04/19/24
April 09, 2002
Is Peter Angelos intentionally trying to field a bad team to keep baseball out of Washington?
"the Orioles apparently will put the most fan-repellent team possible on the field in Camden Yards so attendance will be as low as possible. Finally, after a lousy season, they'll poor-mouth: Please, don't put a team in D.C. You'll kill us."Tony Kornheiser thinks something may be up as well. Another Baltimore owner for the Danny to feud with? (via Slate)
I agree with moz. Conspiracy theories generally are impossible because people aren't smart enough to pull them off. Unless Angelos is of course, pretending to be dumb, which would be part of his conspiracy...
posted by insomnyuk at 01:12 PM on April 10, 2002
Where's Charile Sheen when you need him?
posted by sauril at 04:20 PM on April 10, 2002
I'm with moz too- if his idea was to tank the team so as to prevent Washington-based competition, then it's a conspiracy that's been going on for years; the Baltimore franchise isn't just a mess at the major-league level, but all through the farm system- it will take years to right that ship through solid trades and stocking the farm system, a la Beane in Oakland. An aside: One thing I never could stand about the movie "Major League" was that the basic plot premise is horribly flawed. First, why doesn't the owner just sell the team and retire to Miami? Or failing that, there's no reason she couldn't live in Miami even if the team is in Cleveland. How many owners actually live in the cities of the team they own, seeing as outright owning an entire MLB franchise- Bud Selig's protestations notwithstanding- should make you wealthy enough to afford some swanky housing anywhere, along with a nice private jet to ferry you back and forth (not that we're lead to believe Phelps is much of a baseball fan)? Lastly, and most disturbing to me, the magic number is 800,000 in attendance- not implausible, although the only team to draw less than a million fans in the last two years was Montreal, which still averaged just under 800,000 (they managed 926,213 in 2000 and 642,745 in 2001). So let's assume that the fictional Indians team was on pace to draw only 600,000 for that fictional season until they began their winning ways. However, once the Indians hit a winning streak, and the audience was treated to montage sequences of people suddenly noticing and rooting for this upstart team, even 10-15 home games of ~35,000 people (and based on the crowd shots showing a well-filled stadium, it's worth noting that old Municipal Stadium could seat 74,000 at full capacity, and that as a winning team Cleveland in the 90's was drawing capacity crowds of 40,000) would skyrocket attendance enough to shoot them well past 800,000 for the season. Indeed, by mid-August at least, the owner would have to concede defeat in her diabolical plan when the team had already drawn well more than 800,000 fans- so why does she keep trying to make them lose and kill attendance? Nothing to gain by it except losing money, and we're not lead to believe the Rachel Phelps character is actually retarded or otherwise mentally disabled. I swear, that has ALWAYS bugged me....
posted by hincandenza at 06:22 PM on April 10, 2002
Wow. I can see you've given that a lot of thought.
posted by kirkaracha at 06:47 PM on April 10, 2002
For crying out loud, it's a plot device! It's a silly movie! It's not some intricately-plotted Pinter play!
posted by meep at 06:54 PM on April 10, 2002
I fail to see how having low attendance right now, while there is no team in DC, would help him in any way. Now, showing a huge drop in attendance after a team is moved to DC would prove his point, but right now, they aren't drawing any fans, and that has nothing to do with anything except the fact that they suck and noone wants to watch them. Which is his own fault. Actually, by sucking so badly, he might be driving more fans away to the point where if a DC team did show up, they'd be more than happy to watch them instead. (shit, that sort of makes the conspiracy thing make more sense. But still not a whole lot.)(either way, it'd be his fault, not a DC team's).
posted by Bernreuther at 08:50 PM on April 10, 2002
NC needs baseball before DC does. I mean, we can't keep our other teams, so we need a few replacements.
posted by corpse at 09:04 PM on April 10, 2002
Hey, the Orioles won the AL East in '97 and the wildcard in '96. Their farm system has been broken for essentially 25 years and since then they've been a reasonably successful team up until now. I think that a cheap losing team suits them right now what with the spectre of the Washington Expos looming. Whether they've gotten to this point accidentally or on purpose is uncertain. it will take years to right that ship through solid trades and stocking the farm system, a la Beane in Oakland. yeah, except they already started 2 years ago. Although your rotisserie teams continued to count their stats, since july of 2000 the Orioles have traded... Mike Bordick, Charles Johnson, Will Clark, Harold Baines, B.J. Surhoff, Mike Timlin and Gabe Molina in return they've received Melvin Mora who is unfortunately probably their best player, Geronimo Gil, Brook Fordyce, Fernando Lunar (3 catchers), and Chris Richard who'll be back this summer. They also got about a dozen AA and lower pitchers who are working their way onto the club or out of baseball. That's not bad, maybe one catcher too many, but there have been worse sell-offs, considering the lack of promise in what they gave away. They've made plenty of sound baseball decisions the last couple of years, picking Batista up off waivers, Jay Gibbons as a Rule 5 pick, they've shown terrible taste in free agentse, you could probably spend the money used on Marty Cordova, Segui, Fordyce and Buddy Groom on Mike Mussina and be better off for it. But, try to remember that this team and some of the decisions (notably David Segui) look much better with Albet Belle in left field, without him and with revenue sharing and with potentially half their market going away as early as next April, they might be well-advised to hold down their operating expenses and wait for all this to shake out.
posted by pastepotpete at 09:32 PM on April 10, 2002
jay gibbons was a good pickup for the orioles; the batista one is not all that great. batista has a very nice SLG, but terribly poor OBP. i agree with you; i think the orioles have made some awful free agent signings, largely because anyone they enter into contract with right now for much money will be gone or useless by the time the orioles field a good team again. the orioles have made a lot of trades to try to get talent in return, but they did not get any upper-middle tier or better prospects. in fact, they practically gave one away to the Blue Jays (Jayson Werth) and that was back when the Blue Jays were still being run by Gord Ash. i wish i could tell you reinforcements were coming for the orioles. all that can really be done is to cross one's fingers and pray some of their ok guys turn out well in the future.
posted by moz at 11:02 PM on April 10, 2002
i'm not sure how the orioles could possibly have fielded a good team with Syd Thrift as a general manager. there's just no talent in upper management with the team. i'm sure angelos would love for there not to be a team in DC, but Kornheiser et. al are accusing the village idiot of faking it when, in fact, the idiot's just being himself.