Looking forward

The All star Break is upon us and the Orioles are currently sitting five games over .500, bunched with the non-New York teams in the AL East. The first half of the Orioles' season has outperformed everyone's wildest expectations and the team has some very serious, and very important decisions to make.
General Manager Dan Duquette has to decide how much he wants to wager on this summer, the Orioles' minor league system has some useful pieces that could be moved to fill in holes on the major league squad - but he can't mortgage the future for a run that could very easily fail if the Orioles don't capitalize on their solid first half play.

It boils down to, "go for it" or "wait for the future".

Reasons to "go for it":

1) The Al East is the weakest it has been in a decade and the Orioles are in a position to take advantage of it. The Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox and Tampa bay Rays are all extremely flawed teams that are dealing with scores of injuries. On top of all of that the Orioles' rivals have largely underperformed so far this year. While the Yankees have now acquired the American League's best record the Orioles have hung around long enough to remain relevant in the wild card hunt.

Don't pay attention to those "playoff prediction percentages" you see, they don't take things like injuries into consideration, nor strength of schedule. The Orioles will have one of the "easier" schedules in the second half and that will only help them in their run.

2)The second wild card. When MLB announced that a second wild card would be instituted this year most people in baseball rolled their eyes and yawned. After the drama of game 162 last year, where the Red Sox were knocked out of the playoffs, it appeared that Bud Selig was once again rigging the game to assure that both the Yankees and Red Sox would make the playoffs. yet here we are, the Red sox are in last place and the Orioles currently have a, very slim, lead in the second wild card.

The American league is a very interesting place this year. As it stands right now only three teams are legitimately out of the race (The Royals, Mariners and Twins) and the rest of the league is salivating at the thought of sneaking in the playoffs. The Orioles have a legitimate shot like the rest of them and despite their recent skid they are hanging in there and need to strike when they have their opportunity because there is no guarantee it will come again next year. if they pass up this chance they could once again be stuck as a middling team in a very tough division.

3) Breaking the streak. The Orioles have not had a winning season since 1997 and this is their best chance of breaking that streak since 2005. The team needs to show the fans that they are serious about making this team a winner in a very demanding league and the fans are frankly tired of "waiting for the kids to develop." The group of young arms known as the cavalry have largely failed to live up to the hype, catcher Matt Wieters took a couple years to come into his own, Nick Markakis really hasn't lived up to his contract and despite all of that the Orioles are where they are right now. Duquette simply can't let this first half be squandered and he needs to make a play to run for the post-season. Even if he misses the post-season the team will likely break that ridiculous streak and be on better footing next year when players like Dylan Bundy and Manny Machado may be knocking on the door.

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