Are we heading back into the dark ages?

[MDtransplant757]

Legitimate question. Are we on our way back to the years of 1998-2011?

[Can_of_corn]

Just declaring it a legitimate question doesn't make it a legitimate question.

There are no reasons to expect a decade plus slide.

[abbott]

Too early to say. But another terrible offseason and no playoff wins net year and the trend towards success will have been reversed.

You can say the O's have been a playoff team in 2 of the last 4 years. Or 1 of the last 3. I don't consider 2015 to have been a season where the O's were playoff competitive, based on their record against winning teams this season has been a misfire

[OFFNY]

Legitimate question. Are we on our way back to the years of 1998-2011?

Just declaring it a legitimate question doesn't make it a legitimate question.

There are no reasons to expect a decade plus slide.

Legitimate answer.

[ArtVanDelay]

[Frobby]

Too early to say. But another terrible offseason and no playoff wins net year and the trend towards success will have been reversed.

You can say the O's have been a playoff team in 2 of the last 4 years. Or 1 of the last 3. I don't consider 2015 to have been a season where the O's were playoff competitive, based on their record against winning teams this season has been a misfire

I pretty much agree with this. If we have a poor offseason we could be headed downhill for a while. The farm system is not in good shape. We need some clever acquisitions this winter.

[eddie83]

One key point is that during a big chunk of that time frame the sport was much more top heavy. No PED testing for a portion, better intelligence now. Revenue sharing is better now as well. If the Astros/Twins and Rangers make the playoffs 12 of 15 AL teams will make it in a 3 year period. It would take greater ineptitude now to pull that off.

[MDtransplant757]

Just declaring it a legitimate question doesn't make it a legitimate question.

There are no reasons to expect a decade plus slide.

You always come up with the wittiest comments and analysis', you know that? Thank you, master Can

[Reboulet'sStache]

Too early to tell. The next few years will determine that. There isn't a ton of high end talent in the farm system, and a bunch of holes on the big league squad. But we also have a ton of money to spend. At this point I think it could go either way.

[allquixotic]

I won't consider it the dark ages if we get 82 wins this season. Consider that the team has been playing with a win rate comparable to a playoff team for the past 10 games... if that means they're healthy enough, motivated enough, and/or lucky enough to string together a couple more wins, the O's will exit 2015 with a winning record, and by doing so, we'll be able to say that at least we are avoiding the most dubious statistic associated with the "dark ages" period -- namely, having a losing record.

By that measure, 82 wins definitively shuts the door on any talk about the O's going back to their (bad) old ways. In my opinion. But that just means we didn't regress back to the old ways this season... we could still, easily, regress to a losing record next season, if management does nothing to fix the lack of talent at specific positions (SP, corner outfield) in the offseason.

[DrungoHazewood]

Just declaring it a legitimate question doesn't make it a legitimate question.

There are no reasons to expect a decade plus slide.

There is never any reason to expect a decade-long slide. Not when the Orioles, Pirates, Royals, Rays and just about everyone else has been in contention over the last several years. By 2020 nobody currently on the Orioles will still be here, at least on their current contracts, it's likely Angelos will be gone, Duquette and Buck will be gone. Revenues could be radically different, in either a good or bad way. The wider sports landscape could change significantly. The local or national economy could boom or bust or both. Predicting W/L records 10 years out is impossible. Expansion teams have been created out of whole cloth and gotten to the World Series and then collapsed in less time than that.

[DrungoHazewood]

I pretty much agree with this. If we have a poor offseason we could be headed downhill for a while. The farm system is not in good shape. We need some clever acquisitions this winter.

But in baseball "a while" could be any period at all. Rarely a decade-plus. How many non-expansion teams have had 10-year periods of irrelevancy in the post-WWII era? It certainly doesn't have to take more than a few years to turn even a long-term poor team into a winner. That should be the position of the Orioles' fanbase, not "Oh woe is us, poor Orioles fans, are we going to have our next winning season in 2027?"

[Camden_yardbird]

A lot depends on this upcoming draft. The Orioles opted to try and compete and rebuild through the draft with some 5-7 picks in the first two rounds. There is little help in the upper minors for next year, so unless the Orioles make some really prudent off season moves (note that does not necessarily mean spend a lot of money), then I think we will see this slip back to a sub .500 team over the next two years. After that it all depends on their ability to retain Machado and build off of him and Gausman and Schoop. You get also see a snowball of a loss of talent in the coming years as well.

[Tx Oriole]

Legitimate question. Are we on our way back to the years of 1998-2011?

Oh heavens no. Why you think they would slide back five to

ten years?

[weams]

Legitimate question. Are we on our way back to the years of 1998-2011?

Legitimate answer. No.