As Britton Left the Clubhouse, so Ended the Flanagan Era

As I noted when the Zach Britton deal was going down, that the remnants of a past era were being swept from the Orioles franchise.  Britton was the last Oriole signed during Mike Flanagan's time as General Manager to be on the club's 40 man roster.

When Zach Britton is traded, the Orioles 40 man roster will no longer have a player acquired during Mike Flanagan's tenure.

RIP Flanny pic.twitter.com/uzbGwzJjEG

— Camden Depot (@CamdenDepot) July 25, 2018

Britton was drafted in the third round of the 2006 draft out of Wetherford High School in Texas.  It was his first time away from home.  Britton was part of Flanagan's grand plan of developing young pitching and strong defense while supplementing that roster with high profile talent like Miguel Tejada and Javy Lopez.  Young talent, like Britton, were not only evaluated on their physical ability, but also on novel (yet misguided) psychological tests.  Flanagan was unceremoniously replaced by Peter Angelos right after the draft in 2007 with Andy MacPhail.  To those who knew Flanagan, this was both shocking and deeply embarrassing.  It, supposedly, was something he had difficulty dealing with for the rest of his life.

With that, there is not much to say.  The sun comes it.  It goes down.  Life and death continue.

We will not be writing up a Zach Britton trade piece.  I will wait until a couple other expected deals come together into next week and take a more global look.  The short of this though is that the Orioles were able to beef up their ranks.  This was something that was depleted by trades in earlier seasons that saw arms like Zach Davies and Josh Hader depart.  It also helps introduce talent, especially the live arms of Carroll and Pop, that a respectable international amateur system would have developed.  Dillon Tate is an interesting arm that has rotation potential, but he does not exactly look like a difference maker.  Basically, the trades have all been solid and mark the Orioles getting back to average.

Now, one caveat to the above with Britton, if we expand beyond the 40 man roster, then there still is one   Technically, there is still one player left in the entire organization that still hails from that times, Garabez Rosa.  Rosa was signed in 2007 before leadership was handed over to Andy MacPhail.  Rosa outlasts Camden Depot's existence by three weeks.