The O's record since Davey Johnson was fired:
856-1095 = 0.439 winning percentage
In other words, to give themselves a .500 record since 1997, they'd need to win 239 straight games.
Or, another way of looking at it is they'd need to finish 101-61 for the next SIX years.
Or 91-71 (a fine record) for TWELVE straight seasons (the same number of losing seasons in a row).
Time to bring back Davey?
We can thank "Asbestos" Peter Angelos and his meddling ways (which I believe still endure after all these years).
ReplyDeleteC.P. Zilliacus:
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right. Don't tell me Brian Roberts would still be on the team if Angelos hadn't meddled. And now look. An aging 2nd baseman on the DL with a herniated disc that could likely ruin his season.
The Brian Roberts signing was a good move, whether or not he's currently injured.
ReplyDeleteThe potential return we were offered by the Cubs was insulting, and if we'd made the trade, you'd be bitching right now about how we got completely ripped off, since the prospects would all be in the crapper by now.
I'm no Angelos fan, but I don't blame him for Roberts, and I don't think we can place all the blame on him for these 12 years of losing.
I blame him for 3 major losses:
1. Jon Miller
2a. Davey Johnson
2b. Pat Gillick
3. Mike Mussina
I don't need to go into the Miller loss. It's just a travesty.
The Johnson and Gillick losses are intertwined, as Gillick likely wouldn't have left had Angelos not run Davey out of town. I'll come back to this one.
And Mussina should have been offered everything he could possibly have wanted to spend the rest of his career here. This one is the scariest one, because if Angelos is still involved, he could pull the same crap with Matusz 5-6 years from now.
Back to Johnson/Gillick, this is the one that you could possibly use to make a case against Angelos. If Gillick doesn't leave, we don't get Wren, Malone, Beattie, and Flanagan. If Davey doesn't get run off, we don't get Miller, Hargrove, Perlozzo, and Trembley.
It's that string of unsuccessful GM/manager combos that is as much to blame for the failures of this organization as Angelos is. But you can say he's responsible for hiring them, so maybe you're ultimately right.
It's funny you list those four, since I constantly go off on Angelos about the same group. I think I'd put Davey at the top of the list, though.
ReplyDeleteHow do you run a guy out of town after two playoff seasons? I believe the story goes that Angelos was furious how Davey handled Alomar's skipping out on a team dinner and fined him with the check going to his wife's charity. While Davey admitted it was inappropriate to give the money to his wife's charity, Angelos wanted to make him admit that it was not Davey's right to handle the Alomar situation, it was Peter's. And this is when Davey resigned. I'm sure there many other run-ins, but how small (some pun intended) can you be if you're Angelos?
As for Roberts, (and I want to devote a whole post to how I can't stand the current trend of nicknaming every player in rap fashion: e.g., B-ROB), the point is not how it might have turned out. The point is that the owner is calling the shots on baseball decisions, not the GM. He has his favorite players, and he wants them here no matter what.
Does it really make sense to keep a 32-year-old player whose game relies heavily on speed on a team that at best won't be good for another couple years when you can continue to bolster the roster with good prospects?
Again, the point was just that Angelos STILL has the final say on baseball decisions, something he supposedly relinquished with the hire of MacPhail.