighs his negative offense, he'll have a positive WAR. It it doesn't, then it will be negative. If a guy is a +4 hitter and a -2 defender, he's a +2 over all, and if he's a +2 hitter and a -3 defender, he's a -1. Weeks, who's bandwagon my ass has been firmly planted upon for quite some time now, has more than enough offense to make up for his poor defense. If you want defense, then play Goins. You're not going to get a great all-around 3-WAR second baseman now. Value is value, and Weeks will give you value. At least, he should.

To be honest, no, I don't think Beeston being upset is a problem. He was already on his way out, and he probably knew that when his contract was allowed to run out in October, before this stuff even came to the surface. In the worst case event that he was upset, how much does it matter? He has very little control of the actual baseball ops. I always felt like the only time Beeston is ever significant is when the Jays need to ask for more money. Might that effect the supposed rumors that the Jays want to go balls out in the IFA market? Maybe. But the only person he'd be hurting by not trying to the best of his ability in that case would be AA, and I can't see him doing that. Maybe I'm wrong for taking it so lightly, but I just can't seem to get worried about the Jays side of this at all. I agree with you, but I don't think O's fans are even half as smart or rational enough to look at it that way. They won't care who the alternatives were, the stupid narrative that DD might phone it in now is going to be enough to drive them off a cliff.

I don't mind this either way though. I mean sure it creates a disadvantage, but it creates it for everybody. Not a big deal. In the bigger picture, they probably realize that the game really is way too slow right now. In the era of dying attention spans, they need to make the game as concise as possible. This'll also force people to have stronger bullpens than usual. Creates a new strategical element.

On the other hand, Orioles fans should be f***ing pissed off right now. We don't know if Hoffman alone was ever even on the table, but they're all going to believe that he was, and that Angelos said no to just Hoffman, something most of them seemed to be more than okay with as a straight-up trade. Not only that, but after all of them made peace with the idea of losing Duquette, and actually wanted him out at this point, they're going to be stuck with him coming back.

Honestly, who cares? I doubt the cost will be bigger than Hoffman.

Thank your lucky stars. Walking away was the absolute best case scenario.

"Recently it was reported that the O’s have a list of candidates for the job if it opens up and that includes names like Ned Colletti, Kevin Malone, Omar Minaya, and Kevin Towers." Holy f*** http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-laughing002.gif

Is that really a surprise, given who they're run by? They probably have the best executive duo in sports right now, and I wouldn't be shy in saying they've also probably got the best owners. When you got Kasten, Johnson and their dollars, and Friedman, Zaidi, and their expertise, I don't know if it will surprise anyone if it turns out that the Dodgers have just begun a run at the top that will last longer than what the Yankees have done since '96.

To be fair, my comment about him doing as much as he probably could within his limitations was in strict reference to this offseason specifically. I don't believe that to be true for any time period before then.

Not only that, but you have to assume Friedman's influence when rating Zaidi, which makes him better by default, the same way every other GM gets credit for whoever is in his office, and why Hoyer also gets credit for working with Epstein. It wouldn't surprise me if Preller is sharing body warmth with the bottom of that list before long.

I think that's fair. I do think depth has been a pretty serious problem lately, but hopefully that's not as big of an issue anymore. They've made some seriously intriguing pick-ups from the waivers and through minor-league deals over the past few months. I felt that the OF absolutely could not afford a serious injury going into the next year, but I think I feel slightly better about it with Dirks back in the mix. Hopefully with Izturis, Kawasaki and Travis, theres at least a win or so of value there over the course of the year. To be honest my biggest fear is the rotation. I like what they have, but I'm just not comfortable with it for some reason.

Dombrowski, Beane, Mozeliak, Freidi, Hoystein and maybe Daniels are the only ones I could conceivably put at the top of the pack and be confident that they wouldn't embarrass me shortly after, even though Beane and Dombrowski have both done some pretty questionable s*** in recent history. Maybe Huntington and Cherington and a few others could also be nearby, but most of everyone else is either mediocre or absolute garbage; I think it's a bit of a stretch to say there's another seven or so guys ahead of Anthopoulos without letting some pretty serious biases get in the way.

lol, I swear I didn't see those posts before mentioning Beachy.

My point though is how much more can they do. If it's true that AA has had offers lined up for Navarro and wasn't given the go-ahead because of Ed Rogers' ********, then that's out of his hands. There's still guys like K-Rod, who had one of the best xFIP's of his career last year, and Badenhop, who is a groundball machine, so I'm still holding out hope that something will be done about the bullpen. I also agree that they should get another starter; if they're not going for Shields, then maybe a flyer on Beachy who can be a May callup or something when he's healthy. All that said, they've had a good offseason and they have to depend at least a little on some good luck. The Orioles got to the ALCS with the 28th ranked (third worst) starter xFIP in the majors last year. The Royals made the world series after having played Billy Butler for a full year. Not everyone can have a roster like the Nationals, who are almost completely supplemented by Harper, Strasburg and Rendon, the products of being perennial trash for such a long time, or the Dodgers, who have a 270M payroll and are helmed by Friedman and Zaidi. AA has probably done close to as much as he could have given the kind of limitations that he has to deal with.

Which is essentially irrelevant at this point, after the Pentecost selection and the Martin signing.

Sort of like nearly every other roster in the game.

AA is probably a top 10 GM in the game, and the scouting/development system is probably top 10 as well. Jays fans are ungrateful. Could be so much worse.

Could be anything; there's a whole host of reasons they might be upset with him. There's the idea that they're upset with him for standing up against Manfred. There's the idea that they're upset with him for not firing Anthopoulos (this sounds f***ing stupid to me). Putting on my Stoeten-level speculation hat, I was actually wondering earlier today if Beeston's remark about payroll could have been a contributing factor. If Rogers had absolutely no intention of green-lighting an increase on payroll, it could have irritated them that Beeston promised us that it would be going up. Even if Valencia and Donaldson win their arb cases, and if you put aside another 5M for league min guys, the payroll is still 12M under what it was last year (125M vs 137M). Or maybe nobody is upset with Beeston; maybe everyone was expecting to give him a victory lap and then go their separate ways at the end of 2015, and Ed Rogers is just a f***tard loose cannon that went behind everybody's backs, not just Beeston's. This seems like the likeliest of scenarios to me. One of the first things that Guy Laurence apparently did when he got the job was to remove Ed and Melinda rogers from their day-to-day ops, so maybe nobody other than Ed Rogers knows what the hell is going on.

I'd imagine it gets slightly easier if you're going downward from the mound, but it's still incredibly impressive.

Cubs getting sued by the owners of Wrigley Rooftops. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/rooftop-owners-sue-cubs-over-wrigley-field-renovations/ This whole thing is f***ing stupid. Both parties involved are dumn.

No, I'm pretty sure that even last off-season, the inactivity was largely driven by Rogers. I don't think anyone believes that AA willingly chose to sit out the entire time in a year as important as that one was going to be. It won't end. It could have already ended a month ago in reality, and we're none the wiser, because the stupid f***ing reporters won't let it go. This is literally all they have to write about right now, they'll milk it for every single extra page click they can get out of it.

This isn't the article I was talking about, but it does get somewhat of a mention here by Blair: "I know one Blue Jays insider who claimed this weekend he was shocked Navarro hasn’t been traded yet, believing that general manager Alex Anthopoulos had two viable deals for the catcher on the table as late as last week. Meanwhile, Beeston is not under contract for next season and is scheduled to make a public appearance in front of season-ticket holders at the state of the franchise function on Feb. 5. I’d call that a timeline, if not a deadline." http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/dickey-insinuates-he-wants-thole-on-jays/

It's escaping me now who said it, but I'd never quote a blogger.