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.

Whose WAR is Whose? Duquette vs. MacPhail and others

If you have traveled the provincial lands surrounding Baltimore you get a general feeling that people believe the Orioles' success derives from Dan Duquette riding on Andy MacPhail's coat tails of talent.  You will hear how with the Adam Jones deal or the Chris Davis deal or drafting Manny Machado that the Orioles would have been toiling at the bottom of the Al East instead of being one of the most winningest teams in baseball during the Duquette reign.  However, when one looks at the MacPhail era that feeling seems more like a glass is half full perspective of MacPhail; or, more likely, a glass is half empty view of Duquette.

One of the difficulties is assigning responsibility for a team's well being is that so much falls outside of the control of the general manager.  For instance, you only have so many Billy Beanes who have been the main caretaker of a club for nearly two decades.  Whatever happens with the Athletics, you can place that at the feet of Beane.  With the Orioles, Duquette inherited a franchise that was largely tended by MacPhail with a lingering presence of Mike Flanagan and a wisp of Syd Thrift.  It is a hard line to cut because inheriting those players also means deciding what to do with them.

Below we present the proportion of fWAR by players drafted or acquired by each General Manager:

2012: 29.1 fWAR
2013: 38.2 fWAR
2014: 42.8 fWAR
2015: 32.7 fWAR
2016: 35.3 fWAR
2017: 21.4 fWAR

So what was Duquette handed?  He was handed a team with a strong partial starting squad and gaping wounds at starting pitcher.  MacPhail's group could not figure out how to develop guys like Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Zach Britton, and Jake Arrieta.  Duquette's record in continuing their development is mixed, but he knew the area was a weakness and supplemented it as best as he could.  He turned the fading career of Jeremy Guthrie into a solid performance by Jason Hammel and a useful piece in Matt Lindstrom that led to an essential September performance of local product Joe Saunders.  In addition to that, Duquette added on Wei-Yin Chen and Miguel Gonzalez.  Tinkering with Tillman saw his velocity return and his pitchability.  It cannot be denied that 2012's playoff run was built on Duquette's ability to take a ruinous starting rotation and find the pieces to create a passable one.  That was a remarkable accomplishment and it cost the club relatively nothing in terms of money and prospects.  It is perhaps the greatest series of moves he has made while with the Orioles.

In 2013, the MacPhail portion of the club boosted the team into playoff contention with strong performances from Davis, Machado, Jones, and J.J. Hardy.  Duquette once again put together a decent collection of role players headed by Nate McLouth, Ryan Flaherty, Danny Valencia, and Steve Pearce.  The pitching floundered again.  Duquette products in Chen and Gonzalez as well as mid-year pickups Scott Feldman and Bud Norris did well, but not well enough.  Duquette was unable to find solutions for the dearth of talent in the minors, particularly on the pitching end.

In 2014, Duquette reaped all that he had sewn in the years prior with the club pushing strong on the shoulders of Chen, Gausman, and Norris as well as Pearce, Nelson Cruz, David Lough, and Adam Jones (on his first year outside of his team controlled years).  This team ran away with the AL East, but there were some worrying aspects of it.  Long-term, there seemed to be an issue with pitching.  The club did not have a group of high minors arms that looks like significant pieces.  The only one, Eduardo Rodriguez, was traded out for a vanity piece by the name of Andrew Miller.  The team did well to avoid injuries, outside of Manny Machado, and almost made the World Series.  It was a type of performance that would elevate most general mangers to a long term status and a fan favorite.  That said, the minor leagues were in a wreck and a major reason why many analysts, including us, would say, "Yes, but..."

From 2015 through 2017, we see the extinguishing of Flanagan's fingerprints on the Orioles as well as the end of MacPhail touch on the team.  MacPhail's minor league talent will likely all be gone in a couple seasons.  What we are left with is Duquette's decision making.and what we have seen is a cratering of talent.  MacPhail did not produce much minor league talent with an uneven first round history and a pretty dreadful track record past the first round.  Duquette's decision to focus on the MLB squad and decimate talent influx by signing players on Qualifying Offers hurt the talent level on the team.  Additionally, decision making in the early part of the Duquette draft era was not especially fruitful with only the past few drafts resulting in a good influx of position player and relief talent.  Starting pitching remains an issue throughout the organization.

Who Gets the Credit for the 2012 Orioles?

Executive Vice-President of Baseball Operations Dan Duquette (there's a mouthful) is getting a lot of credit for building this Orioles team that ended the franchise's streak of 14 losing seasons and he does deserve some credit. But if we are to assume that the most important part of a team's success in the actual talent on the field, how much credit goes to his predecessors?

(Regardless of proper title, all heads of baseball operations for the Orioles will be referred to as a General Manager or GM going forward.)

I decided to find out. I took a list of every player who made an appearance for the Orioles in 2012 and assigned them to their GM of origin. This is a real oversimplification as it does not take into account coaching staffs or minor league development teams. Perhaps the new people Duquette brought to the organization had a big impact on the turnaround of Chris Tillman, for instance. But that's impossible to quantify.

I credited the GMs if the draft pick, the trade, the free agent signing or the waiver claim was made during their tenure. There are some minor exceptions dealing with mid-year regime changes or contract extensions. Brian Roberts, for example, would no longer be an Oriole if Andy MacPhail had not extended him through 2013. On the other hand, Nick Markakis was extended by MacPhail but he would have still been under team control in 2012 whether he was extended or not. So Roberts is credited to MacPhail  instead of Frank Wren (the GM who drafted him) but Markakis still falls under the Mike Flanagan/Jim Beattie regime that selected him in the 1st Round of the 2003 amateur draft.

If you want to see the individual transactions that brought the principle members of the Baltimore Orioles to town, go here. The below lists assign each player to a GM but does not detail how they got here.

Here are the player breakdowns starting with the most recent GM:


Dan Duquette 

Nate McLouth
Wilson Betemit
Nick Johnson
Bill Hall
Jim Thome
Steve Pearce
Lew Ford
Steve Tolleson
Luis Exposito
Taylor Teagarden
Ronny Paulino
Ryan Flaherty
Omar Quintanilla
Endy Chavez
Jason Hammel
Wei-Yin Chen
Darren O'Day
Joe Saunders
Miguel Gonzalez
Luis Ayala
Matt Lindstrom
Stuart Pomeranz
Dana Eveland
Randy Wolf
J.C. Romero
Miguel Socolovich

I'm giving Duquette credit for Darren O'Day even though the Orioles claimed him on November 2nd of last year and the Orioles did not introduce him as GM until November 8th. Andy MacPhail had been gone for almost a month but some of his staff were obviously making some of these decisions but since it falls closest to Duquette's start than MacPhail's departure, I'm giving it to him.


Andy MacPhail 

Adam Jones
J.J. Hardy
Chris Davis
Manny Machado
Mark Reynolds
LJ Hoes
Xavier Avery
Robert Andino
Chris Tillman
Pedro Strop
Troy Patton
Brian Matusz
Steve Johnson
Dylan Bundy
Zach Phillips
Jason Berken
Kevin Gregg


Mike Flanagan 

Matt Wieters
Joe Mahoney
Jake Arrieta
Zach Britton

Mike Flanagan gets credit for Matt Wieters because he drafted him shortly before he was removed from the job. Andy MacPhail took over in late June and signed Wieters but did not actually draft him.


Mike Flanagan/Jim Beattie 

Nick Markakis
Nolan Reimold

Flanagan and Beattie served as co-GMs for three seasons. I will split credit in terms of player value between Flanagan and Beattie since I don't know if either man had championed either player before they were drafted.


Syd Thrift

Jim Johnson

Jim Johnson is still under his original team control so Thrift gets some credit for drafting him way back in 2001.

Then I totaled up the fWAR (collected from Fangraphs.com) for each GM's associated players. Here's the breakdown:

fWAR by GM for 2012 Orioles

Not surprisingly, Andy MacPhail leads the field. He was, after all, GM for 4.5 of the 6 most recent seasons. It is a bit surprising that his players have delivered 44% more WAR than Dan Duquette's. His leaders are Adam Jones (4.6), J.J. Hardy (2.5), Chris Davis (1.7) and Chris Tillman (1.1). Brian Roberts (-1.1) and Tommy Hunter (-0.5) were the laggards.

Dan Duquette's most successful moves were with the pitching staff with Jason Hammel (2.9) and Wei-Yin Chen (2.1) leading the way. Joe Saunders and Miguel Gonzalez have both delivered 0.8 WAR in a relatively short amount of time and Nate McClouth has chipped in 1.5 WAR in just 49 games. Endy Chavez (-0.9), Omar Quintanilla (-0.4) and Ryan Flaherty (-0.4) dragged down the overall totals.

It's easy to forget the contributions of the late Mike Flanagan as a GM. Most of his WAR total is wrapped up in Matt Wieters (3.8) but he also had a hand in drafting Nick Markakis and Nolan Reimold. He also selected Jeremy Guthrie off of waivers from the Indians back in January 2007. Dan Duquette was able to flip  Guthrie for Jason Hammel, Matt Lindstrom and then Joe Saunders. But that is not accounted for in these totals.

Jim Beattie gets partial credit for Markakis and Reimold.

That echo from the past is Jim Johnson, who gains Syd Thrift a shoutout on this list.

It would be interesting to do this at the end of each year to see how the quickly (or slowly) Duquette's influence moves from a minority to a majority. But for this team in particular, the core of the team was assembled by MacPhail. Duquette deserves credit for deftly adding some low-cost pieces to the Oriole pitching staff and some cheap but useful hitters like Betemit and McLouth but this team is still MacPhail's.

Flanny, in their words....

This will be an open post where we will provide links to some of our favorite remembrances of Mr. Flanagan. Please feel free to add to the thoughts/links in the comment section.

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Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal speaks about Flanny (Video) -- a player of substance and a representation of The Oriole Way.

MLB.com's Jon Star and Jordan Schelling provide quotes and comments on Flanagan, including video of MASN's post-game coverage last night (video of Jim Palmer, Buck Showalter, Cal Ripken and Joe Jordan sharing heartfelt thoughts).

ESPN's Tim Kurkjian shares fond thoughts regarding a memorable man. If you're going to read one piece today, Kurkjian's is the one to read. Some quotes:

In 1980, as another Orioles pitcher, Steve Stone, was on his way to winning the Cy Young, Flanagan determined the different stages of Cy: He was the reigning Cy Young. "[Jim] Palmer is Cy Old," he said. "Stone is Cy Present and Storm [Davis] is Cy Future. When you get hurt, you become Cy-bex. When you're done, you become Cy-onara."

I covered a game in 1991 in which Orioles DH/first baseman Sam Horn struck out six times consecutively, the first non-pitcher in AL history to do that. After the game, I went to Flanagan. "Three strikeouts is a hat trick," he said, "four is a sombrero, five is a golden sombrero and from now on, six will be known as a Horn. Seven will be a Horn-A-Plenty."

Flanagan played in his high school alumni game one year, and scored 63 points. He played freshman basketball at UMass with Rick Pitino. Flanagan tried out for the varsity the next year. "I pulled up for a jumper on the break from the top of the key, and Julius Erving blocked it, then swoop-jammed on the other end,'' he said. "I knew then it was time to work on my slider."

Some quotes from MASN's Roch Kubatko on Flanny:

[Former pitcher and current MASN analyst Dave] Johnson watched from the dugout on Oct. 6, 1991 when Flanagan, as the last Oriole to throw a pitch at Memorial Stadium, struck out the only two batters he faced in the top of the ninth inning and walked off the mound to a rousing ovation.

"I remember thinking, 'I wish that was me,' " said Johnson, who started the previous day. "I meant that I wish I had that type of career where I was the guy out there to close that ballpark. It was neat and fitting that it was him doing it because he had that type of career and he deserved to be out there."

Chron.com's Richard Justice -- "If you were lucky enough to know Mike Flanagan, you were better off for it." Some fun stories in Justice's piece here:

Did you hear the one about the Orioles mascot falling from the roof into the dugout onto the concrete floor below? Yeah, unfortunately he landed at Flanagan’s feet.

His head was turned completely around, and from inside the costume, groaning could be heard.

“Listen,” Flanagan told the guy, “take two bird seed and call me in the morning.”

Peter Gammons with more Flanny stories at MLB.com. Select quotes:

If you've ever seen the famous video of the argument between Weaver and umpire Bill Haller in Oakland (in which Earl correctly predicted he would go to the Hall of Fame), it began because Haller called a balk on Flanagan. The obscenity-laded argument lasted a dozen minutes, and, finally, as Earl passed the mound en route to the third-base dugout and the clubhouse, Earl told Flanny, "You got [hosed]."

"Actually," Flanagan replied, "I balked."

There have been few greater baseball humorists in the last 50 years than
Flanagan, a New England iconoclast as well as a brilliant pitching mind. He
threw the last inning at Memorial Stadium because he was so revered in
Baltimore, where he won the American League Cy Young Award in 1979 and helped win the O's the World Series in 1983.