Concern for the O's Future: Reasons 1 & 2

Based on their recent play, I would expect the Orioles to continue being bad at baseball for at least the next three years.  The five year outlook doesn't look any better in my opinion, but I want to focus on three year future for the purposes of this discussion.  The pathetic baseball that has been played by the Baltimore Orioles the past 14 days has disheartened my fan loyalty and driven me to rant/gripe/cry/yell about their future via blog posts.

For the past the few years, the fans have been told by Andy MacPhail to be patience and wait for "the plan" to be carried out to fruition.  I don't want to detail out "the plan", but its basic foundation is to "grow the arms, buy the bats, and be patience until 2011" (that was my understanding of it).  Well guess what, it's 2011, we're at the end of "the plan's" life-cycle and I'm having trouble finding reasons to be positive about the future.

As one would expect, I did not have any trouble finding reasons to doubt there would be success for the Orioles in the future.  I have identified four reasons why I think the Orioles will not be competitive in the next three years.  Reasons 1 & 2 (see below) explain how Andy MacPhail's "Plan" failed to understand that a team will not be competitive in the AL East if it doesn't at least attempt to draft a multitude of high school/college players with premium talent and purchase/sign multiple high-end major league players.

1.  No Playoff Hopes:  Orioles are still no closer to the playoffs then when MacPhail took over as General Manager.  The 2011 Orioles are likely to win somewhere between 70 and 75 games this year, a slight increase from 2010's 64 win campaign.  From my perspective, the difference between 64 wins and 75 wins in the American League is nothing since both of those teams would be at least 20 games out of the playoffs. 

Current Realization: Orioles are still a 20 game Overall win improvement away from a chance at the playoffs.
Future Realization:  No one player (P. Fielder for instance) is going to improve this team by 20 wins.

2.  Getting Owned by the AL East Teams:  Orioles have to beat the teams in their own division to reach the playoffs.  The unbalanced schedule means the Orioles have to play the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Rays a total of 72 times each season (18 per team), which means 44% of the Orioles' games come against the AL East.  I don't need a statistic to tell me a team better win at least 50% of the games against your division if you want to make the playoffs.  Average Win Percentage for the AL East Champion since 2006:  .602

To put that number in perspective, the Orioles were 135-208 (.385) against the AL East during that same time period.  On average, the Orioles were about 15 games under .500 each year against the AL East.  Currently, the Orioles are 10-18 (.360) against the AL East.  If they lose all four games against the Red Sox this weekend like I expect them to, they will be 10-22 (.312) against the AL East. 

Current Realization: Orioles are at least a 20 game versus AL East win improvement away from being competitive in the AL East.
Future Realization:  The Orioles are likely to lose their best player, J.J. Hardy, to a trade by July 31st or during free agency after the season.  There is no viable player in the farm system to replace him for at least 2 more years.  A playoff berth is not a realistic goal for 2012 if you cannot retain your highest performing players. 

Conclusion: The Orioles are bad at baseball and need to improve their win total by at least 20 games if they want to be part of the AL playoff race. Please Orioles, prove me wrong!!

In my next post (Reasons 3 & 4), I will explain how #McFail's "plan" was strategically and fundamentally misguided from the very beginning...