Baltimore, Maryland ---
The Baltimore Orioles have been baseball's greatest success story after finishing 97-65 and reach the ALCS in 2014, just a year and a half after they wrapped up their 114 loss season that captured them the 2013 1st overall pick. How have the Orioles been able to do it? How, in a division that features the World Champion New York Yankees and great teams like the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays? How do you take a team with nothing and pull it within 3 wins of the World Series just a year and six months later? Their GMs make it simple.
"We've got a defense that works with our pitching." states Co-GM George Fitzpatrick. "We knew the only was to build a team from grass and soil in this division was to obtain what we could right away, then addressing what we needed later." Wait, what? So you guys are saying that you do not need to address your needs in the situation you were in? "To an extent, yes. Good pitching is what we needed, but good pitching is so hard to find that it would take a couple years to establish a ground in that area. We needed to address team concerns right away, and what we found was that we could obtain good defense for cheap and right away. We started with that as a building block, and then we planned to build the pitching slowly from there." Although their methods were pretty well organized, they didn't totally go as planned, Co-GM Thomas Sanabria explains.
"We tried to get pitching during the winters of 2012 and 2013, and we failed." "It was the winter of 2012 that we realized it was easier to land hitters than pitchers, so we went where the bright light was showing us to go." "I think what George means is if you cannot address a certain need right away, your better off addressing other needs that you can get done right away, even though those needs aren't as important." Sanabria explains. "The pitching somehow just fell into our lap late last season. We landed Mike Leake who completely obliterated hitters for us once he got here, William Wilson who did a nice job of turning his season around and we built upon it during the winter with the acquisition Brett DeVall. I also think the biggest key here is, these pitchers are worth nothing without a defense behind them. There is a reason Wilson and Leake felt more comfortable on our team than their previous teams. Defense was the best decision to build upon when we did because had we done it later, these guys might not have performed the way they did."
When asked how they felt about their chances this year, both GMs humbly agreed, "With the team we have out there now, we always have a shot. This AL East division is a bloodbath, Toronto has a great team, Boston has a great team and New York is New York, but we've overcome large obstacles before and this is just another challenge for our boys. It's a long season and we've only finished month one, there are five more to go. Anything can happen." The Orioles currently sit in 4th place with an 11-14 record over the last month. Most people have doubted the Orioles every step of the way, but now more than ever. It seems very very unlikely Baltimore will finish anywhere but 3rd in the standings this year. The Oriole Voo Doo chants need to start whipping up a strong whoop ass recipe quick or these birds might just find themselves the main target during hunting season. Nevertheless, we've seen crazier shit happen. One thing is for sure, the Orioles are finally playing baseball!
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