Markakis Signs 4 Year $44m Deal with the Braves

Make no mistake, this is Angelos striking again. He offered Jimenez a rare (for Angelos) four year deal last year, it didn't work out, and now he has decided he won't offer anyone else a four year deal. Cruz he says it's because of his age. He couldn't use that excuse with Markakis, so he cited phantom health concerns.

People can blame Duquette, but this is classic Angelos. He doesn't want to spend the money, and he doesn't want to offer anyone long-term deals. That would be true under any GM who works with Angelos. Duquette has so far proven much better at constructing reasonably good teams within Angelos' constraints than any other Orioles GM in recent memory, but it was only a matter of time before ran headfirst into the Angelos cap and the Angelos CBA, those two unique restrictions that only exist for the Orioles and not for any of our rivals because our owner is a penny pinching- well, I can't really complete that sentence because the chances of it staying up on a family blog owned by a company that Angelos has a big financial stake in are not favorable. But you guys can fill in the blank.

Angelos has ruined this organization. We've lost a whole generation of fans. We suffered through 14 straight losing seasons. Some long-time Orioles fans from the Washington DC area and border regions between Baltimore and DC who otherwise would have stayed loyal to the Orioles defected to the Nationals and probably aren't coming back. And, finally, when we looked to be turning the corner, Angelos screws us again. Worst Orioles owner of all time. I know some might argue that Eli Jacobs was, but, remember Eli Jacobs had a low payroll because he actually could not afford a competitive one- that's why the Orioles wound being sold in a bankruptcy auction. Angelos can afford it, and also has been, between his asbestos fortune, revenue from Camden Yards, and now his MASN money. Angelos just wants to squeeze every dime out of a loyal Orioles fan base and offer the bare minimum payroll that will prevent him from losing the fan base so completely that he can't make money off us anymore.

This is unacceptable. I will not be buying any Orioles merchandise until Angelos sells the team or otherwise relinquishes ownership.

You guys can argue the merits of this or that move, but there's a pattern here, and many of the arguments for not re-signing Cruz contradict the arguments for not re-signing Markakis and vice-versa. The one guy we said is too old, even though he led the league in home runs, the other guy we say doesn't hit for power, even though he's only 30 or 31 years old, won a gold glove this year, and is great at getting on-base and drawing walks on a team that really needs those attributes. Yeah, apparently the only guy we'd give a four year deal to is a non-steroid using version of Barry Bonds, though of course a guy like that would command way more than four years and way more money, so we wouldn't actually sign that guy either.

What Angelos needs to realize is that baseball entails some risk. You sign players to big money contracts, and maybe out 1 in 3 or 2 in 3 work out. That doesn't mean you're allowed to stop signing big money contracts. The expense of some big deals not working out is part of the expense of owning a team. If you're not winning to pay it, don't buy a team. If you were willing to pay it and then change your mind, sell the team. Stop torturing your fan base.

I don't care how much Angelos likes swimming Scrooge McDuck style in that big vault of gold coins he probably converts the MASN money into, he needs to sell.