Since about June or so, it’s become increasingly clear that current Orioles general manager Andy MacPhail, who took over baseball operations in the middle of 2007, will step down from his post after the season when his contract expires. His tenure has had some good features and, well, some not so good features. All in all, the club has more young players that could be a stable part of the club’s future than when MacPhail took over, but the general outlook remains the same. The Orioles are in by far the worst shape of any team in the toughest division in sports, both in the short-term and the long-term.
Once MacPhail steps down – and again, that’s not a guarantee but it seems likely – the Orioles could promote from within the organization or go outside the organization to look for a replacement. Promoting from within the organization would probably be a mistake. (One of Buck Showalter, Joe Jordan or Matt Klentak would likely become the general manager.) The organization needs to look to the outside for a fresh, new voice with fresh, new ideas.
In a division that includes the ninja-like tendencies of Alex Anthopolous and Andrew Friedman and the never-ending resources of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, finding the next general manager is an absolutely crucial hire. Camden Depot took a look at potential replacements for MacPhail outside of the organization here. Orioles Nation examined potential candidates here. Both are good pieces and I encourage everyone to check them out. Personally, I’d love for the Orioles to take a hard look at John Coppolella, Director of Baseball Administration for the Atlanta Braves.
I think that the most likely scenario after the season is MacPhail, Showalter and majority owner Peter Angelos all selecting a successor for MacPhail. I feel like the idea of Showalter hanging up the managerial cleats and becoming the general manager is a bit overblown at this point – or at least I hope it is. The idea of Showalter becoming the GM is borderline frightening. If that were to happen, I could totally see him trading Zach Britton for Dan Uggla or something.
The other issue is Angelos himself – are MacPhail, Showalter and Angelos able to convince candidates for the general manager position that Angelos won’t interfere with everyday baseball operations? And once that trust is established, will Angelos keep his word? Anyway, with the organization in the position that it’s currently in, I’m looking for a handful of things from the next general manager, as well as whomever he brings into the organization. Let’s get to it.
1. An open mind in terms of player development. Over recent years, the Orioles have had a terrible time developing quality talent through their farm system. The most recent example garnering national headlines has been the young pitching that has filtered through the farm system and into the big leagues from 2009 to 2011 (from Brad Bergesen to Zach Britton). The issues with the young pitchers are well documented, as well as the slower-than-expected offensive development of Matt Wieters and Adam Jones.
The poster boy of the player development failures, though, could be Josh Bell. Acquired in the George Sherrill trade from the Dodgers, Bell’s approach at the plate completely fell apart, seemingly the moment he entered the Orioles’ system. He’s quickly gone from “third baseman of the future” to “oh look, another failed Orioles prospect.”
Daniel Moroz of Camden Crazies broke down the Orioles’ fairly recent track record of developing young pitching on a recent MASNsports.com guest post here; I recommend everyone checking out the dismal track record. Or maybe you don’t because you’ll get depressed. I don’t know. Your choice.
The first thing I’d do as the next Orioles general manager is try to uncover everything I can possibly can to get to the root of this constant issue. It’s still possible that the failure to develop prospects within the system is all rotten luck, but this seems like an awful lot to attribute mainly to bad luck; more realistically, this is systemic. The frustrating part is that it’s impossible to put a finger on what exactly is causing the player development issue. Former minor leaguer Don Olsen wrote a piece for Orioles Nation here about what he would do to ensure that the organization’s talent develops to the best of its ability.
I’d want the new general manager to come in with the understanding that the organization has had difficulty developing productive young players and have an open mind about how to fix it so that current prospects like Manny Machado, Dylan Bundy and Jonathan Schoop don’t become the next victims. If that means overhauling the current player development chain – it probably does – and hiring new instructors, so be it. If it means keeping some current instructors in place who are thought to be doing an excellent job, so be it. If it means clearing out folks in the Warehouse, fine. But changes very obviously have to be made.
2. An understanding of where to allocate a finite number of resources. MacPhail seemed to have an understanding of where a lot of his available resources needed to go when he took over the general manager position. He spoke of paring down the major league payroll and ridding the club of burdensome contracts for middling players, and for the most part, he did that in his first couple of years in Baltimore. Meanwhile, his first major move as general manager was signing Matt Wieters to a club record $6 million bonus for an amateur.
MacPhail’s first two draft signing periods he presided over – 2007 and 2008 (he was hired after the draft in 2007 but before the signing deadline) – saw higher draft bonuses given out to amateurs than in the recent past, headlined by Wieters and Brian Matusz. MacPhail also spoke of a greater commitment to the international scene, where the Orioles were a non-factor at best and an embarrassment at worst. But then the rebuilding movement MacPhail instilled, partially based on committing to the draft, sort of came to a halt.
More resources were spent on middling free agents, especially troubling since relievers were involved: Michael Gonzalez, Miguel Tejada (round two), Garrett Atkins, Kevin Gregg, Derrek Lee and Vladimir Guerrero. The 2009 draft saw a departure from the previous two drafts, as the Orioles went with Matt Hobgood as the fifth pick of the draft, and most draft analysts believed the Orioles passed over better talents such as Jacob Turner and Shelby Miller due to potential price tags.
There can’t be any restrictions placed on scouting director Joe Jordan, or whoever the next lead scout is. (Jordan’s contract is up after this year. I personally think Jordan has done a pretty good job and would like to see him continue.) And to be fair, the Orioles took two high price-tag players in Machado and Bundy the next two years, but the Hobgood pick remains suspicious. Meantime, the commitment to the international market never manifested, and the way MacPhail has ended up talking about the international scene is borderline sickening.
The next general manager must understand that resources need to be devoted to the draft, the international market and player development and not middling free agents. Maybe just as important, the next general manager has to have the latitude with ownership and other internal forces to stay on the rebuilding path and not drive off said path and straight into a river. To recap: Upgrading spending on the draft, the international market, along with player development – good. Spending a lot of money on middling free agents – bad.
3. An understanding that a shift in strategy needs to occur. The recent off-season free agent signings, along with some other recent moves, signal that the organization’s biggest concern as currently constructed is to be less terrible in the short-term, and they’re willing to sacrifice long-term goals to satisfy the former. A perfect example of this is the Guerrero signing, which was meant to help raise the win total of the 2011 team by a win or two, but two negatives were also achieved.
One was that Nolan Reimold, a possible part of the future as a cheap left fielder, was pushed out of the 25-man roster and onto the Norfolk roster. Reimold finally got a chance to play later in the year (but only due to an injury to Luke Scott), but even now, Reimold isn’t playing every day. The organization sacrificed finding out about Reimold’s long-term future in the hopes of being ever-so-slightly less terrible in 2011. The other negative was the $8 million contract number – that’s real cash that could have been used to sign international free agents and draft more costly, high ceiling players.
The next general manager must understand the proper strategy in the broad scope of the organization’s path and has to trust that it’s the correct path. MacPhail seemed to get impatient with his rebuilding plan in its beginning stages – he gave up a draft pick for the “privilege” to sign Mike Gonzalez, proclaimed that wins matter in the 2010 season, and that the team had turned the page on nurturing along the young talent. Now, the Orioles find themselves in a position where their big league payroll is far too large, with bad contracts abound (but at least most of those are short-term).
4. Creativity and a willingness to take risks on young talent. After the Blue Jays pulled off the trade that brought them uber-talented center fielder Colby Rasmus, the reaction among Orioles fans was fairly universal: “Andy MacPhail could never pull off something like that.” The Jays pulled off a tricky maneuver involving three teams to get Rasmus, a player they coveted. The Cardinals, Rasmus’ former team, were looking for starting pitching for the stretch run and put Rasmus on the block in order to acquire said pitching. Rasmus, for whatever reasons – some are known, some are not – did not mesh with manager Tony LaRussa. So the Jays acted boldly, acquiring Edwin Jackson from the White Sox and flipping him and a bevy of relievers (and Corey Patterson…) for Rasmus.
Could MacPhail have found a creative way to acquire the talented Rasmus, who could have been a cost-controlled cog in the outfield for years to come? Could the Orioles have put together a trade package involving Jeremy Guthrie and Koji Uehara to acquire Rasmus? Maybe so. If the Cardinals were content with acquiring Jackson and some relievers, wouldn’t they at least entertain the notion of trading for Guthrie, who would slide into the middle of their rotation, and Uehara, one of the best relievers around? I think they would. Alas, given MacPhail’s history, it’s fair to say that he would not be able to put that kind of trade together in a short amount of time.
MacPhail is known as a methodical front office man with a lot of ties to the commissioner’s office, even rumored as a possible future commissioner of baseball after Bud Selig. Those connected to the commissioner’s office tend not to be terribly forward-thinking, often shunning possible innovation within the game. (Which is why we’ll never see the commissioner’s office approve a potentially innovative owner like Mark Cuban. He’d be a threat to the current way of thinking among ownership groups and the commissioner’s office.)
MacPhail might be able to get away with it in another division. But not in the AL East. The Orioles need to embrace “the extra two percent” like the Rays and Jays have. Those two teams realize that they can’t do business in a conventional fashion because they’re not in a conventional situation given the division alignment. These two teams realize they have to recognize every possible advantage and market inefficiency available to them and exploit it.
For the Rays, that might mean endlessly studying where to position their defenders against certain opposing hitters. For the Jays, it might mean taking other teams’ supposed headcases like Yunel Escobar and Rasmus and inserting them into the lineup everyday and allowing them to shine. Each team realizes, though, that they need to stay ahead of the curve. They need to exploit the smallest of loopholes. They get it.
The Orioles, meanwhile, routinely trot out a less-than-optimal lineup every night, basically ignore the international market and are one of the few teams left that haven’t fully embraced new, advanced metrics.
The Orioles need to get on board. That hasn’t happened under MacPhail, and his attitude towards international scouting is a perfect metaphor for his approach to running a baseball team in 2011 in the AL East – slow, tired and behind in the times. The Orioles need a general manager willing to explore all avenues to success, not a narrow-minded approach.