The Orioles have largely been the laughing stock of the American League for the last decade. Sure the Royals might have been worse, even though they did scrape together a winning season in the last ten years, and the Pirates and Nationals may have been more embarrassing but the Orioles have been larger jokes. Why? Well the Orioles have been like the untalented little cousin that wants to play basketball with you and your brother at Thanksgiving. He can’t really run, shoot or jump but you have to let him play because he is family. Maybe if he were playing with kids his own age and height he would be fine but as it stands it is just embarrassing.
The Orioles struggles, much like little cousin’s struggles, have always been thrown into stark relief because of the division they play in. Having to play the two most popular, richest and media-visible teams as many times as the Orioles do a year makes you look bad. Having those team’s fans invade your home-park 18 times a year makes you look really bad. Getting completely walloped 30 out of 36 times a year makes you look clueless.
And really who can blame them. The rest of the league does not have to play these juggernauts nearly as many times. Hell the AL Central is nearly homongenous when it comes to market-size and talent level (outside of Kansas City anyway). So, over the last decade the Orioles have enjoyed a very public beat-down year-in-year-out at the hands of their rich relatives from the north.
It has been embarrassing.
But the Orioles have largely deserved it as well. Mismanagement, poor meddling ownership, horrible trades and signings, a minor league system devoid of any meaningful talent despite drafting so highly year after year after year. Between Cal Ripken Jr. and Brian Roberts the Orioles did not produce a single homegrown everyday posistional player. That is about two decades of minor league busts.
New General Manager Andy MacPhail has begun to right the ship however, and national baseball press is beginning to take notice. Most recently from Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan. Passan heaps praise on the Orioles and MacPhail praise that I have not seen coming from a national sportswriter in quite some time.
“The praise, almost universal…. Scouts love the Baltimore Orioles. They want to peg them as baseball’s great darkhorse of 2010, the latest team that can turn homegrown talent into long-term success.”
Of course Passan points out what most Oriole fans already know. As he calls it that pesky “seven-word postscript”
“if only they weren’t in that division”
According to Passan, and believe me this is not the first place I have heard this, baseball loves what the Orioles have done and are doing. The fact that in a relative short amount of time the Orioles have completely recharged their minor league system and stocked their major league roster with a lot of really talented young players that they control for years. It should be the beginning of the great Oriole renaissance. Hail the coming of the second great Oriole Empire, long may it reign. But – if it weren’t for our division.
I am not going to sit here and bemoan the Orioles the AL East as the sole source of the Orioles woes. The Orioles as an organization have largely dug their own grave. But one can not deny the fact that playing in the monstrous conditions of the AL East makes the Orioles brand of rebuilding that much more difficult. Yes Tampa Bay did it with one magical season, but they were unable to repeat after the Yankees broke the bank. And you can make the argument that the Rays success was buoyed by a down and injured Yankee team that year. In 2008 the Rays played near-perfect baseball, they had a good year in 2009 and were still 19 games behind the Empire. When you look at that it truly reveals the size of the mountain the Orioles must climb and it is very disheartening to think that the Orioles could suffer the same fate as the Rays: Do everything right for one great season only to see the richer team’s wallets open and bust you back down to third place.
But, in a way, that is what makes the way the Orioles are doing things better. Everything is an unknown. We just don’t know if Brian Matusz will be the next Mikle Mussina. We just don’t know if Matt Wieters will be our Joe Mauer. We just don’t know if Adam Jones and Nick Markakis will become 2/3 of the best outfield in MLB. We just don’t know.
But you know what I DO know. Watching this team grow together is fun. Watching and rooting for an organization that seems to have exorcised its demons is fun. Rooting for a club that is finally doing things the right way is fun. Finally getting a little respect from the national media is fun. And 2010, a full year of Markakis, Jones, Matusz, Tillman, Reimold, Wieters, Pie, Roberts, Gonzalez, Hernandez and Millwood – will be very fun.
