Mr. Angelos? Um, We Got Kicked Out Of Korea

You really have to give the Baltimore Orioles credit, there giving this a really good try. It’s not easy to be the single most inept organization in baseball, especially when your competition is the Pirates, who haven’t had a winning season in about 2 decades, the Mets, who hired and then waited 5 years to fire Omar Minaya and subsequently got Madoffed out of a few hundred million dollars,  and the Dodgers, whose front office got taken over by the MLB last year after the owner syphoned millions in team revenue to help pay for his divorce, but any such conversation now must include the hapless O’s. If you hadn’t heard, Baltimore had quite a week. First, they traded the guy who had started 3 of the past 4 Opening Days (he wasn’t good at it, but still…) for two pitchers who are objectively worse  and certainly cost more. Next, they signed Nick Johnson, whose last big league stint was 24 games for the Yankees in 2010, to compete for their starting first base job. And finally, the Pièce de résistance if you will, was today’s announcement that the Korean Baseball Association (not to be confused with the Korean Baseball Organization) has permanently barred Orioles personnel from the country after they signed a 17 year old pitcher, Kim Seong-min, a high school sophomore, to a more than half a million dollar contract in violation of the rule that says that Korean players can only sign in the last year of high school or college. 

Here’s the worst part: the O’s are terrible. The O’s minor league system is bad. They’re scouting apparatus is atrocious (don’t quote me on this but I’m pretty sure I read that the O’s will have exactly one scout committed to the Grapefruit League and one other the Cactus League this spring). Really, the only thing they had going for them was their presence in Asia and their “skill” at identifying young Asian prospects. Well, that and Manny Machado, Keith Law’s 4th best prospect and their shortstop of the future. Now? The Orioles have nothing, no reason for fans to come to games, no reason for free agents to want to sign there and a newly hired but completely inept GM in Dan Duquette. Thing is, it all stems from owner Peter Angelos. Nothing can improve in TheWire-town until he leaves. At some point, you’d think he’d want to cut his losses on this one, right?

Something’s got to happen in Baltimore because this once proud franchise, home of Cal Ripken, Brooks Robinson, the 1971 rotation (with 4 20-game winners), is going down the drain. This Korea thing is just the latest in a long line of recent embarrassments.

Stat of the Day: The 1997 Baltimore Orioles’ average age for their pitchers was 30.7 years old. 

-Max Frankel