MacPhail Coming Back?

[JTrea81]

NBC Sports: Andy MacPhail reconsidering leaving Orioles?

Andy, do us a favor and just leave already. Please...

You owe us some shred of hope after the misery you've subjected us to.

[weams]

This year's model

[JTrea81]

This year's model

A safety vest? Not quite sure I get the metaphor.

The franchise is not safe with MacPhail.

A straightjacket would be more fitting as him coming back is the definiton of insanity...

[SammyBirdland]

Andy, do us a favor and just leave already. Please...

You owe us some shred of hope after the misery you've subjected us to.

The reason he's still in the picture is because Angelos is begging him to stay. What are your thoughts on that?

[JTrea81]

The reason he's still in the picture is because Angelos is begging him to stay. What are your thoughts on that?

I said I'd get my answer this offseason on Angelos' commitment to win. MacPhail = a commitment to lose. Enough said.

[The Rick]

My best guess is that AM staying is the lesser of the other evils, so to speak. Angelos clearly trusts MacPhail, and I shudder to think how PA would screw up another regime by meddling... even if that "other regime" was better for this team.

[ShaneDawg85]

Andy, do us a favor and just leave already. Please...

You owe us some shred of hope after the misery you've subjected us to.

Yes, because Andy MacPhail sits in his office every day and thinks, "Hmm, how can royally screw the Orioles fans? How can I make their lives absolutely miserable?"

I'm sure he just sits there and thinks about these things.

[TonySoprano]

MacPhail = losing. No doubt about it.

He should not be back as GM if this franchise cares about winning as much as they preach they do.

If Buck wants him back in that role (which I doubt based on the veiled shots he's taken), Buck is a hypocrite and a liar.

Newsflash, Angelos makes the final decision, not Buck. Only Buck knows for sure how he feels about MacPhail, but he sure as hell isn't going to throw Andy under the bus in print.

[JTrea81]

Yes, because Andy MacPhail sits in his office every day and thinks, "Hmm, how can royally screw the Orioles fans? How can I make their lives absolutely miserable?"

I'm sure he just sits there and thinks about these things.

That's the problem really. He's completely out of touch with the fanbase and doesn't seem to care about the long 14 year losing streak IMO.

He only sees one way to do things, and while we've improved our record each year, it's been 4 years and we haven't seen 70 wins yet and yet his predecessors were fired with better results.

Syd Thrift won more than 70 games multiple times and he was senile.

[JTrea81]

Newsflash, Angelos makes the final decision, not Buck. Only Buck knows for sure how he feels about MacPhail, but he sure as hell isn't going to throw Andy under the bus in print.

If Buck doesn't want MacPhail back, he should quit if he does come back. There will be better opportunities than the Orioles...

[Frobby]

NBC Sports: Andy MacPhail reconsidering leaving Orioles?

Just a regurgitation of Connolly's piece from this morning.

[crawjo]

I don't want him to come back, but MacPhail, if he leaves actually has the organization in a better position than he did when he took the team. He brought in young talent, which the Orioles lacked for most of the decade prior to MacPhail's hire. Most of that young talent has failed to deliver, and MacPhail deserves responsibility for that, but I don't think his tenure was an entire failure. I think people forget how little talent there was in this organization for most of the decade.

I also completely disagree with the notion that rehiring MacPhail would be a "commitment to lose." What infuriates me about JTrea's posts is the arrogance involved, mainly in the fact that his proposed solutions to the Orioles problems are unimaginative, unrealistic, and very often worse than the status quo. There is a wonderful critique to be made of MacPhail's tenure in Baltimore, but unfortunately his #1 critic on this board is apparently incapable of making it.

[crissfan172]

That's the problem really. He's completely out of touch with the fanbase and doesn't seem to care about the long 14 year losing streak IMO.

He only sees one way to do things, and while we've improved our record each year, it's been 4 years and we haven't seen 70 wins yet and yet his predecessors were fired with better results.

Syd Thrift won more than 70 games multiple times and he was senile.

You just described Angelos.

[Frobby]

MacPhail = losing. No doubt about it.

He should not be back as GM if this franchise cares about winning as much as they preach they do.

If Buck wants him back in that role (which I doubt based on the veiled shots he's taken), Buck is a hypocrite and a liar.

That's the problem really. He's completely out of touch with the fanbase and doesn't seem to care about the long 14 year losing streak IMO.

He only sees one way to do things, and while we've improved our record each year, it's been 4 years and we haven't seen 70 wins yet and yet his predecessors were fired with better results.

Syd Thrift won more than 70 games multiple times and he was senile.

If Buck doesn't want MacPhail back, he should quit if he does come back. There will be better opportunities than the Orioles...

Buck has said, at least twice that I know of, that he'd be pleased to keep working with MacPhail, and that MacPhail's decision was up to him and his family as to what he wanted to do. Buck has gone out of his way to state that he has a good working relationship with MacPhail, that he considers MacPhail a good friend, and that MacPhail is one of the most moral and ethical people he has met in baseball. So, to me, Buck would be "a hypocrite and a liar" if he didn't mean those things when he said them.

As to MacPhail not winning 70 games, he was in a hole when he started. He didn't expect the team to get better right away when he traded Bedard and Tejada. 99% of the fans understood that MacPhail was going to put us through a couple of years of pain to try to position the team better for the long run.

That said, I didn't expect the team to be nearly as bad as it has been in 2010 and 2011. 69 wins after 3+ years as GM is not a good record. It's not all MacPhail's fault, contrary to your opinion. You can't always expect young players to develop at exactly the pace you want, and sometimes a good plan simply doesn't work out. The fact that we've gotten so little from Matusz, Tillman, Arrieta and Britton has hurt; BRob's injuries and Markakis's regression have been difficult blows that aren't the fault of the GM. I am not holding MacPhail blameless here -- he has made plenty of mistakes. But your tendency to blame every negative thing that occurs on MacPhail, and never give him credit for things that work out well, is well documented.

I'd prefer to have a new GM, but if MacPhail returns, it does not at all mean that the franchise isn't committed to winning, and it certainly doesn't mean that Buck is being overridden, based on what he has said.

[ccbird]

My best guess is that AM staying is the lesser of the other evils, so to speak. Angelos clearly trusts MacPhail, and I shudder to think how PA would screw up another regime by meddling... even if that "other regime" was better for this team.

Pretty much. I absolutely believe Angelos trusts AM more than he would trust anybody else in the position. Maybe, maybe Buck has close to the same amount of trust but IMO when it comes to being a GM AM>BS. ANybody else brought in here is going to have nowhere near the fee reign that AM had and the truth of the matter is AM probably still had a relatively tight leash himself.