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Duquette 'Sick Of Hearing' Bad Pre-Season Predictions About Orioles

Dan Duquette, executive vice president of baseball operations for the Baltimore Orioles, joined 105.7 The Fan's Hot Stove Show at Dempsey's Brew Pub and Restaurant Thursday to talk about moves the Orioles organization is making in the off season to improve the club in 2017.

He had quite a bit to say about bad pre-season predictions for the O's in the off-season.

"I see these winners and losers [stories] of the winter meetings, you know, and then I see the prediction for the Orioles," he said. "You know, people don't really like us in the off season. They don't predict us to do well."

Later, he added:

"If you take a look at the number of players that came up from our farm system that contributed to this team last year, it was like 17 players on the team came up or played on the farm system before they got here. That to me is a sign one, that the farm system's healthy and then two, we have a competitive team on the field every year. So the organization is healthy. So these national publications that rank these farm systems and make the pre-season predictions, they're not very good, OK? Their record is not very good. And frankly I'm sick of hearing about it, OK? Because every year we have a pretty good ball club here and we put together our team throughout the course of the season and we use players that came up from our farm system, like Zach Britton, like Manny Machado, like [Jonathan] Schoop... like Dylan Bundy, like Kevin Gausman... They come up and they play here. So I don't really understand what this is about. Because we have a good farm system, it's healthy, it's producing teams for the major league club, and we traded about seven or eight or nine pitchers for players to help us in the pennant race when we've been making the playoffs three of the last five years. Frankly, I don't get it and I'm sick of hearing it, OK? Because there's no basis for it... You want to look at our farm system, go out and watch our Major League team play because we got 17 guys from the farm system playing in the big leagues and they're winning more games than they're losing."

Even without factoring in off-season moves, the Orioles "have a pretty good ball club already returning," he said.

"You got the whole infield back... they're all good everyday ballplayers and you got a couple of all stars there," he said, including Machado and Davis.

The team is working on picking up a catcher and outfielders. A few outfielders were picked up in this week's Rule 5 draft, he said. (Aneury Tavarez from the Red Sox organization, and Anthony Santander from the Indians.) More on them HERE.

Six starters are returning and "a terrific bullpen" will be back, anchored by Zach Britton.

"Our bullpen's good, our starters are good, our infield is good, we got a good center fielder in Jones, we got a solid .300 hitter in Kim but, you know, we need to add to our outfielders."

Duquette also discussed the possibility of Britton and Givens being closers for the Orioles someday, getting a deal with Mark Trumbo and other Rule 5 picks.

You can listen to the interview in full below:

Part 1:


Part 2:

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