By the time many of you read this, Baltimore Orioles manager Dave Trembley may already be one of the many Americans without a job.
The Orioles are hands down, the worst team in baseball, and are well on their way to a 100-loss season.
Is that all Trembley’s fault?
Not really.
First off, the Orioles have the unfortunate luck to play in the same division as the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Tampa Bay Rays.
The first two teams, especially the Yankees, have no problem overpaying players in order to compete. The Rays, on the other hand, were so bad for so long that they gathered several high draft picks who, for the most part, have panned out and are all signed long-term.
The Orioles, on the other hand, have been bad, but not bad enough to get a really high draft pick, but nowhere good enough to have anyone care.
Just look at beautiful Camden Yards on any given night. It isn’t hard for someone from home to take a head count of fans. I’m willing to bet on some nights there are more players in both dugouts than there are fans in the stands.
That is, of course, unless the Yanks or Sox are in town. Then the place will be sold out. Unfortunately for the home team, it isn’t their fans packing into Camden.
My second reason you can’t blame Dave Trembley for the awful state of the Orioles is that his players just aren’t that good.
Sure, Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis are good enough players, but they’re average when you compare them to players of the same positions on their division rivals.
The O’s pitching (starting, relievers, and closer) is terrible.
There is only so much Trembley could have done with the talent he was given. Maybe the team underperformed under him, but even with a guy like Joe Torre, I doubt the O’s would be out of the cellar of the American League East.
That brings me to my third and final reason you can’t blame Dave Trembley for the woes of the franchise.
He may have worked for American professional sports’ worst owner. Not baseball, mind you, but all of sports in this country. That’s saying a lot considering just south of Baltimore is Washington, D.C., where Dan Snyder runs the Washington Redskins.
However, the difference between Snyder and Peter Angelos is that at least Snyder tries to make his team better. I have never seen any evidence of Angelos doing anything in the offseason to make me think that he is even thinking about competing with the Sox or Yanks.
Angelos can fire all the managers he wants from here to eternity, but until he realizes that he’s the problem, the O’s won’t come anywhere close to competing for a playoff spot.
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