Earlier this week, Orioles owner David Rubenstein spoke with NPR and discussed his thoughts on the future of the franchise. “Success means you win a championship”, Rubenstein said. That’s all well and good, but it’s a lot easier said than done.
During the interview, Rubenstein, who is 75 years old, said “I’ve got to speed up the effort to get to a World Series a lot sooner than maybe some younger owners would”.
Rubenstein did acknowledge the level of difficulty in reaching the World Series and mentioned the fact that he wants to give Mike Elias and his staff every possible resource to take the team to the promised land. Unfortunately for fans, getting to the World Series and winning it have a lot more to due with luck than talent these days.
One result of MLB’s expanded playoff system is that regular season results no longer correlate well with postseason success.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has even come out and explicitly said that he likes the expanded playoffs because they prevent the best teams from winning more frequently.
Just look at a team like the Dodgers, who have been far and away the best team in baseball over the past 10 years. They have a .621 winning percentage in that time, and just two teams are within 100 wins of the Dodgers’ total since 2014.
Yet LA has just one World Series title to show for their efforts, including their over-the-top free agent spending. That October record says more about the MLB postseason than it does about the Dodgers.
David Rubenstein wants to bring a World Series trophy back to Baltimore
It is possible that we’ll see the top seed in each league reach the World Series this year but going backwards, we’ve seen Wild Card teams, 6-seeds, and numerous sub-90 win teams reach the CS/WS since MLB expanded to twelve teams in the postseason.
While it’s absolutely a good thing that Rubenstein wants to give Elias as many resources as possible to help the team win, there’s no magic button to be pressed here.
The Orioles could build a juggernaut in the AL East and win 100 games every year for the next decade, and they still wouldn’t be guaranteed any postseason success.
Defining success over the long-term based on how many championships you’ve won is a fool’s game. It’s also the unfortunate reality that we live in that championships are all people care about.
Yes, we all want the Orioles to win a World Series. And yes, most of us would love to see Elias do whatever is necessary to get there, including trading top prospects from the lauded farm system and spending whatever money necessary to improve the roster over the winter.
If the O’s come out and win 100 games next year but fall short in the postseason, that won’t mean the season is a failure.
If the Orioles don’t win a World Series in Rubenstein’s tenure, that doesn’t mean his stewardship of the franchise is a failure either.
This is just the system we have to live with.
We spend six months figuring out who the best teams are, then spend four weeks rolling the dice on short series baseball and watch variance and small sample sizes wipe all of it away.
It’s a breath of fresh air to have someone like Rubenstein at the helm, rather than the roach John Angelos.
But if Rubenstein is going to define his tenure exclusively by the number of World Series trophies the Orioles win during his time here, he’s setting himself up to be disappointed.
