A strong front office should be rewarded for being intelligent and competent. For example, the Red Sox are run very, very well. Sure they throw around a lot of money, but they are where they are largely based on shrewd scouting and player development (Ortiz, Varitek, Pedroia, Wakefield, Youkilis, Ellsbury, Bucholz, Papelbon, Okajima, and Masterson are all derived from this very system. That’s a heck of a team).

The Yankees have shown no such skill or intelligence in their dealings. They just say “We need to resign this guy” or “This is the best free agent pitcher” and load up a truck with money. Their player development and scouting has yielded a few genuine stars like Chamberlain and Wang, but who’s on the Yankees right now because they pay the most? Teixeira, Rodriguez, Posada, Damon, Sabathia, Burnett, Marte, Matsui, Igawa.

I won’t devolve this into an argument of “The Yankees sign EVERYONE and that’s RUINING BASEBALL!” because, you know what, it’s absolutely their right and their job to do this. I don’t see a salary cap ever coming when all it would really do is reward billionaires like Jeff Loria who can’t open a wallet to give a starving man a buck, and penalize the Steinbrenners who actually donate a ton of money to improving their ballclub. They work within the system, and that’s good for them, I guess. But someone eventually has to say that this isn’t a sport anymore – it’s a goddamn Monopoly.

It won’t happen, not even if the Yankees win the World Series the next 8 years in a row. You’ve got guys on ESPN like Steve Phillips and Buster Olney who can barely contain their glee on camera – you’ve got owners making more money than ever before. You’ve got some semblance of parity in the last decade. It won’t happen.

And last thing, the fact that there are rules in place to ideally fight monopolies in baseball (I’m talking about the luxury tax, which is a joke, and the rule allowing only a specific number of type A free agents to be signed – I think it’s 3 or however many you’ve lost this year – which is also a joke) implies that on some level, Bud Selig is aware that this is a problem, but he feels that throwing some token gesture at it is enough. Far be it from Bud Selig to know that a problem in baseball exists and ignore it. That’s not his character at all.

Ok. I’m done, too. I’ve got to take a break from this stuff before I give myself an ulcer. And then, sometime after the New Year, we can start thinking baseball again. Until then, it’s all Ravens all the time. And one last time for kicks: Go fuck yourself, Mark Teixeira. I don’t expect you to understand how us Oriole fans feel, so just do us a favor and fuck yourself. Thanks.

We are in a division with two teams that will ALWAYS spend the money and buy the players necessary to win. It’s fine and good to say we have The Plan and such, but unless all, or at least most, of our prospects develop, we are screwed. We all know the recent Orioles past is littered with prospects who have not developed, and look where that’s left us. The 2001 draft is a perfect example. The Rangers draft Teixeira, we draft Chris Smith. Now that draft pick probably made a lot of sense at the time. My point is that one of the three – Arrieta, Tillman, and Matusz – is pretty much guaranteed to fail or at least be mediocre. That’s just logic and percentages. You can only do so much with your prospects to fill out your team. (The Rays had to lose for 10 years and draft consistently well to get where they are. That’s the ONLY way they were successful, by losing for that long and having luck with their draft picks.) What teams like Boston and NY do is fill in their gaps with talented, very highly paid players. Teams like the Orioles fill in their gaps with mediocre, very average-ly paid players. With this model, they will NEVER compete in the AL East.

Waiting for players to develop is a crapshoot, and by doing that you take a chance that your few homegrown stars like Markakis and Roberts will lose interest in being on the team. They will leave and they will get signed by Boston or NY or some such team. It’s a vicious cycle. To win as a mid- or small market team in the MLB, you must be both very smart AND very lucky. It’s a flawed system.

I could write a ton more about this, but I’m done for a bit. Neal, you know how huge a fan I am of the O’s and baseball in general. It pains me to say it, but that interest is taking a big hit this offseason. And it has almost nothing to do with the Orioles themselves. (Although they have been neither smart or lucky.)

But then I read that MacPhail wants us to be like the Twins and the Rays, and that we can’t afford to invest that much capital into any one player. Do you hear that, Nick Markakis? How ’bout you, Matt Wieters? I guess I should be happy with the idea of being the Rays as opposed to the Orioles, but if we’re unwilling to pay the going rate for our free agents-to-be, we stand no chance of actually building a core of players, and we certainly will NEVER compete in the AL East.

For all his blusteriness, Drew’s right about at least one thing: where is all this MASN money going? Regardless of how much you or I give monthly or whatever, RSNs (of which only the Mets, Yankees, Orioles, and Red Sox own) are supposed to generate tons of money. Where is it going?

As a fan, Mr. McPhail, you’re asking me to suffer at least 2 more awful seasons, bringing my total to 13 straight (and I only picked up baseball in ‘93…oh, where have you gone Mike Devereaux, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you…). You’re asking me to accept that we can’t deviate from “The Plan”, which I assume is building the farm system. And I’m okay with it – if it works. What I can’t abide is you doing all of this without at least having the sense of mind to tell us, the few loyalists remaining, what you’re doing with the money you do have and what exactly is the endgame for “The Plan”. In fact, you haven’t told us anything, Mr. McPhail.

I demand some transparency!