Baltimore Orioles: A Guide to Reading Dan Duquette

Apr 6, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Baltimore Orioles general manager Dan Duquette prior to the game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

When the offseason is done for the Baltimore Orioles and Dan Duquette, they are going to have spent more money on new player acquisition than at any other time in their history. Yet at the same time, it is my expectation that there will be plenty of residual disappointment by the fanbase.

This is an article with illustrations to make a point about how to read and understand what Duquette is saying when he speaks. But let me begin with an illustration of what it is going to feel like when the shopping season is done. It will feel like you do at the grocery store when you look at your shopping cart and it is only about one-third full, and then you are told the shocking total by the cashier. And you think to yourself, “Good God, that’s all I got for this amount; I’m not sure the family can live for a week off this and what we still have in the cupboard at home!”

The Orioles’ Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations told Jim Bowden and his brother Jim Duquette Sunday on MLB Network Radio’s “The Front Office” that the Orioles would be an active party to look for starting pitchers and outfielders in the free agent market.

“We would like to sign a top-of-the-rotation starter,” said Duquette … adding also, “And by that, I mean a number 1, 2 or 3 starter.”

Continuing on, DD said, “There’s some in that group. I don’t think there’s that many number one starters, but there’s some twos and threes in there that we could be very competitive on.”

So Orioles writers and tweeters and others in the fanbase found themselves a click or two more encouraged than before reading or hearing this.

Let me preface the rest of this by saying that, if put on a continuum, I would chart more toward the appreciation side in terms of evaluating the efforts of Duquette and the O’s front office and ownership than I would the skeptical side. Yet I have to say that I recognize public-faced, carefully-parsed political speech when I hear it. Let me illustrate …

Illustration #1 – Where to travel

Looking ahead on the calendar and into 2016, there are at least four out-of-town trips that I want to take and that I am going to actively look into doing. There is a professional conference in Southern California in mid-February that I would love to attend and re-connect with colleagues and friends in a place much warmer than Maryland. We have extended family in Dallas where we used to live, and it would be great to visit them again, in that it has been many years since last doing so. My elderly mother-in-law lives in Yakima, Washington in a new residence, and it would be responsible for us to visit her there. A 2013 trip to Europe had my wife and me committing to one another that we need to value more expensive vacations in a way that we never have, doing so now before we get too old to enjoy such.

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I want to do all four of these things and will look into each one of them. I have a good amount of vacation time available. There is no lack of genuine desire to do all of these. When the leaves turn color again a year from now, will I have made four trips? Not very likely at all, even if I talk now like all are going to be done.

This is how to hear Dan Duquette when he says something like “we are going to be active to looking to add to our ball club by re-signing our free agents and seeking a top-of-the-rotation starter and corner outfielders.” There is a difference between earnestly shopping, versus taking those items to the checkout counter and paying for them.

Illustration #2 – Who to vote for

For illustrative purposes only, let me say that I am a Republican. And I watch the debates and find myself (with a few unnamed exceptions) genuinely liking most of the horde on the stage. I like Carson’s humility, Rubio’s ability to think on his feet, Fiorina’s focus (she’s a UMD grad, did you know that?), Christie’s spunk and snarky nature, and Cruz’s priorities. But at the end of the day, and when the primary eventually gets to Maryland, though I like them all, I can only vote for one of them (though there are other places I guess where you can vote early and often).

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Duquette will often go into extended discussions about how he “likes” certain players and what they bring to the team, or could bring to the team. Hey, I like chocolate ice cream laced with fudge and nuts and chocolate chips, but I’m simply not at this time going to buy a five-gallon container of it and ruin a summer’s worth of extreme exercise and bicycle miles that helped me lose 30 pounds. I’d love it; I truly like it and could exclaim how much I love it, but I’m not going to do it.

When all is said and done, “looking into” and “liking” are very different verbs than “buying.” So, when taking your expectations into the free agent grocery store, leave behind the shopping cart, because one of those two-handled baskets will probably be enough to hold one expensive item and a couple other deals found in special displays at the end of the aisles.

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