The Orioles Are Still Andy MacPhail's Team

On November 6, 2011, the page was turned from the Andy MacPhail era to the Dan Duquette era.  Buck Showalter finished his first full season in Baltimore with a 69-93 record, which was good for last place in the AL East.  The team was composed of Jeremy Guthrie and a promising Zach Britton rotation that was backed up with solid setup men, Koji Uehara and Jim Johnson, and not much else.  The offense saw a resurgent J.J. Hardy turn heads with blossoming Matt Wieters and Adam Jones.  Still, it was a pretty poor team. 

With MacPhail out the door, players with MacPhail's fingerprints departed: Felix Pie, Craig Tatum, Vladimir Guerrero, Cesar Izturis, and Jake Fox.  Two weeks later, Duquette would make his first official transaction: signing Matt Antonelli to a major league contract.  It still perfectly describes his apparent strategy: find the fringe that no one else wants and maybe it will go big.  Anyway, the team began its change into Dan Duquette's team.

However, the team in the midst of its fifth season under Dan Duquette does not really look like Dan Duquette's team.  The club is dominated by MacPhail era players, such as Zach Britton, Chris Tillman, Manny Machado, Jonathan Schoop, Chris Davis, Matt Wieters, J.J. Hardy, and Adam Jones.  Duquette's main contributions are in the pen (e.g., Brad Brach, Vance Worley), one year positional trappings (e.g., Hyun Soo Kim, Mark Trumbo, Pedro Alvarez), and rotation desperation (e.g., Yovani Gallardo, Ubaldo Jimenez).  It is fair to say that the primary structure was developed by MacPhail's group and was then adorned by Duquette.

As you can see above, half of the primary performance of the club is tied into original deals made by MacPhail's administration.  At 21% are MacPhail players who were then re-signed by Duquette (e.g., Chris Davis, Matt Wieters, Adam Jones).  At 29% are players that never overlapped with MacPhail's tenure.  This does not mean to say that Duquette is simply playing out MacPhail's string.  It is unknown whether MacPhail would have been capable to bring the little pieces together to form a strong ballclub or know which pieces were important to retain or moved.  Perhaps the only thing to be said is that Duquette has been a remarkable caretaker.

That said, is a 71% connection to a regime from five years ago notable or not?  Twelve days before Duquette inked his contract, the Cubs brought on Jed Hoyer to be their General Manager.  Below is what his chart looks like.

The only players remaining from the Randy Bush era are Javier Baez, Wilson Contreras, and Matt Szczur.  The Cubs literally have been rebuilt while the Orioles were refurnished.

There certainly is more than one way to skin a baseball and the skills Dan Duquette and Jed Hoyer have shown worked for their situations.  We are hard pressed to know whether they would be as successful were the roles reversed.  With the Orioles, Duquette never tried to start from scratch.  He had an amazing structure left behind by Andy MacPhail.  However, as the MacPhail era ages or becomes too expensive, the Duquette regime will need to find long-term replacements.  Maybe Duquette can do that as well as MacPhail did.