“It used to be the best organization in baseball. You can’t avoid the conclusion that one man came in and fouled it up. As long as he’s going to be there, he’s going to fail. It’s just unfortunate that the wrong guy owns the team.”

So, Frank, we're supposed to hold Cuban Pete responsible for the late '80s decline of the Orioles, several years before he bought the team? Yes, they rebounded a bit in the '90s, though it never translated into an AL pennant, and I too doubt Angelos can put things back together again, but blaming him for the Orioles of today not being like their counterparts of three and four decades ago is ridiculously simplistic.

Oh, be fair. Destroying the O's was the work of a whole lot more than one man. Start when Hoffberger sold the team and lots of FO talent was hemorrhaging, heading places like Milwaukee and the Mets, among others.
EBW was a man with good intentions, but he had no ties to the Oriole way and little care for tradition. What he was interested in was winning now...and maybe moving the team to DC, if not, at least getting a new stadium (Which he eventually got)
Yeah, the EBW O's won a series in 83 under Antonelli, but that was more the last gasp of the old guard than anything done by the EBW folks.

EBW's O's are exemplified by his signings of aging vets Don Aase and Fragile Freddy Lynn in 85, turning their back on 25 years of tradition and home grown players and going for the quick fix. Multiple Orioles over the years have talked about the changes in the clubhouse, how the team began to lose their identity then.
EBW's O's cratered in the infamous 0-21 start.

The EBW tenure ended with his death, after which the team was sold to NY financier Eli Jacobs, a skinflint who spent no money and basically kept expenses at the bare minimum. Jacobs cared about covering his debt and extracting the maximum cash out of the team and that's about it. He certainly left no local impression that he gave a rats ass about much of anything else. More than anything, I would say this is when the decay really set in.EBW, misguided though he was, at least tried. He had great success running the Skins and wanted to do the same with the O's.
Jacobs was in in as a straight money making venture-nothing else.

By the time Angelos comes into the picture the Orioles were only a shadow of what they had once been so blaming him completely for the current state of the franchise is grossly unfair. That said, the Orioles haven't been the same since the Johnson/Gillick days-Angelos firing/forcing out the two destroyed the last hopes this team has had in a long time, alienated the fanbase and basically drove a nail through the heart of a franchise that had long been on life support.

The irony of this all is that not to long ago the O's were the financial beast of the AL with a brand new stadium, a city that absolutely fell in love with the team, a string of sold out dates and the acclaim of the national media. Toss in the fact that EBW (Due to his union ties via is asbestos lawsuits) was the one owner who supported, or at least sided, with the players in the strike (And the Players Union remembered-there was a period there where almost any player would have danced to have been an O)and there was a chance for Angelos to restart the golden age of the team.

Hell, I have books from that period where Steinbrenner dismisses the Red Sox as being perpetually mismanaged and thus no threat, but he sweated the O's every day.
Sounds quaint now, but that's the way it was.

The Orioles are exhibit number one in the "How bad ownership will ruin a team quicker than any GM or manager" display.
Sadly for the team, they have had thee successive owners who were either clueless, tight or just plain lost, which has gutted the team and left them one of the laughingstocks of pro sports.

Coke to TerpsNats-that's what I get for putting together a long post.

Coke to TerpsNats-that's what I get for putting together a long post.

Yeah, but you expanded upon it, and everything you wrote was 100% true. That was one of the best short summaries of the Orioles' plight I've ever seen posted here.

I'd only add the final nail that drove me away, which was when Angelos forced out Jon Miller at the end of the '96 season for not being enough of a shill. That made me miss what tuned out to be the best season they had since '83, but I'd do it over again without a thought.

WORLD LAMENTS SORRY STATE OF FRANK DEFORD, MR. PRESIDENT.

That should be the "Sorry State of the First Place Baltimore Orioles".

“He was great at asbestos,”

That's what I want as my epitaph.

Yeah, but you expanded upon it, and everything you wrote was 100% true.

Except for the part about "Antonelli."

Altobelli, Antonelli, itsa Italiano.

Teach me to work fast and from memory

I wish Peter Angelos hadn't invented free agency so the team could keep their home grown talent.

It's also his fault that the team doesn't draw 3 million fans a year anymore into Camden Yards. There is no competition as fans in Maryland hate the Ravens, the Terps, the Redskins, Nationals, Wizards and Caps and refuse to go to their nice new arenas or attend their games.

It's also his fault that the team doesn't draw 3 million fans a year anymore into Camden Yards.

Yeah, it is. Most of those competitors existed when the Orioles were drawing 3 million per year. The seasons only partially overlap. In some cases (Terps basketball) not at all - they start playing in November and finish in March.

The Orioles were still drawing 3 million when the Ravens won the Superbowl. Attendance was down a bit but the feeling that the losing was permanant had not yet sunk in.

Orioles attendance can be completely explained by the record of the team. That is the overwhelming factor in a team's ability to draw fans, and if the Orioles ever put a 90 win team on the field I have no doubt they'll be back over 3 million, either that year or the next.

I wish Peter Angelos hadn't invented free agency so the team could keep their home grown talent.

I know, just think of the dynasty they could have built around Sidney Ponson, Daniel Cabrera, Jay Gibbons, Rocky Coppinger, Rodrigo Lopez, Larry Bigbie, Jerry Hairston...

Yeah, it is. Most of those competitors existed when the Orioles were drawing 3 million per year. The seasons only partially overlap. In some cases (Terps basketball) not at all - they start playing in November and finish in March.

Maybe he meant Terps lacrosse.

...a top player at every position and the team was something to be proud of.

THe Pittsburgh Pirates say "hello."

I wish Peter Angelos hadn't invented free agency so the team could keep their home grown talent.

It's also his fault that the team doesn't draw 3 million fans a year anymore into Camden Yards. There is no competition as fans in Maryland hate the Ravens, the Terps, the Redskins, Nationals, Wizards and Caps and refuse to go to their nice new arenas or attend their games.

Oh, please. The Ravens overlap the Orioles at home twice a year at most, the Terps, Wizards and Redskins are in the tank, and the Caps compete with the O's only in the playoff season. Beyond that, the Baltimore-Washington metro area contains 9 million people. Give the Orioles a competitive team for more than two months every two years, and Camden Yards will fill up quite nicely.

EDIT: Big Gulp to AROM

I really like Camden Yards being empty and cheap. It's much nicer than a full ballpark.

Excellent postings gentlemen; I think you've cut it to the nub.

Doing things "The Oriole way" is oft discussed but seldom exhibited under Mr Angelos.
Palmer is their TV color guy and Rick Dempsey, he of the last good team 1983 often mention "how things used to be done" in their day.

Some of it is wistful remeberences of older players; much of it is spot on analysis of a lack of fundamentals.

Buck is trying to instill accountability and good quality of play; we'll see how it works out.

The early O's are 8 and 5 and of to a reasonable start as they've hit 20+ HRs in their first 13 games and gotten quality starts from Arrieta and Hammel and Hunter.

Maybe they can get decent starting pitching and hit 3-run HRs like Weavers teams did?

I wish Peter Angelos hadn't invented free agency so the team could keep their home grown talent.

Forget that. There was a point in the mid nineties where the Orioles could have had it all. They had the crown jewel of baseball in Camden Yards, they were the team that free agents yearned to play for due to Angelo's pro-labor stance, they had tons of revenue and little competition. The Ravens hadn't hit town yet or were brand new, the O's had HTS and a chance to break into the cable markets of Delaware, Southern PA (Areas like York, Lancaster etc...)and the mammoth Northern Virginia market and create lifelong fans. That they failed to recognize the market opportunity and capitalize on it is on them.
Finish off with a top notch management team in Johnson and Gillick (Who only went on to build the late 90's Mariners and early 2000 Phillies and ended up in the HoF)and the Orioles had a chance to set the stage for a long term period of domination.
Instead they totally blew it.
IIRC, at one point a decade or so ago you could have built a pennant winning staff out of Oriole castoffs and bad trades that included Kevin Brown, Jamie Moyer,Schilling, Mussina and McDonald (off the top of my head).
The O's have had the talent. They had the GM. Heck, as pointed out above, they even had the announcer.
And they chased it all away.
So when I hear people cry poor little Orioles, I have zero sympathy. Most of their wounds are self inflicted.
They are a textbook example of how some teams create their own small market status.

I really like Camden Yards being empty and cheap. It's much nicer than a full ballpark.

Yeah, and from an admittedly selfish POV the golden age of Birdland fandom was between 1960 and 1978, when you had the best of all possible worlds: Winning teams and small crowds, with the best seat in the house going for less than 22 bucks in 2012 dollars.

toratoratora, I see that you're from Baltimore, and it shows. (smile)

In am...and I gotta say I love the empty Yards. I work downtown so, if I get off early enough,lotsa lazy summer nights I can wander over to the stadium in the first few innings, scalp a late tix for under $10 and essentially pick any seat in the house.
It ain't half bad.

But you've got it right about Memorial. I loved that place. $2 bleacher seats (At the most-I remember getting em for .75 cents)BYOB and grub, phenomenal teams, a small but highly educated and rabid fan base, Wild Bill Hagy, no loud music, no scoreboards needed to tell folks when to cheer, and Earls tomato garden.

What more could a kid ask for to grow up loving baseball?

It was a huge part of my childhood. Nice at it is in it's own commercialized way, the Yards have nothing on Memorial for me.

Was it also true in the mid-1990s that Camden Yards had significant tourist appeal? I remember my father, my brother, and my brother's sons-in-law putting together a fairly elaborate road trip there from New Jersey just to see the place – an expedition that has lost some of its appeal, I reckon, with new parks now bracketing Baltimore up and down the Corridor. If I'm in New England I always check the Red Sox schedule, because Fenway is such an attraction; if I'm in the Greater Mid-Atlantic region, eh, so what, we have parks like that in Arlington.

#16 The Orioles turned out pitching more or less at will for so long that they seem to have believed this was a normal state of affairs. Of course it's not and the structure (scouting and coaching -- particularly at the lower levels) that allowed them to do so hasn't been in place for decades. Somehow though the sense that turning out pitching is easy still seems to be part of an unspoken organizational belief.

There's a great rant by Eddie Epstein about the lack of accountability of scouts in the first Minor League Scouting Notebook and (because he worked for the Orioles at the time), the specific examples all are related to the Orioles. (Including a scout who declared that neither Dave Justice nor Ron Gant were of interest -- and kept his job because his qualification was that he was a friend of the GM)

Was it also true in the mid-1990s that Camden Yards had significant tourist appeal?

Yep. I worked at a snazzy downtown restaurant then. We used to get lots of folks coming just to see the Yards.

Now they only come to see the Yanks.

Camden was the first retro ballpark, wasn't it?

drayton mclane destroyed the astros franchise even faster than peter angelos let the remnants of the Orioles sink.

I wish i understood financial stuff better than i do because i just don't understand why owners, with a few exceptions, don't really care if they have a winning team or not. or how many people actually GO TO THE ballpark. i guess that the money from mlbam and tv is so good that there is no real point in trying to get a winning team.

I sure don't understand angelos at ALL - but i guess he's like drayton mclane and thinks he's the best GM money can buy

I could see that if Os fans and ex-O's fans saw that the team was good and gonna be good that camden would be packed with actual O's fans right quick - same with the pirates fans going back to PNC

Not so much with houston especially now with the move to the DH league. i know my lawn is awful small, but it was only 4 years ago that the park was almost full for almost every non-weekday game. the only time that park is ever gonna be more than 1/4 full again is for the (swear words) yankees/redsox and probably the times when the gloating nolan ryan comes in.

You talk about revenge - he got the best kind - why kill your enemy when you can have much more fun and enjoyment by keeping it alive and torturing it brutally for decades/centuries...

I also like how Nolan has managed to get all the credit for his team's success when it was already all in place BEFORE he ever got involved. Reminds me of I forget which Nazi (or Commie - or maybe even some other kind of politician) who talked about how being a "leader" is all about seeing which way the parade is marching and jumping in front and waving your arms around...

For those who lived outside the city, GETTING to Memorial Stadium was terrible. Which was still better than trying to get back out. I like the Yards. I hate the Angelos.

For those who lived outside the city, GETTING to Memorial Stadium was terrible. Which was still better than trying to get back out.

I left Adams-Morgan in DC at 6:15 and was always in my seat in Memorial Stadium by 7:30. The secret was to part south of 32nd and west of Greenmount and avoid all the traffic beyond that point. After the game you didn't have to worry about getting out of the immediate vicinity, and if you drove south to 28th St. and then west to Maryland Avenue you never had a backup back to Washington. The lack of easy and unrestricted street parking on crowded Camden Yards nights makes it much tougher that Memorial ever was. Not to mention that the Hagysphere (and the brand of baseball) was infinitely better than the overamplified noise machine of Angelos. Earsplitting noise from crowds is great. Deafening noise from tenth rate songs over a turned up loudspeaker is another story.

Was it also true in the mid-1990s that Camden Yards had significant tourist appeal?

Also as the Orioles started the decline in the late 90s their attendance stayed afloat thanks to Cal Ripken. Even if the team was bad you still had the Ironman out there so he put butts in the seats.

In the big attendance days you had a very "be seen" crowd at the Yards. Arrive 2nd or 3rd inning, off to the next event in town before game ends. Now you have more baseball fans who are there to see baseball.

For those who lived outside the city, GETTING to Memorial Stadium was terrible. Which was still better than trying to get back out. I like the Yards. I hate the Angelos.

Chuckles
I learned Baltimore by leaving Memorial. I would pull out of the school parking lot into the alleys and start making random turns until I hit the Beltway. A few years doing that and I had a comprehensive mental map of the city.

I wish i understood financial stuff better than i do because i just don't understand why owners, with a few exceptions, don't really care if they have a winning team or not.

The real irony of the Orioles situation is that Angelos bought the team, in his words, "Because I'm the richest man in town and I am so unknown I can't get a good table at a restaurant."
Now we all know his name, but he still shouldn't eat in a restaurant simply because the waiter is likely to go all Tyler Durden on his food.

Edited to add that speaking of restaurants, in light of the discussion we had a while back re eateries in Baltimore, Michael Mina is opening a new joint in the just opened Four Seasons downtown.
It's supposed to be the nicest place in the city once opened.
Good times.

IIRC, at one point a decade or so ago you could have built a pennant winning staff out of Oriole castoffs and bad trades that included Kevin Brown, Jamie Moyer,Schilling, Mussina and McDonald

Brown and Moyer were "cast off" by plenty of teams besides the Orioles, McDonald only pitched for two years outside Baltimore, and Mike Mussina was signed by the Yankees, like lots of other teams' best starters. I'll give you Schilling.

I know, just think of the dynasty they could have built around Sidney Ponson, Daniel Cabrera, Jay Gibbons, Rocky Coppinger, Rodrigo Lopez, Larry Bigbie, Jerry Hairston...

Gibbons and Lopez weren't homegrown, by the way; Gibbons was a rule V pick and Lopez was signed after the Padres gave up on him. Both gave the Orioles a lot of value. In fact, I would say the Orioles have been notably good at getting real production out of scrap-heap guys like Gibbons, Lopez, Mora, and Guthrie. Note also that LOTS of people thought that Hairston, not Roberts, was the better 2b choice going forward. The Orioles gave the job to Roberts and cut Hairston loose. Pretty good decision!

I don't think the Orioles' problem is a lack of homegrown talent OR bad trades; I think it's a failure to develop the talent they grow. Yeah, you're not going to build a winning team centered on Larry Bigbie and Rocky Coppinger. But at the beginning of 2009 it sure looked like Nick Markakis, Matt Wieters, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, and Adam Jones could be the core of a good team. Some of these guys have produced but not one of them has produced as much as expected.

Jeffrey Maier:Orioles::Steve Bartman:Cubs.

The worst thing to happen to the Orioles was when the stupid hilton ruined the view from the stands.

Deafening noise from tenth rate songs over a turned up loudspeaker is another story.

You must have heard our garage band play back in the early seventies :-) If you can't play good, play loud was our motto.

The O's seem on a tried-and-true path to success ...

Disappointing young team
Hire Showalter
Improving young team that can't quite cut it
Fire Showalter
Championships ensue

BBC

Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
John Naisbitt


Funny, I'd always thought it was a Mark Twain quote, and there are references to friends claiming he had said something similar, but there doesn't seem to be anything actually on the record.

The Oriole failure is all of the above. They drafted poorly. They developed poorly. They often signed the wrong free agents, and when they didn't they misunderstood their value and let them leave. When they did get and develop (or at least not ruin) a player like Mussina, they alienated him with stupid front office moves. It's 30 years of bad management in almost every way.

My point was that the Orioles have more competition for both corporate sponsors and fans due to the competition in the area. Most of the other teams I mentioned have newer facilities, built since Camden Yards. It is not so much that there is seasonal competition as fans have many choices on how they may spend their sports dollars They may become Ravens' fans and buy tickets for their games and see the Orioles less.I doubt there will be 3 million fans in Camden yards in the foreseeable future. Combining the populations may yield 9 million bodies but I doubt much of the DC based population will bypass their own teams to come back to Baltimore.

Angelos has spent a ton of money on free agents for the team over the last several years including, Albert Belle, Raphael Palmiero, jimmy Key, B.J. Surhoff, Roberto Alomar, Eric Davis, and Javy Lopez. He has paid/overpaid fan favorites to stay in town - Melvin Mora, Brian Roberts, Nick Markakis.

The farm system hasn't delivered yet the Orioles minor league exec, Joe Jordan, was just hired to run the Phillies' system. How bad could he have been?

What I would like to hear is how the Orioles system of player development is different (in a bad way) than the other teams. Why haven't more picks made it to the majors? Why are there so few ex-Orioles minor leaguers playing in the majors for them or other teams. The Oriole minor league scouts and personnel seem similar to that of the competition. I have never heard that their coaches and minor league managers were underpaid or considered incompetent. Why haven't they produced big league players? I don't think Peter Angelos is micro-managing in the depths of the farm system.

My point was that the Orioles have more competition for both corporate sponsors and fans due to the competition in the area. Most of the other teams I mentioned have newer facilities, built since Camden Yards. It is not so much that there is seasonal competition as fans have many choices on how they may spend their sports dollars They may become Ravens' fans and buy tickets for their games and see the Orioles less.I doubt there will be 3 million fans in Camden yards in the foreseeable future. Combining the populations may yield 9 million bodies but I doubt much of the DC based population will bypass their own teams to come back to Baltimore.

Of course the drop in the O's attendance is almost perfectly correlated with their dropping off the radar screen in the AL East. Bring them back to the level of the Rays for a few years and that attendance will soon return, and the existence of other teams in other sports in other seasons isn't likely to stop fans from coming back. The only team that might hurt them would be the Nats, but as the New York, Chicago and LA areas have shown, when both teams consistently win, both teams get supported. It always comes back to the winning.

Angelos has spent a ton of money on free agents for the team over the last several years including, Albert Belle, Raphael Palmiero, jimmy Key, B.J. Surhoff, Roberto Alomar, Eric Davis, and Javy Lopez. He has paid/overpaid fan favorites to stay in town - Melvin Mora, Brian Roberts, Nick Markakis.

Last "several" years?

The farm system hasn't delivered yet the Orioles minor league exec, Joe Jordan, was just hired to run the Phillies' system. How bad could he have been?

What I would like to hear is how the Orioles system of player development is different (in a bad way) than the other teams. Why haven't more picks made it to the majors? Why are there so few ex-Orioles minor leaguers playing in the majors for them or other teams. The Oriole minor league scouts and personnel seem similar to that of the competition. I have never heard that their coaches and minor league managers were underpaid or considered incompetent. Why haven't they produced big league players? I don't think Peter Angelos is micro-managing in the depths of the farm system.

That's a good question, but like the case of the other poisoned franchise in the area (Snyder's Redskins), the rot begins at the top and can permeate the organization in ways that aren't always easy for outsiders to identify.

Oh, I've heard many players that have left the O's criticize the discipline, training, and coaching they've received in the minors. And just this year, many GM candidates said they turned down Angelos for the position because he refused to give them a free hand to get rid of long-tenured people in the minor league developmental system. No one denies that Angelos has spent money, but there's a HUGE difference between spending money and spending money WISELY. That's the difference, often, between winning and losing in a sport.

Since Jordan was just hired, we don't know about his performance with the Phillies. The fact that someone was hired does not provide any evidence that they do a good job!

Free agent signings were from a few years ago to establish he is not a penny pincher. I think it is a good thing that my examples pre-date the McPhail years as GM. Hard to make a case that expensive free agent signings would have turned the teams fortunes around (ex. Werth, Crawford, Pavano, Yankee Mike T.)

Oh, I've heard many players that have left the O's criticize the discipline, training, and coaching they've received in the minors. And just this year, many GM candidates said they turned down Angelos for the position because he refused to give them a free hand to get rid of long-tenured people in the minor league developmental system

Hearsay , rumors . "Many" gms? One guy went back to Blue Jays and he didn't say why. Not sure I have heard the many ex-Orioles (who?) who bad-mouthed the organization. My point was that there are very few ex-Orioles in the Majors to begin with. The talent that has risen to the top has been mediocre and few O's were drafted and improved by other teams

No one denies that Angelos has spent money

Many do on this site and elsewhere.

there's a HUGE difference between spending money and spending money WISELY.

Agree 100% but if not a lack of money, why have the various powers in the organization been so bad at it over the last several years. Rot at the top is not a good enough answer for me.

No one denies that Angelos has spent money

Many do on this site and elsewhere.

Nobody denies that Angelos has spent money in the past. What is equally obvious is that after having his fling in the late 90's, he's cut back today to the point where the Orioles payroll is now 19th out of 30, whereas in 1998 it was the highest in baseball.

That doesn't mean that throwing around money like a Snyder is anyone's magic bullet, but it does shift the discussion from the 20th century to the present.

Rot at the top is not a good enough answer for me.

It's not the whole answer, but there's certainly a correlation in all sports between an erratic temperament at the top and a lack of intelligent coordination below. And when the same pattern continues for over a dozen years, you can't help but think that if it walks like a duck....

The Ravyns are competition for the Orioles??? The last hit they had was Raised on the Radio way back in 1982.

Your point is silly. Who hires, retains, fires, evaluates and promotes the people who select the talent drafted? Whether the problem is development or drafting, the ultimate boss is Angelos, and he's either hired those people directly or given the authority to someone else he's hired to hire those people. He has had PLENTY of time to get the right people in the right positions to draft and develop and identify free agent talent and coach and he's failed to do so, again, and again, and again. And all around the league, you can see plenty of examples of teams without nearly the economic resources of the Orioles succeeding because they do at least a few of those things well.

One of several sources on the Oriole weaknesses in scouting and development:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-10-15/sports/bs-sp-schmuck-orioles-1016-20111015_1_top-priority-brian-matusz-operation

to me the interesting question is - WHY did he suddenly decide to go el cheapo/el crappo after 97?

why get rid of really good Organization guys and replace them with idiot yesmen? i still don't get why he threw pat gillick out.

why both let the minors rot AND not get good players for the majors? you have a winner, a packed stadium, generations of diehard fans. why WHY WHY??? just say eff that who cares?

I think that just being poorly run is not enough to have a sustained run of losing like this. Shitty organizations make the playoffs and win championships all the time.

I think the Orioles have also had extraordinarily bad luck with developing talent when you compare the various rankings of their prospects over time to their eventual production as major leaguers. Player development is important, but I don't believe poor player development turns a great player into a poor one, and the fact that the Orioles have failed to develop more than a handful of even average players in 2 decades is just an impossibly bad record. And it's not like failed prospects they've given up on have rushed off to become stars for other organizations.

One of several sources on the Oriole weaknesses in scouting and development:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-10-15/sports/bs-sp-schmuck-orioles-1016-20111015_1_top-priority-brian-matusz-operation

Maybe donlock should take the time to read that article before he starts making any more excuses for Angelos.

#45 Here's a David Neiporent post on the subject from back in 2002

There's an old parable about the difference between a cat and a person. A cat who once sits on a hot stove won't ever make that mistake again. It won't sit on a cold one, either.

That's Angelos, to a T. The lesson he took from the flops of the late 90s was not that expensive old washed up players are a poor investment, but rather that all expensive players are a poor investment. So no Mussina, no Rolen.

If you recall, the Orioles had a chance to get Rolen this past offseason; Angelos vetoed the idea after he found out how much Rolen wanted for a long-term deal.

#347 It's also worth noting that Eddie Epstein quit the organization after his attempts to clear out the dead wood were frustrated by those who were happy with the state of affairs (cronyism and lack of accountability being the norm)

to me the interesting question is - WHY did [Angelos] suddenly decide to go el cheapo/el crappo after 97?

He didn't really stop the big spending until a few years later.



After '98, the team failed to re-sign Alomar and Palmeiro, but compensated by signing Belle to a ginormous contract. After Belle's body gave out, they finally gave up on the patching and filling around Ripken and traded many veterans at the trade deadline in '00; this kick-started the rebuilding by getting Melvin Mora and a bunch of nothing. Mussina's contract also expired at the end of 2000.

After a couple of years failing with lousy cheapish players, Belle's contract expired and the new Flabanageattie regime tried to jump back into the free agent pool before 2004 by signing Tejada, Javy Lopez, Palmeiro, and making what was for months the largest offer to Vladdy. The team continued to add salary in the form of various stiffs and occasionally useful players until MacPhail came in and started trying a more serious rebuild.

So Angelos seemed to be happy to let Gillick spend his money as long as it led to playoff appearances, but having a losing team with a top 5 payroll didn't appeal.

#50 The accepted combination name for that era is Beatagan. For obvious reasons.

I forgot spending big bucks on Tejada.

Yankee Mark Texeira, not Mike.

Who is Eddie Epstein?

#50-Spending seems middle of the pack over the last 5-8 years.

Schmuck reference - not much new there. Orioles have had a limited Latin presence on the field which may put them at a disadvantage. I heard that the REdSox had 10 or 12 Latin scouts but I don't think of them as a team of Latin stars or even many home grown bodies. Pedro, Manny and Papi are imports.

Again, how are the Orioles different in their scouting and development than other teams. Never heard that their scouts were hacks or bums that stayed on because Angelos loved them. Most of the personnel have never met him. He is a cold-blooded millionaire lawyer and doesn't appear to put up with incompetence in his business.

Most of the Oriole picks have not panned out. Why?

#52 I guess you could call Epstein a stathead for hire these days. Started out with the Orioles as their Director of Research and Statistics from 1988 to 1994. Moved to the Padres in 1995 as the Director of Baseball Operations. Quit in frustration (He wrote an interesting rant about quitting that job that wasn't up all that long. The thrust of it was that he was quitting for the same reasons he left the Orioles)

Wrote the first edition of the Stats Minor League Scouting Notebook and his intro contained specific examples of Oriole related cronyism and lack of accountability. The one that I bring up repeatedly is the scout who stated that neither Ron Gant nor David Justice were of interest. And kept his job because he had friends higher up.

It's not Angelos who hires the scouts and keeps them on, rather he's allowed others to hire friends (normal enough) and hasn't held anybody responsible for the lack of results. One thing that Epstein mentions is that there was no systematic review of the scout's reports, nor was there any systematic examination as to why players didn't develop as expected. Mike Emeese days.igh has said that if it's still happening it would be unusual th

Epstein currently consults for a number of teams.

The irony of this all is that not to long ago the O's were the financial beast of the AL with a brand new stadium, a city that absolutely fell in love with the team, a string of sold out dates and the acclaim of the national media. Toss in the fact that EBW (Due to his union ties via is asbestos lawsuits) was the one owner who supported, or at least sided, with the players in the strike (And the Players Union remembered-there was a period there where almost any player would have danced to have been an O)and there was a chance for Angelos to restart the golden age of the team.

I believe it was Angelos who won the asbestos lawsuits. He also wouldn't use replacement players for the 1995 season.

i have never understood Organizations' attitudes about the minor leagues. Why on earth not try to develop the most people you possibly can? Even if your didn't NEED them for you own team, you could certainly use them to trade.

How is it that even if a team hasn't picked some guy in a high round because they get him for cheap - why do so many fail so badly? Almost all of the Astros 08 and 09 picks are already gone - OOB, even the pimpees like Jay Austin and jonny Gaston. Jo Mier is only still there because he was a first rounder.

I know that some guys won't do the work, don't really have the drive to succeed, or get injured, but there are fewer and fewer rounds of the draft and why let all those guys go to waste?

Also, the policy of not feeding young, growing males really good and healthy food at team expense is stupidly cheapo. Same thing with not hiring the best teachers/developers money can buy. To me, this is like having a whole bunch of 7 year olds and dumping them and a bunch of books in a room and telling them to figure out how to read and do math their own self.

#52: I don't think of the Red Sox as great in Lain America, although you might recall that Hanley is one of their finds. Look at the Yanks, however--Nova, Montero, Nunez, Banuelos in just the past few years. The Orioles were WAY late in this market and pay the price until this day.

You keep asking why, as if it it's some deep mystery. The Orioles have had plenty of high draft choices in the last 15 years and they have had plenty of money. They have not picked the right players, and that's on the scouts. Just look at the list of players picked after us who have succeeded. They have not developed the players they've picked, and that's on the minor league coaches. They have not succeeded in getting good free agents and have made very few good trades, and that's on the major league staff. And all of these individuals are employed by Angelos. If he did not pick them directly, he picked the guys and gals that did hire them.

If your argument is that this is just a 15 year string of bad luck, that's simply not credible in the face of the facts we do know about how the leadership of this team works and the success other teams have had in selecting and developing a team. I do not see why you keep looking for excuses.

Tell me ONE area of talent identification and development where the Orioles have excelled in the last 15 years. Just one.

Remember when BPro called Matt Wieters one of the biggest busts of all time? What a bunch of clowns....

Tell me ONE area of talent identification and development where the Orioles have excelled in the last 15 years. Just one.

1. Greek outfielders
2. Boxing judges...er, judge-punchers.

The O's actually have gotten more position players out of their farm system in the last dozen years than they did in the previous dozen. You'll remember the oft-repeated lament of the '90s about how the team hadn't produced a regular position player since Ripken. Since then, Roberts and Wieters have been to the All-Star game, and Markakis is a solid player, though it looks like he may never break through to being a star. This improvement was only possible because the baseline was so abysmal - the recent system has still not produced nearly enough talent.

Had the Orioles not had a Greek owner, Markakis would probably be a Detroit Tiger. Opa!

Well, if the benchmark for the O's for 2000-2012 is the O's of 1987-1999, I might accept that point. Of course, the last decade, the O's have drafted much higher on a consistent basis, so they ought to be able to get more position players.

But, that's not really the relevant benchmark, just as you indicate.

#53 - Small correction: Eddie hasn't consulted in about a year to a year and a half. (I spoke to him today to confirm that. He now works at a client of mine where I provide computer consulting services.) He got kind of tired of baseball. We talk about it mostly from a statistical analysis and a back in the day context, but he clearly isn't following it that closely any more at this point.