It will come as no surprise, I'm sure, to hear that the baseball world now firmly identifies the Baltimore Orioles as a losing organization.  Eight consecutive sub-.500 seasons, a dismal postmodern history of player development and an apparently chronically dysfunctional front office, repeatedly embarrassed by breathtaking on-field collapses and off-field humiliations, will do that.  The Orioles are now routinely grouped with teams such as the Royals, Pirates, Tigers, Rockies, Devil Rays and Brewers as habitual, incorrigible losers.  The media believes this; other organizations believe it; players throughout the major leagues believe it; fans across North America believe it.  Whether this is a fair assessment is, quite frankly, beside the point; for the purposes of this discussion, perception is 100% of reality.  

The only primary means to broadly changing this view is to show clear improvement at the major league level--that is, the big league team must demonstrate the ability to win more games than it loses and do so for more than a fluke season every now and again.  On this point, there is little if any debate.  But on the means to this end?  That's an entirely different kettle of fish.

After eight straight years of losing and a six-month stretch of controversy presumably unmatched in the history of the franchise, the Orioles are facing a crisis of confidence.  The 2005 season's first few months served as a tease, and an ultimately unsatisfying one at that.  The seeming implication of last season was that even if the Orioles are able to put together a few months of solid play, they lack the depth--and perhaps the organizational fortitude--to sustain a competitive season for a full four months (to say nothing of six).  Like an underdog basketball team that plays well into the early stages of the second half only to collapse under the weight of its own inexperience and talent dearth with ten minutes remaining, the Orioles fell apart in the latter stages of their own first half for many of the same reasons.  The front office was unable or unwilling (or both) to assist in any meaningful way.

The Rafael Palmeiro episode only added to the number of holes the club had to try (unsuccessfully) to fill, pointing out to the club's fan base how far the team is away from legitimate competitiveness.  The likelihood of successfully filling these holes was dependant largely on one's definition of "successfully," but if that definition involved contending for a postseason berth, it was highly unlikely.  If the club viewed the status of things thusly it was probably a realistic assessment. 

Until this week, I was inclined to believe that the direction that the front office had chosen to take in an attempt to revive the long-term competitiveness of the franchise was essentially to sit and do nothing and, quite frankly, a case can be made that this was in fact the best course of action under the circumstances.  Consider the following:  1) the Orioles had a lot of holes to fill; 2) the free agent market this season was one of the worst in the history of free agency; 3) the team's most important off-season move, arguably, was completed when Leo Mazzone was named the club's pitching coach.

The thinking continues along the following lines:  there has rarely, if ever, been a bigger seller's market in the thirty-odd years of baseball free agency.  Very few impact players were available and those that were ultimately received absurd contracts as a result.  The Orioles, who certainly were not one or two players away from competitiveness and whose immediate needs matched dreadfully with those players who were available (needs:  impact corner outfielders, first basemen, designated hitters; availability:  limited or non-existent), it can be argued, wisely got out of the way.  The lone significant signing that the team did make--Ramon Hernandez--can be seen as fitting the profile.  If not an immediate need, catcher is a position at which the Orioles would need help no later than the 2007 season; the organization has no catching prospects to speak of; Hernandez has been one of the better catchers in baseball in recent years, isn't that old and was signed to a less than utterly ridiculous contract.

The rest of the story unfolds as follows.  Mazzone, regarded as nothing less than a pitching guru by many around baseball, could spend a year--or at least the lion's share of one--deciding which of the young Orioles starting pitchers--Daniel Cabrera, Erik Bedard, Hayden Penn, John Maine, etc.--were keepers and which weren't; which of the Orioles veteran starters--Bruce Chen, Rodrigo Lopez--were worth hanging on to or dealing.  The Orioles, then, would use 2006 to sort the wheat from the chaff in preparation to making a major free agent/trading splash entering 2007.  Another year of development might well allow the club to fill a couple of its chronic holes--perhaps one or more of its outfield prospects--Nick Markakis, Val Majewski, Jeff Fiorentino--might prove ready to aid the club at the big league level by then, cutting down on the number of obvious needs.  A surplus of starting pitching and a couple of key moves from a deeper free agent market might well allow the Orioles to head into 2007 with a legitimate expectation of heading firmly in the right direction.

This is something of a quick and dirty explication of the front office's possible line of thinking, but I think you get the idea.  And, despite the fact that it does little to immediately arrest the eight-year losing skein, it was arguably the best long-term course of action.  The short-term actions--or non-actions--can be viewed in this vein.  Or could have been.

But then, two things took place that served to throw this possible plan of attack into serious doubt.  

First, the Miguel Tejada fiasco erupted and then re-erupted.  Second, Jeromy Burnitz was signed to a two-year, $12 million contract.

The Tejada episode--he wants a trade, he doesn't want a trade but he feels the need to motivate the front office to do something, he's-mad-as-hell-and-he's-not-going-to-take-it-anymore, ad infinitum--appears ostensibly to be the latest in a maddeningly long list of public relations nightmares afflicting the Orioles, and it certainly is at least that much.  A team that already has a palpably difficult time attracting legitimate interest from prime major league players took another hit when the man who has become the face of the club over the past couple of years, the one performer on the Orioles viewed around the big leagues as a star, a player who has not historically been viewed as a malcontent, publicly popped off that he wanted out...or, at the very least, that he was extremely dissatisfied.  Those who hoped or expected that this was nothing more than a case of momentary frustration must have been disappointed when, nearly a month after the original outburst and a presumed cooling off period, the Orioles shortstop (at least for the time being) fired another salvo, slightly amending but essentially reiterating his initial complaint.  

We can argue until we're blue in our faces that Tejada handled this situation poorly or that he's being unreasonable, or that his "don't just stand there do something" demand would make him a lousy general manager unless he was working for George Steinbrenner, but this is really all beside the point.  The salient issue is that Tejada's diatribe echoes the general consensus opinion of Baltimore fans, who are sick to death of the losing and the appearance of a nearly decade-long directionless organizational drift.  Many Orioles fans are probably unhappy with Tejada's specific actions, and the fact that someone making a guaranteed eight-figure salary for each of the next four years is complaining, but I daresay that the vast majority of Orioles rooters are equally (or perhaps exceedingly) mad as hell and disinclined to take it anymore as Miggy.

I'd like to think that the Burnitz signing had nothing to do with the Tejada flare-up, for two reasons.  The first is that, clearly, if the front office is reacting to a public outburst from an annoyed player, it's as directionless as its harshest critics believe; such a scenario would confirm that the inmates are indeed running the asylum.  The second reason is that even if the front office did commit a cardinal sin and respond in reactionary form to a player's eruption, this was a pitifully inadequate way to address the presumed shortcoming.

Let's examine Jeromy Burnitz, the player.  Burnitz is approaching the end of what has been a solid big league career.  Overall, he has been more or less an average offensive player at his position (right field)--mediocre average, plus power, decent (or slightly better) walk rate.  He fans a lot, but has historically been a plus defender with a strong and generally accurate arm.  He's been a pretty decent player throughout his career...but he turns 37 in mid-April, is coming off a down season (his worst OPS, despite playing in a hitter's park, since a horrid year with the Mets in 2002, and an OWP of .468).  Burnitz ranked 26th in Offensive Winning Percentage among 34 major league right fielders with at least 300 plate appearances in 2005.  He was still arguably an upgrade for the Orioles (the prime Baltimore RF in 2005, Sammy Sosa, was dead last among qualifiers with a .359 OWP), but that says far more about the Orioles, in the negative sense, that it does positively about Burnitz.  Despite the checkered assessment, Burnitz might still be regarded as a short-term hole-filler for the Orioles under their current set of circumstances--someone who can fill a need to some modest extent without embarrassing himself (assuming he doesn't perform the way he did in 2002).  But the Orioles secured this filler by giving him a 50% per annum raise and signing him for two years.  It's an undeniably bad contract given Burnitz's recent performance and his age and it belies the notion, to at least some extent, that the Orioles are sitting in wait for a better market; they've just invested $12 million in mediocrity to patch a hole.  

The point is that the notion of plugging Burnitz in for a year, at a modest salary, was a defensible move and one that was in line with the aforementioned "long-term plan," but that's not what happened, and we're left wondering just what the "plan" is.

And this leads us back to Tejada, as the Orioles presumably continue to entertain offers for him, mull over the notion of whether they can stuff the dissatisfaction genie back in the proverbial bottle and decide what direction to take.  

Again.

My personal feeling--and I've said this repeatedly over the years--is that until and unless this franchise figures out how to consistently develop an abundance of its own major league caliber talent, it will do nothing more than race along on a sub-.500 treadmill regardless of what it does in the trade and free agent markets. Until such time as that happens, the rest of the process is little more than an exercise in picking around at the margins because the notion of cobbling together a competitive unit without a significant contribution from the fruits of internal development--in the form of direct contributions to the success of the Orioles, in the manner of indirect contributions through trades or, more likely, both--is almost impossible to fathom.  To a very great extent, the Orioles are simply reaping the fruits--or lack thereof--of countless years of unsuccessful player development.

We can of course argue this point, but even that's not all that important at the moment.

What is important is that the organization have some kind of plan and the will and ability to execute it.  Perhaps it does, but if so, it's doing a very, very poor job of communicating that fact to the rest of the world.  

The Orioles need to pick a course of action and stick with it; they need to execute that plan.  They need to establish a semblance of organizational direction, communicate it to all of their employees and supporters and make it happen.  They need to retain people who are fully on board with this established direction and bring in people from outside, when necessary, who are willing to be part of the program.  They need to recognize that rebuilding in baseball is a difficult, time-consuming process that, if implemented poorly, can result in years and years of sub-mediocrity.  (If this fact hasn't already been accepted in light of the events of recent years, we may be doomed to eternal failure.)  And of course they need to take several uninterrupted steps forward on the field.  They don't need to make a World Series appearance this season, but they do need to demonstrate a series of clear, progressive steps.

Maybe all of this is actually taking place...at least the organizational part...but if so, the public communication mechanism is damaged, if not irrevocably broken.  I've said many times that we're not engaging in fantasy league baseball here; putting together a real life major league organization is far more complicated than merely picking the right players in some sort of faux draft.  There are public relations matters to be considered, and one of those is convincing a franchise's fan base that the people in control know what they want to do and have the ability to carry out their charge.  At present, few outside the organization itself believes this to be the case.  The rest of major league baseball doesn't believe it, the media doesn't believe it and, consequently, the fan base doesn't believe it, and I think that if people within the organization made an attempt to take an objective look at why this might be the case, rather than engaging in a bunker mentality, they'd understand why "the outside world" feels this way.

The Orioles, as an institution, are suffering through a serious crisis of confidence right now and I sense that the next few months will be a critical period in determining whether an emergence from the present somnolent slumber is imminent or whether we have many more years of additional subpar baseball ahead in Baltimore.

Stay tuned.

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