The Orioles getting swept by the Rays was a lightning rod to attract a lot of criticism about the way the Orioles have been doing things so far this year. This was so true that even MASN’s Ben McDonald, who gets his paycheck from a team-owned entity, was fired up enough to unload about analytics on a post-game show after the sweep.
In this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m thinking about what McDonald had to say about the team and why a lot of ultimately misguided attitudes are flowing from that.
I’m also thinking about an article that was in The Baltimore Banner the day after McDonald’s rant that suggested that no changes will be coming to the Orioles offensive philosophy because that “would be an admission of failure that … would only lend credence to the criticisms” of the front office.
For me, that was a disheartening article, and I try to get into why in this episode. High-level baseball is a game of constant adjustments, where you see how they’re responding to what you’re doing and then you respond to that, and then they respond to your response, and so on down the line. Perhaps if it seems like the Orioles are poorly adapting, it’s because Jon Meoli’s report that the front office doesn’t think there’s a need to adapt. If that’s the case, then Mike Elias has staked a lot on this season, and if it stays on the failure path, he shouldn’t get another season at the helm.
Listen to this week’s episode here:
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How are you feeling about the way things are going with the Orioles right now? Answers could make it into the mailbag section of the next episode of the podcast.
