Baltimore Orioles: Rival Birds at it again

I was fascinated to see this article in yesterday’s Washington Post with a new rumor; Toronto is now interested in Washington’s Mike Rizzo as their President/CEO. So I suppose it wasn’t enough for them to go after the Baltimore Orioles’ GM, but now they’re doing the same with his regional counterpart. For the record, it was one week ago today that the news broke that they wanted to go after Dan Duquette – a rumor which luckily for Orioles fans had died by mid-week.

Mandatory Credit: David Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

But the rival birds’ timing is once again poor, as Washington was in the middle of their annual NatsFest celebration at the DC Convention Center when the report initially came out. And incidentally, this also smells like another “leak,” which should remove any doubt that it was someone in Toronto’s camp who leaked the Duquette (and Kenny Williams) story. But again, pretty interesting timing if you think about it – do they just leak these reports at inopportune times so as to cause friction between a team and their GM?

Incidentally, Toronto said during the latter part of last week’s winter meetings that Paul Beeston (the current office holder) would return next year in his current role. So with this report now breaking, it’s pretty obvious that while they may not be opposed to keeping Beeston, they’re still actively looking to replace him.

So that said, would you want to work for people like that? But in spite of that point, my issue is with Toronto now establishing a pattern of not really caring about he way things are supposed work. If you’re going to change GM’s, you do it after the season. Instead, they throw fireballs into other teams’ camps by leaking information at the most inopportune time possible for that other franchise.

Obviously this latest situation with the Nationals has nothing to do with the O’s, other than the fact that the two teams share a region. However it’s woth pointing out that one of their division rivals appears to be totally throwing whatever protocol that exists in these situations (GM searches). Now in fairness, Toronto’s perspective might be that it’s not against the rules, therefore why shouldn’t they have the right to do what they’re doing?

And the answer to that is simply because…you just shouldn’t. There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about one’s business in all aspects of life. As an example, you just don’t go to a birthday party for someone and expect to be the center of attention. But…it’s not against the law, right? So why shouldn’t someone be allowed to do that? 

Again, because they just shouldn’t. There are unwritten codes in all things, and throwing bombshells into someone else’s camp is just poor business on all levels. Mind you, the modus operandi for these things is that the team who wants to interview the other team’s property has to make a formal request of that team’s owner. But that isn’t what Toronto’s doing; stories are being leaked to the media instead.

Orioles fans might understand Toronto being tired of being in the cellar of the division, as the O’s were there for years. However the way you get out of the cellar is by working within the system that exists and trying to improve yourself. And that system which exists includes a series of both written and unwritten rules.