Change Is for the Birds

Everyone knows that baseball, like every sport, is cyclical. You don't really have situations anymore where teams are truly dominant or truly terrible for more than a few years - unless you get mismanaged into the ground like Pittsburgh or Houston.

That being said, it was really only a matter of time before the balance of power in the American League East began to shift away from what has been a long run of a division classified as "Red Sox, Yankees, and... those other guys."

We saw it begin last season, when the Rays had multiple young and talented players finally click together all at once (Garza, Shields, Upton) to carry them all the way to an AL pennant. Now, to the surprise of some, the Baltimore Orioles are seeing a sudden upshot of talent that may put them in the conversation to stay for a number of years.

It's been several years of excellent drafting - just ask the Pirates about how it isn't enough to simply have high draft picks, but to use them wisely - and a little bit of luck for the newest Oriole GM, Andy McPhail.

It started several years back with the drafting of outfielder Nick Markakis, who in his fourth full year in the major leagues at age 25 is already on pace for his fourth straight year of 20+ home runs, 90+ RBIs, and a .300 batting average.

Then the Orioles got lucky and ran into one of those few incompetent general managers. Seattle Mariner ex-GM Bill Bavasi foolishly believed his team was one ace pitcher away from playoff contention, and the Orioles capitalized on that to add Adam Jones to their roster. At only 23 years old, and in his second full season, Jones is crushing the ball to the tune of 11 homers and 36 RBI in the first two months.

Article Author: Geeves

Geeves is mainly a critic of the sports and entertainment arena, recently shifting his time and resources away from his own middling blogs and into the Blogcritics realm at something resembling full time.

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