50PoundHead
Hessmania Forever
I wouldn't go as far as Cy, but Anthopoulos is not above criticism and those of us who have even ventured mildly found fault with some of his moves usually find ourselves deluged with pushback from his most ardent fans. He inherited a superlative core of players from the previous three front offices and built on that to form a serious contender. He rolled hot dice at the 2021 deadline, which led to the World Series win, but I think a case can be made that he was throwing sh*t at the wall with those moves.
When he took the job, he clearly said he wasn't going to run things the way he did with the Blue Jays, but that is precisely what he's done. The minor league system is clearly in the bottom third of major league teams and a case can be made that it's in the bottom two or three. He's used a lot of depth that was built up (some of it by himself and the current scouting a player development group) to land some key contributors and maybe that works and maybe it doesn't. We really won't know until we know.
The team-friendly deals for a lot of the guys deemed as core players are a double-edged sword. They buy out arbitration years, but the long-term costs have to be averaged into the annual determination of the luxury tax thresholds and that limits flexibility. Further, the deals are based on assumptions that the players will continue to perform at the levels projected when the contract was signed. In some cases, I thought the deals were really premature, but again, we won't know about the strategy until things actually play out. That said, Anthopoulos clearly started a trend as we see more and more teams sign their top prospects to long-term deals, some of them even before they have taken a regular season at-bat in the major leagues.
I (and a couple of others) have been p*ssing and moaning about the draft and development process. There have been some notable successes under the current regime and one aspect of the strategy has been to draft pitching and then trade it for developed assets and that has worked to some extent and if we make a move at the deadline, it's likely to include some of the recently-drafted college pitchers going the other way. Anthopoulos inherited a terrible situation on the international front, but his premier signings since the penalties were lifted have not done well. Again, too early to really tell how some of these guys will turn into as players and one doesn't know if it is due to miscalculation by the scouting staff or less-than-stellar instruction. I agree with some above who posted that the current mindset seems to challenge guys and push them up the system rapidly. I've been critical of that, but no one has ever paid me to provide baseball instruction or assess players, so my criticisms may rightfully fall on deaf ears. There were no domestic draft penalties directly tied to the international sanctions, but they did lose a third-round pick in 2018 due to the offer of a new pick-up truck to Drew Waters.
Someone mentioned the issues surrounding Freeman's departure. I've been a lonely voice on this, but I am of the opinion that Anthopoulos preferred Olson to Freeman all along (for a variety of reasons and some of them based on solid reasoning) and that he played out the string with Freeman in order to not look like the bad guy when Freeman departed. Given the timing of the Olson deal, I have to think that was already in place before the Freeman negotiatoins fell apart. Both sides share blame for the final outcome, but Anthopoulos has largely avoided criticism. I'm not going to get into the Olson/Freeman comparisons because we're less than halfway through the deals.
Anyway, Anthopoulos isn't getting fired. If the team totally falls on its face as the season rolls on, I think Snitker is out if not during the season, then right away in the off-season. There will likely be a corresponding shake-up throughout the system. Anthopoulos has a lot of money to play with this off-season and those moves will likely determine his long-term future. This is a good team, but the near-total lack of depth has shown up and there may have been some faulty assumptions about the continued level of performance of some of the guys signed to long-term deals.
When he took the job, he clearly said he wasn't going to run things the way he did with the Blue Jays, but that is precisely what he's done. The minor league system is clearly in the bottom third of major league teams and a case can be made that it's in the bottom two or three. He's used a lot of depth that was built up (some of it by himself and the current scouting a player development group) to land some key contributors and maybe that works and maybe it doesn't. We really won't know until we know.
The team-friendly deals for a lot of the guys deemed as core players are a double-edged sword. They buy out arbitration years, but the long-term costs have to be averaged into the annual determination of the luxury tax thresholds and that limits flexibility. Further, the deals are based on assumptions that the players will continue to perform at the levels projected when the contract was signed. In some cases, I thought the deals were really premature, but again, we won't know about the strategy until things actually play out. That said, Anthopoulos clearly started a trend as we see more and more teams sign their top prospects to long-term deals, some of them even before they have taken a regular season at-bat in the major leagues.
I (and a couple of others) have been p*ssing and moaning about the draft and development process. There have been some notable successes under the current regime and one aspect of the strategy has been to draft pitching and then trade it for developed assets and that has worked to some extent and if we make a move at the deadline, it's likely to include some of the recently-drafted college pitchers going the other way. Anthopoulos inherited a terrible situation on the international front, but his premier signings since the penalties were lifted have not done well. Again, too early to really tell how some of these guys will turn into as players and one doesn't know if it is due to miscalculation by the scouting staff or less-than-stellar instruction. I agree with some above who posted that the current mindset seems to challenge guys and push them up the system rapidly. I've been critical of that, but no one has ever paid me to provide baseball instruction or assess players, so my criticisms may rightfully fall on deaf ears. There were no domestic draft penalties directly tied to the international sanctions, but they did lose a third-round pick in 2018 due to the offer of a new pick-up truck to Drew Waters.
Someone mentioned the issues surrounding Freeman's departure. I've been a lonely voice on this, but I am of the opinion that Anthopoulos preferred Olson to Freeman all along (for a variety of reasons and some of them based on solid reasoning) and that he played out the string with Freeman in order to not look like the bad guy when Freeman departed. Given the timing of the Olson deal, I have to think that was already in place before the Freeman negotiatoins fell apart. Both sides share blame for the final outcome, but Anthopoulos has largely avoided criticism. I'm not going to get into the Olson/Freeman comparisons because we're less than halfway through the deals.
Anyway, Anthopoulos isn't getting fired. If the team totally falls on its face as the season rolls on, I think Snitker is out if not during the season, then right away in the off-season. There will likely be a corresponding shake-up throughout the system. Anthopoulos has a lot of money to play with this off-season and those moves will likely determine his long-term future. This is a good team, but the near-total lack of depth has shown up and there may have been some faulty assumptions about the continued level of performance of some of the guys signed to long-term deals.
