OnThMove

It's been a long time since the Baltimore Orioles have been competitive. The Birds haven't had a winning record since 1997 when they won the American League East by going wire to wire. They beat the Mariners and then lost to the Indians (all losses by one run) in the ALCS. It was the second ALCS loss in a row. In 1996 the O's lost to the Yankees (remember the Jeffrey Maier incident) after beating the Tribe. The Orioles won the wildcard that year. The downfall really began in 1993 when the O's were bought by a group led by local lawyer Peter Angelos. It appeared at first that the new ownership was going to continue the Orioles tradition. Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak in 1995 and MLB endured and got passed the strike of 1994. Pat Gillick and later Frank Wren, both good baseball men were hired over the next few years as general managers. Talented players were brought in as free agents and manager Davey Johnson had the Birds in the playoffs. But after Johnson's resignation, the Orioles hired Ray Miller as manager in 1998. And even with Wren as his GM, Miller and the Orioles went into a losing spiral. The farm system produced little over the next decade and the owner became a meddling, hard to deal with baseball ignoramous. He installed a two-headed GM system and teams throughout baseball found it nearly impossible to deal with them. Angelos didn't keep up with the rest of the MLB clubs. The Orioles farm system became ranked as the worst in baseball for years. The O's couldn't win, produced the fewest young stars, but had the most players of any team in baseball on the Mitchell report. The few valued possessions like pitcher Erik Bedard had to be sold off to restock an organization that even after ten losing seasons couldn't provide new star power. But somewhere, somehow, and sometime last year, things changed. A baseball man, Andy MacPhail, returns to the GM position. He trades Steve Trachsel to the Cubs for 3 prospects, then trades Miguel Tejada to the Astros and nets 5 more prospects, and gets 5 more from the Mariners for Bedard. The farm is newly stocked, there is a new scouting director and added scouts in place, there is a new Asian scouting department and an upgraded Dominican scouting group. All this after ten seasons of disappointment. What happened? Did Peter Angelos finally realize he is not a baseball operations man? By turning the operations over to MacPhail, maybe, just maybe, Mr. Angelos has become a baseball man though. And, perhaps the Orioles will contend in a few years too.