Three years in, the Orioles' brain trust is still looking for ways to climb out of their seemingly bottomless hole.

(Illustration by Alex Gelfenboim)

By Michael Anft

Among all the nights of disappointment, loathing and pain in a season offering little more than red-faced shame, the scene at Camden Yards June 8 ranks as a nadir -- even for a franchise spiraling its way toward historic depths of ineptitude. As a majority of patrons chanted "Let's go, A-Rod" during the Yankees' 12-7 drubbing of the home team, some watched the scoreboard to chart the antics of a heat-throwing phenom 40 miles down the road.

Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg was in the process of fanning 14 batters in his first major-league start, a feat that brought more excitement to Washington, D.C., than a congressional sex scandal, and vibrated throughout the Yard, too.

The Baltimore Orioles were the third most popular team in their own ballpark that night, giving their partisans yet another reason to sigh their way through this pity party of a season. Even an O's fan with a free ticket had a right to feel cheated.

This night fell hard on the heels of published statements made by Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who expressed similar excitement over the ascendancy of the Washington Nationals. More interest in the Nationals might just mean more of a take for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), the majority of which the Orioles own, after all. (Memo to the Law Firm of Peter G. Angelos: Is it a conflict to have an interest in two major league baseball teams? Shouldn't you concentrate your energies on the client at hand, aka your fans?)

But the Orioles brass could literally flip the bird to their dwindling, shell-shocked fan base at this point and it wouldn't bat an eyelash. The only thing that would bring fans out of their collective coma is a season "all about wins and losses" where a strong "inventory" of players gives the team the depth it needs to keep pace with the thoroughbreds and robber barons of the American League East, a land in which "grow the arms and buy the bats" becomes an affirmed credo.

It's way too easy to throw president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail's pre-Opening Day quotes back at him now that the Orioles have become big-league sports' mascot for futility, en route to 13 straight seasons (19 of the last 25), and in position to challenge for the worst record in team history, perhaps sniffing the Unamazin' 1962 Mets all-time 40-120 mark of shame. But is it fair?

Three years of engineering a mammoth project to rebuild a team loused up by the incompetence and front-office terrorism of his predecessors -- most of it wrought by general manager Syd Thrift -- probably isn't enough time to judge. MacPhail's charge, after all, is not to merely save the patient, but replace its entire body, cell by cell.

MacPhail's advent in Baltimore in June 2007 represented a return to sanity for fans tired of the nonsensical corralling of end-of-career free agents and the promotion of overrated non-phenoms. The team had laid an egg for most of the previous decade, with no clear long-term strategy for developing homegrown players or mining talent abroad. For once, fans thought, we have a baseball man with the front-office gravitas to stand up to the grim, pedantic image of that meddlin' Angelos. Here was a guy who had done things the right way with the Twins, had stalwartly tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to resuscitate the long-smoldering corpse of the Cubs, and who spoke thoughtfully about that intelligent-man's method for diamond salvation: building from within. On top of that, he was a calm, cool presence in a Warehouse more often resembling a hot house.

That was then. Now, with former manager Dave Trembley a faint memory and the organization seemingly in disarray, MacPhail is this town's punching bag Bozo. As if it wasn't bad enough the Orioles rank 27th out of 30 teams in both runs scored and ERA, they have baseball's worst record. Web site posters point to the 300 losses the O's have racked up during MacPhail's reign, many members of the 1970 world champion Orioles -- a team in large part put together by Lee MacPhail, Andy's father -- cited the team's lack of leadership during a late-June celebration at the stadium. Ouch.

"I didn't think it would be this tough," MacPhail said. "There are things I didn't foresee, like how good Tampa was on the cusp of being."

His original thought was the team would have a chance to remodel from the bottom up while worrying about little more than the behemoths in Boston and New York.

"I thought we could concentrate on rebuilding the infrastructure here," he said.
Rebuilding is still central to The Plan, his scheme for remaking the Orioles with a core of young players. Despite the disaster of 2010, he's not changing course.

"The Plan's still the only path we can take to get to where we need to be," MacPhail said. "I can't even conceive of what a Plan B would be. As a franchise we've tried other things before and they haven't worked. We have to improve how we're carrying out The Plan, but abandoning it is not an option."

He chalks up much of this year's suffering to injuries, especially ones to Brian Roberts, Felix Pie and Nolan Reimold, and to a dashed expectation last year's core of young players would continue to improve. Last year, as Reimold, Pie, Matt Wieters, Brad Bergesen and Brian Matusz emerged, "We saw individuals progress," MacPhail said. "This year, we hoped to show collective progression. I think there are some encouraging signs that still will happen."

PressBox asked two major league scouts (who preferred to remain unnamed) and former big league executive Joe Klein to make the call on MacPhail's stewardship and suggest ways he can get the organization back on track. To focus their thoughts, they concentrated on four major methods executives use to build a ballclub: growing talent on the farm, signing foreign (primarily Latino) players, making solid trades and bagging the right free agents.

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Issue 151: July 2010