As the Orioles settle solidly into their biannual August collapse I'm left to ponder how much more tolerable it would be to follow this franchise if there was a sense that it would ever commit to anything other than settling for the sub-mediocre death spiral that the club has been mired in for nearly a decade.  It's truly remarkable to consider, nearly nine full years into an uninterrupted string of losing seasons, that the club has never really committed itself to a rebuilding process.

Most lousy, veteran-laden clubs have two principal options:  1) sell off the parts for young talent as part of a gutting process; 2) continue the mixing and matching game and never really get significantly better.  The Orioles have consistently followed the latter choice, even though it's been pretty obvious since at least 1999 that the former option was the better course of action.

A true rebuilding process is not for the faint of heart.  Even with a poor club, it usually--not always, but typically--involves taking a step backward right off the bat.  It's a determined choice; a club accepts that it will probably get worse in the short-term with the hope of becoming significantly better in the mid- and/or long-term.  There are, of course, no guarantees.  A poor rebuilding process will leave a club in the same losing rut it can find itself using veterans.  A good strategy poorly implemented is usually no better than a bad strategy.  Given the alternative, however, there's typically little in the way of a viable option:  a chance at improving is better than a lock on persistent losing.

One of the ironies about the decision making locus surrounding rebuilding is that, often times, the longer a team goes on losing, the harder it is to commit to rebuilding precisely because it means not only an extension of a losing skein but likely greater losing for awhile.  This can be hard for an organization desperate to break free from a string of losing seasons to accept.

I think the situation surrounding the Orioles is, arguably, as bad as it can get.  My sense is that the single most important reason why the Orioles are unwilling to commit to a rebuilding plan is their concern of offending a declining--but still fairly numerous--fan base by essentially stating outright that the team will be losing for several more seasons.  It's somewhat ironic, but my feeling is that a team with a fan base that has already declined to its core--as has been the case with the Florida Marlins or the Detroit Tigers, for instance--has a much easier time justifying selling off its veterans with talent for young players.  There's no one left, really, to enrage; there's little interest to be lost.  The Orioles--perhaps more accurately, Peter Angelos, since this attitude has been pervasive despite several changes in front office personnel over the years--seem unwilling to risk "offending" the franchise's fans by "locking in" the prospect of losing.

I'm doubtful that the Orioles are ever going to have a chance to turn around their fate without taking the full rebuilding step.  I'm not sure that they'll turn things around even if they do, but I'm all but certain they won't unless they give it a whirl.  The irony of the team's apparent position with regard to making a commitment to rebuilding, of course, is that they're already "locked in" to losing.

I've made numerous references recently to my belief that the franchise has done a pretty solid job of building some degree of organizational depth in the pitching realm.  It hasn't quite paid off yet at the major league level, and it may not for another year or two, but the Orioles have a reasonable chance of trotting a fairly solid pitching staff out on the field in the relatively near future.  

Would that this were enough.

The position player situation, as I've mentioned before, remains a shambles, with little hope of that changing in the foreseeable future.  Even if things go as well as could be expected in the pitching department, the Orioles will still have numerous holes remaining to be filled to attain a level of real competitiveness.  The only solution to this problem is to succeed in the process of building position player organizational depth, as they have with pitchers.  The only real hope of doing that is by moving some of their current veteran players for prospects from other clubs as they--hopefully--start developing a few more players of their own.  

With the exception of Nick Markakis, the inadequate lineup that the Orioles are already putting on the field is on the wrong side of the age 27 peak season.  Corey Patterson, the next youngest starting position player on the club, turns 27 next season.  Brian Roberts will be 29.  Everyone else will be at least 30.  It's not, overall, an ancient club, but it is an aging one...and it's not very good to begin with.  It certainly isn't a good enough club to compete, even with a sea change in the performance of the pitching staff as a whole.  In all likelihood, we're talking about at least another couple of seasons before the pitching is in order, even if things go well.  

If the Orioles continue their recent trend of patching holes with mediocre, veteran players they won't be in any better position to make a move in a couple of years than they are right now.  The cycle of mediocrity, in that event, will continue ad infinitum. 

Committing to rebuilding is going to be a painful process.  It's going to mean asking a frustrated fan base to be patient.  Again.  But what other real choice is there?  And could it really be more painful than continuing a strategy with absolutely no hope of success?

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