Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason14h
Their UFA signings have been really good over that time, and trades have been at worse average - since no one we’ve traded has done much
The biggest issue is a complete inability to develop and /or draft prospects . You can only UFA your way into contention for so long until your costs are too high and team too old
This is the stage we are in. Unfortunently teams are usually here after some playoff runs . We won zero games
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A lot of truth here but one of the problems with the way they have handled UFA signings is that they have half assed going for it. They’ve accumulated a lot of contracts over the years but only signed one or two second tier/bottom of first tier UFAs per off season. As such, they’ve bloated their payroll without being good enough at a single point in time.
If you are going to bloat your payroll, go out and do your spending in one off season. It creates an assessment window. If the team wins, fantastic. If not, you can start selling off pieces to contenders to stock the farm. Even when you are going all in with UFAs, you have to build the farm through drafting and developing.
By slowly accumulating contracts, you aren’t quite good enough to be World Series contenders at any one point. It’s also harder to pull the plug because the window keeps getting extended with hopes that you can “hang around the rim” to get a chance of getting to the Wild Card spot and going on a surprising run.
Also, changing philosophies multiple times isn’t helpful. Going from a team of home run hitters to suddenly being a run prevention team and then to neither creates an incoherent mess of an organization.
Finally, Atkins seems to be incapable of getting past his own arrogance and seems to feed off of alienating fans by making decisions that scream “I’m the smartest person in the room”.