So many things happening! Blog of Team was busy last couple weeks with failed lobbying effort to have Memlo be part of bronze statue menagerie. Almost pulled it off except that d*mned Brooks R. Such a spotlight thief!
Oh and also everybody got all tut-tutty and judgmental with Venezuela right as Blog unleashed fourteen-slide, bunt-heavy power point Memmlemo polemic at Sheraton. Bad timing.
Team has been busy, and not just on erecting statues front, having also brought back cartoon bird for front of hats.
Image via Sun
Though, for Blog’s money, switch back to “Baltimore” on road unis a year or two back was more earth-shattering (if anything Team has done over last five years or so can be compared with planet-altering events). And now that “Baltimore” lettering has been — how’d the Sun put it? — “flattened slightly and [rendered] consistent instead of tapered,” Wayward O apparently owns very potentially rare valuable … eh nevermind.
This really is Best Time of Year to be Orioles fan. We can argue about whether Team should hire talented baseball players ["Yes, we'll get better and be less boring." "No we're three years from competing and will be for next six years."] and it’s all abstracted by lack of games in which Baltimore team featuring lots of homegrown talent, a few random guys and ZERO free agent talent tends to lose.
(Guess missing part? Dunno … can’t suss it out. Too busy overthinking.)
And abstraction doubly welcome at moment since Team’s new generally managing guy, Dan Duquette, already indicated he can’t sign free-agent pitchers to deals exceeding three years. This means, Blog supposes, that Team will muddle through at least another year without signing a rotation-anchoring starter.
It also means, Blog induces, that big bats won’t come here either since now everyone knows big arms aren’t coming. But, hey, that’s just “analysis.” Nobody really knows that for fact.
Duquette, who now refers to Team as “my team” (something Andy MacPhail certainly never did) also recently was quoted as saying Team’s payroll largely will remain at roughly same level.
Looks like Duquette will try to do it with smoke and mirrors (and trades?) and blogosphere already is cranking up trade Markakis hype machine, suggesting Nicky might fetch a young arm from Atlanta or something because Duquette may or may not like “his” right fielder’s drop-off in home runs.
Trading away Markakis just to keep treading water sounds dumb to Blog. But, hey, what does Blog know?
Oh Blog actually does know something: In order to win, Major League Baseball teams have to sign exciting, talented free-agent ball players to compete. They have to sign players who are proven producers and hope they continue to produce. That costs money. And if one free agent doesn’t work out, it’s not an excuse to cry about it and never sign another player again.
Most importantly, however, Blog has like three fresh observations about Duquette. First his last name is a fantastic fake Scrabble word, and second, dude seriously needs to reconsider his flying lettuce look at top of what best can be described as a forehead so big that a bedouin nomad could get lost on it and die of thirst.
Chop that Buckwheat, Dan, please!
Also Duquette seems to have permanent five o’clock stubble. And he’s probably a sweater, too.
Blog isn’t too immediately impressed with Duquette and pretty much thinks when Buck says “jump,” Dan better say “how high?” Prove Blog wrong, Dan. Do it! After all, it’s “your team.”
But enough about boring old Team. Many things going on around Big Leagues as well!
Perhaps most important baseball finally has appeared to resolve ridiculous situation in which AL West has four teams and NL Central has six teams.
But decision to move Houston Astros to AL West appears to have come with saddening, concomitant expansion of MLB Playoffs that will see ten teams in October scrum.
It will be fun in terms of bracketology, Blog supposes, and chase for postseason spots will yield plenty of drama. But fact is, drama will be focused on who baseball’s tenth-best regular season team is.
Dead, buried and soon to be forgotten is baseball’s traditional system, which rewarded quality over long haul. Once upon time, Team benefited heavily from old system.
New, expanded system essentially supercharges element of playoff randomness and — except for, you know, the MONEY thing — does away with need for 162-game regular season.
And yet change probably was inevitable: as Washington Post pointed out, changes are MLB’s
first realignment in 13 years and its first playoff expansion in 16
Commissioner Bud Selig is right that this will drive more money into baseball’s coffers and, if crazy end to 2011 season is any indicator, will see baseball’s “pennant races,” if we can still call them that, remain in headlines despite advent of football every fall.
But, as it enters new era of playoff uncertainty, baseball likely will never see dynastic teams of yore again. There’s too much randomness now for dynasties, unless they appear by dint of complete luck.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Certainly it will cut down on Yankees’ ability to keep adding to number of World Series titles in bunches.
