Soccer Dad

6 out of 20 is bad

1994 RS RA 589 497 W L 65 47 1995 RS RA 704 640 W L 71 73

1994 RS RA 613 697 W L 52 62 1995 RS RA 691 720 W L 74 70

What do these two tables show? Well the left table records the Baltimore Orioles' record from 1994 and 1995. Which team is on the right? The Texas Rangers. The Orioles got 20 games worse from 1994 to 1995 and the Rangers got better by ten games. The Orioles skid occurred despite having a run differential similar to that of the Yankees in 1995, they finished 6 games behind the wild card winning Yankees. What accounts for that one year decline?

My guess is the late Johnny Oates. Maybe no one would confuse him with Tony LaRussa, Bobby Cox, Davey Johnson or Lou Pinella, but he was a better manager than most people realized. I believe that he didn't have a single losing season until the last two years of his career when he managed a team from spring training. (He had a losing record in 1991, but he took over for Frank Robinson mid-season.)

A manager's most important job is choosing the best resources (ie players) available and then using them to their maximum advantage. If you consider the improvement of the Orioles from 1991 to 1992 and their decline from 1994 to 1995, it's probably at least in part to Johnny Oates. But Oates, unfortunately, wasn't glamorous enough for Peter Angelos and after a very respectable 1994, Oates was fired in an ignominious fashion. Word got out that Angelos was attempting to lure LaRussa to Baltimore. Angelos realized that the situation wasn't tenable anymore so he fired Oates to spare him any additional embarrassment.
Oates deserved better so it was gratifying to see him throw out the first pitch of the 2002 season.
Oates went to Texas and Texas improved. He left Baltimore and Baltimore stumbled. No doubt he was a good manager.
After the 1994 season the Orioles lost another talent, Doug Melvin. Melvin had been the assistant GM under Roland Hemond and was looking for his own organization to run. Instead of moving Hemond to a ceremonial position and promoting Melvin after 1994, Angelos left things in place. I suppose that he did it perhaps to avoid choosing between Melvin and Frank Robinson. But the disgraceful way Angelos dismissed Robinson a year later doesn't suggest that he was all that sensitive. Melvin knew that he wouldn't get a promotion in Baltimore so he left for greener pastures in Texas.
Though Melvin rebuilt the Texas farm system, he didn't produce many successful pitchers and eventually found himself in Milwaukee. How's he doing in Milwaukee? Well he inherited a reasonably good farm system, but that isn't the only thing he's done. Consider the following:

Danny Kolb is now a Brave. His success in 2004 makes it harder to remember that Kolb was a waiver-wire pickup, cut loose by the Rangers after a slow rehab from Tommy John surgery. The return that Doug Melvin got for polishing the proverbial penny has been analyzed elsewhere. It's more interesting to note that Melvin's trade now allows him to search for the next shiny trinket.
Kolb is not the only waiver-wire pitcher Melvin has found. Doug Davis was another 2003 pickup that has paid off and another ex-Ranger Melvin knew from his time there. It's impossible to say who the next candidate might be, though the bullpen will be filled with possibilities.

This shows that Melvin knows (at least a little) how to evaluate talent and to realize when a player is more useful in a new uniform.
I realize it's too late to wish that Angelos had kept Melvin and Oates together. I'm not even sure that would have brought me happiness as an Orioles fan. After all, their tenure in Texas eventually crashed and burned. Still it seems that the Orioles under Angelos haven't always valued the talent - either in the front office or on the playing field - as they should have. There's been too much turnover in search of a quick fix when, in fact, showing patience and allowing a plan to materialize is probably a faster way to success than changing directions every few years. (Assuming the people executing the plan are competent.)
But even as it appears that Angelos is committed to Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan, I have to wonder what other changes are on the way? Will this team adopt a strategy and stick by it? (And no it need not be "Moneyball." Brian Sabean consistently confounds the statheads and still somehow keeps his team competitive. I guess having the best player of the past 3 generations on his team helps to some degree.) The rumors surrounding Lee Mazzilli late last season and the off season departure of Doc Rodgers signal that patience is still not a part of the Orioles organization.
And what makes it worse are sentiments like these:

Hoping to land a premier starting pitcher and a middle-of-the-lineup bat through free agency or a trade, Orioles Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations Jim Beattie said the uncertainty of the financial effect the Nationals will have on the Orioles has caused the franchise to be outbid for players. Without an agreement with MLB on a compensation package, the Orioles are unsure how much they can spend.
"Our revenues drive what we can do," Beattie said during the team's FanFest on Sunday. "It has slowed us down. We would be in better position if we had an agreement. It has put us behind the eight ball in what we want to do."

I have never been a fan of Angelos even when the Baltimore media was uncritically heralding him as a local savior of the team back when he bought it. For Beattie to make this excuse (whether its his own view or the view he was told to promote is unclear) is sheer chutzpah. If the O's were regularly competetive and not just 6 times over the past 20 years, the team's revenue stream would be quite healthy. Outside of Miguel Tejada how many players do the O's have now that children are going to look up to? According to DCRTV the Nationals are likely to make a deal with WTEM. WTEM is Washington's sports talks station and it used to carry Orioles games. But Orioles games are now carried by a lesser Clear Channel station in the market. The Orioles may have real wounds. But the wounds are largely self inflicted. It's hard to see that the Orioles' problems couldn't be solved with a commitment to stay the course with talented management. Blaming the Nationals suggests that the team still doesn't get it.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 18, 2005 09:11 AM | TrackBack