Baltimore Orioles’ ownership pushing to keep Chris Davis

According to a blurb in this article by CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman, owner Peter Angelos has “taken an interest” in the Baltimore Orioles keeping slugger Chris Davis. First off, even the biggest Angelos critics have no choice but to admit that this is good news. At the very least, the folks at the very top levels of the organization are aware of the stakes in the Davis sweepstakes.

Courtesy of Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

However it’s also a break from tradition in a way, and in this case that’s not a bad thing. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard rumblings from Angelos on player personnel – at least at this point. Once the hot stove season truly gets going if management has a player that they think is going to work out for the team they might have to go to him for the go ahead, but in essence he’s giving it now. Or at least making his opinion known that he’d like to keep Davis in Baltimore.

The flip side of course is that Davis is still represented by Scott Boras. Heyman also said that he didn’t expect Davis to sign with the Orioles without at least testing the waters. And frankly perhaps that’s not an unreasonable point for Davis to consider. Unfortunately however, Angelos’ comment or rumbling probably has Boras seeing dollar signs in his eyes.

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I suspect that Boras’ attitude is that if the Orioles are interested in keeping Davis, whatever their offer is (even if it’s a reasonable one) someone else will undoubtedly be willing to pay more. However we also have to assume that Peter Angelos knows that it’s going to take more than an $80 million dollar contract over five years to keep Davis. Otherwise he wouldn’t have made that comment.

You might ask why I would say that he knows it’s going to take more than that to keep a player like Chris Davis. Granted I’m making a bit of a deduction, but work with m. First off it’s easy to say that he’s naive or blind to what it really takes to keep quality players – and for all I know perhaps he is. However in commenting on this matter at all, he’s very plainly broken with tradition.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Angelos chirp up like this. Normally he stays in the background. Perhaps he’s meddled in the past with GM’s and so forth, but rarely has that been in public. He doesn’t talk to the media for the most part, and he kind of stays in the shaddows. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just how he operates. Without sounding patronizing, if I owned a team I’d be the same way.

And mind you, he didn’t openly talk to the media in this case either. However the fact that he’s expressing an interest in keeping Davis has been made known to the world. Even if that wasn’t meant to be public and someone leaked it, the world now knows that Peter Angelos wants Chris Davis to stay with the Orioles. The fact that he’s taken an interest is something that we don’t normally hear.

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