As the Rule IV draft looms ever closer, we have begun to hear names associated with the teams that are focused on them as possible selections in the first round. And more than any other player, the Orioles have been linked to Kevin Gausman, a draft-eligible sophomore from Louisiana State University.

A 6'4" righthander out of Colorado, Gausman has been on the national radar for quite some time due to his prototypical pitcher's frame and his electric fastball, which has hit triple digits at times and sits at 94 with excellent late life. His frame still has room to add strength, and he has the projection to still potentially add velocity. He complements his plus heater with a curveball that has the potential to be major league average and an above average changeup with arm side fade and sink. In the past, Gausman has struggled some with his command, but has shown better polish this season, with a K/BB ratio of 125/24 in 107 2/3 innings in a very competitive SEC.

Compared to the other candidates in the top of the round, Gausman is probably as safe of a pick as anyone but Florida catcher Mike Zunino. He has a long track record of holding the velocity on his plus fastball, setting himself apart from USF's Kyle Zimmer and the life on his fastball and his command of it is superior to that of Stanford's Mark Appel. The knock on Gausman is his mediocre curve, which doesn't have the projection of more than an average pitch and that limits his ceiling to that of a #2 starter. Some believe that Gausman might be better suited to throwing a slider, and the Orioles might very well have him change from a curve to a slider, but having to learn an entirely new breaking ball would certainly slow down Gausman's path to the majors.

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The Orioles are widely expected to select the "best player available" with the fourth overall pick in this year's Rule IV draft. Many people believe that this will end up being one of three college right handed pitchers - Mark Appel, Kevin Gausman, and Kyle Zimmer.

While I like Appel for the Orioles in this spot (although I expect he'll be gone), I find myself underwhelmed by these options, despite these pitchers being in the top of every evaluators draft lists. So I thought I would take a look at the performance of college pitchers selected in the first round of the draft. I decided to look from 1998 through 2007, since I think that any earlier and vast changes in the draft and player development would render comparisons meaningless, and later too many of the players are still prospects.

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Orioles fans can be forgiven if they find themselves looking at the 2012 Rule IV draft and thinking they have done this all before. Not only will the Orioles be making the fourth overall selection yet again, but the 2012 draft class is remarkably similar to the class of 2011. Playing the part of Gerrit Cole, the college starter with the #1 overall stuff but without #1 overall results, is Stanford's Mark Appel. Playing the part of Bubba Starling, the five tool prep center fielder who hasn't faced elite competition, is Georgia prep Byron Buxton. There is a spate of collegiate starters similar in their mix of talent and polish to Trevor Bauer and Danny Hultzen who could see themselves go off the board in the top five - LSUs Kevin Gausman, San Francisco's Kyle Zimmer, and Texas A&M's Michael Wacha. There is a college bat at a premium position similar to Anthony Rendon, Florida catcher Mike Zunino. And there is a prep righthander who could be the best pitcher in the class, similar to O's prospect Dylan Bundy - Harvard Westlake's Lucas Giolito.

The 2012 draft, however, is even less certain than the 2011 draft was, where there was considerable doubt and uncertainty all the way through draft day. Injuries will once again play a role, with Rendon's shoulder issue mirrored by Giolito's elbow and Victor Roache's wrist. Performance will be a major factor, as Appel and Zimmer have at times struggled and fostered doubts about their ability to harness elite stuff for elite results. There is a lot of difficulty in predicting what the Orioles, with a new GM and a new scouting director, will do. And above everything looms the new CBA, which places strict limits on bonus spending throughout the draft, the impact of which can only be suspected.

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One of the more interesting philosophical questions about modern art is that of the importance of artistic intent.  Many people look at a work by Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollack and think that their works could have been made by a child; the works lack the sort of technical supremacy possessed by old masters such as Botticelli or Vermeer that can inspire wonder in even the most indifferent viewer.  The pleasures of modern art are more cerebral and chilly; the interpretation of abstract shapes in a Kandinsky or the reinvention of ordinary objects by Duchamp.  By itself, the intellectual demands of modern art do not necessarily detract from the pleasure, but it does significantly blur the lines between what is and what isn't art.  Many people tend to solve this problem with the heuristic of artistic intent or even merely that of artistic appreciation - if it was meant to be displayed in an art gallery, or even if it merely is displayed in one, it is art.

In 1964, a previously unknown French artist named Pierre Brassau made his debut at the Gallerie Christinae in Götenberg, Sweden.  He garnered mainly positive reviews.  But it turned out that no such person as Pierre Brassau existed.  The paintings that had been so highly praised were actually the works of a four year old chimpanzee named Peter from a Swedish zoo, and the debut of Brassau was a hoax perpetrated by a Swedish journalist, out to see if critics and gallery enthusiasts could tell the difference between "genuine" modern art and the work of a primate.

As patrons of entertainment, we generally assume, however we feel about the performance of the entertainers, that they are trying to do their best.  We assume that Michael Bay is trying his hardest to make a good film, that Wilco wants to make a good album, that Jay Leno is genuinely doing his best to be funny.  And as Orioles fans, we assume that our team is trying to win games, that our front office is trying to assemble a good team, that our players are really doing all that they think they can to be as good at baseball as they can possibly be.  We question whether the decisions made by the manager are the ones that gave us the best possible chance to win, we question whether our front office signed the right players, whether our scouts have the talent to spot the most promising prospects.  But we take for granted that everyone involved wants to be successful, that our players want to be great players, that they are all doing the best that they can.

Yet the possibility that this is all a hoax is out there.

Well, here we are at another All-Star break, and the Orioles have the second worst record in the American League and the fourth worst in baseball. They have the second worst run differential in baseball and the worst in the American League. For enthusiasts of traditional statistics, the Orioles have the worst ERA in baseball; for saber fans, the Orioles are last in baseball by UZR. The Orioles are also unlucky; they have scored the fourth fewest runs in the American League, despite having the seventh highest OPS in the league. We arrived at the All-Star break having lost nine of our last ten games, and with a rotation featuring Jeremy Guthrie, Mitch Atkins, Chris Jakubauskas, and Alfredo Simon. It seems safe to say that we aren't primed for a big second half.

As the survivors of thirteen consecutive losing seasons, Baltimore fans are used to seeing their team lose. But this season has been devastating to the hope that arrived four years ago with the hiring of Andy MacPhail as general manager. His rebuilding effort appears to have failed. Now in his fourth season with the Orioles, Adam Jones has not emerged into a star player. Neither has All-Star Matt Wieters, now in his third season in the majors. Our top pitching prospect of 2009, Chris Tillman, is back in the minors after having failed at the major league level. So is our top pitching prospect of 2010, Brian Matusz. Our top pitching prospect of 2011, Zach Britton, joined them there last week, after failing to get out of the first inning against the Red Sox. Meanwhile, our free agent stopgaps have become more expensive, but no more effective, with Vladimir Guerrero and Derrek Lee proving to be only marginally more useful than Garrett Atkins and Miguel Tejada were last season.

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As previously discussed, the Orioles did well at the top of the draft, particularly with their first round pick of Dylan Bundy.  Now we look at their selections in the middle part of the draft.

Doing well in these rounds is, in my opinion, key to building a strong farm system.  In the early rounds, nearly every player selected is a legitimate prospect with some shot at the majors.  After the twelfth round, teams are mostly selecting organizational players and the occasional prospect who is thought to be all but unsignable.   But in the middle rounds, teams are finding the players who have upside but are flawed or under the radar in some way.  Bobby Bundy, Joe Mahoney, Jason Berken, and Matt Angle are among the players that Joe Jordan has found in this period in the draft.

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Going into the 2011 Rule IV draft, the Orioles had several important goals.  The first was to add star-caliber talent to a team starved for it both at the major league level and in the minors.  The second was to repair a minor league system that has fallen behind most of the other teams in the majors.  The third was to keep pace with their AL East competition - a difficult task considering that three of the four clubs in the division were armed with a multitude of compensation picks, allowing them to select a wider variety of the top amateur talents in the country.

The O's had only one major advantage in this: they possessed the fourth overall pick, and would pick fourth in every subsequent round.  Let's take a look at how they used their picks to achieve their goals.

I generally divide the draft into three sections: rounds 1-5, rounds 6-12, and the remainder of the draft.  The top five rounds should provide you with quality players who qualify as prospects immediately.  Rounds 6-12 should all have potential to be quality prospects and at least one tool that projects as plus for the majors.  After round 12, however, the only legitimate prospects are significant signability risks requiring significantly overslot deals; the rest are organizational players.  We will begin with the first five rounds.

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Well, the day is upon us.  Major League Baseball will conduct the beginning of the Rule IV Draft today, and the Orioles will make the fourth overall pick.

As is fairly typical, the rumors are flying fast and furious as I write this.  The latest is that the possibility is emerging that Arizona will select Dylan Bundy with the third pick, with the result being that the Orioles may either end up selecting Danny Hultzen of Virginia (who cannot of hurt his case with a dominant performance the day before the draft) or Archie Bradley, who like Bundy is a prep player from Oklahoma.

It is hard to know how much truth there is to any of these reports, and we will know soon enough what will happen.  It does seem that the Orioles have narrowed their possibilities down to Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon, Bundy, Hultzen, Archie Bradley, and Trevor Bauer.  For the Orioles to select someone other than those six would be a shocking development.  It will also be surprising to me if the Orioles select anyone other than Cole, Rendon, Bundy or Hultzen, but the possibility that Bradley or Bauer will be the choice cannot be ruled out.  My belief is that the Orioles will select Bradley or Bauer only if both Cole and Bundy are selected ahead of them; it is possible that the Orioles will pass on Hultzen or on Rendon.

I will be at work and unfortunately won't be able to watch or comment on the draft as it happens.  But use this thread to share your thoughts on the latest news as the draft finally happens!

Edit by Stacey:

Just for fun, here are links to a number of mock drafts:

Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com - O's take Danny Hultzen
Jon Heyman, SI - O's take Dylan Bundy
Kevin Goldstein, Baseball Prospectus - O's take Hultzen
Keith Law, ESPN - O's take Archie Bradley
Vince Caramela, Hardball Times - O's take Bundy

This is just an FYI - while I anticipate that I will be here to make the Orioles' first pick and possibly the second, definitely pick three and possibly all picks will be made by Stacey, editor in chief of Camden Chat.  I'm sorry that I can't be here the whole time, but work waits for no man.  Stacey, however, will do great in my stead.

Good luck to all the teams in the draft, except our AL East competition.

@jimcallisBA Jim Callis

Looks like it, as of today. @jsh2185: Do the #Orioles take whichever one of Cole/Rendon/Bundy/Hultzen slips to 4? #mlbdraft

If Callis is correct, then some of the names that the Orioles have been linked to, such as Jed Bradley, Archie Bradley, and Trevor Bauer are out of the running for the fourth pick in the draft.  Also out of the running is Bubba Starling, the top prep bat available.

My prediction is that the most likely of these players to fall to Baltimore is Bundy, followed by Cole, followed by Hultzen, despite many recent mocks showing Rendon being selected by the Orioles.  The most likely scenarios right now have Pittsburgh selecting either Cole or Hultzen while still flirting with the possibility of Starling, the Mariners taking Rendon, and the Diamondbacks selecting Hultzen if he is available and Bauer if he is not.  Of the three teams preceding us, Pittsburgh is the team most comfortable with high school pitchers with top picks, but no prep pitcher has ever gone #1 overall.  The Mariners seem to be leaning towards taking a bat, most likely Rendon, but have been linked to prep shortstop Francisco Lindor as well.  The Diamondbacks have two of the top ten picks, and have been linked heavily to college pitching with both.

So while the most probable scenario leads to the Orioles selecting Bundy, it is still quite possible that the Orioles will have to choose between two or more of the four players on their board.  So how would you rank our four possible picks?  Which of the four do you hope we get, and why?

Well, my thinking on the fourth overall pick has solidified some.  As much as I like the idea of the Orioles taking Bubba Starling, I don't think it is particularly realistic.  I also am having a very hard time seeing the Orioles passing on Danny Hultzen if he falls to them and Bundy is off the board.  I think the Orioles' board right now looks like: Rendon, Cole, Bundy, and Hultzen.  #5 is probably either Bauer or Archie Bradley, another high ceiling arm from Joe Jordan's home state, but I suspect that Bauer and Bradley only come into play if Rendon's medicals are bad.  While I would probably slot Starling fourth overall and possibly even third for the Orioles, I think that the goal here is to make the most realistic pick possible.

With my feelings about the fourth pick pretty set, I'm looking at what to do with the 64th overall pick.  As I mentioned before, Jordan habitually goes for the opposite of whatever he takes in the first round with his second pick, and considering that I expect to take a pitcher, I'm looking at hitters.  Jordan favors athletes when it comes to hitters in the second round, but the Orioles' system is starved for power hitters, so my goal is to find an athletic type with good power potential.  The pick is protected, and while the O's usually save their overslot spending for later rounds, I'm willing to go a bit off script here and think that with a protected pick and the possibility of hard slotting in the future, the O's will spend what it takes with this pick.  Names like Josh Tobias, Dwight Smith, Johnny Eierman or Billy Flamion are all good candidates, with Senquez Golson a dark horse due to lack of power.  If I'm looking instead for a pitcher, I will hope that Matt Purke falls this far, otherwise look at names like Joel Osich, Tyler Anderson, Hudson Boyd, Michael Kelly, Cody Kukuk, and Dillon Maples.  I think among the prep arms there is a big divide between Boyd/Kelly and Kukuk/Maples, so I hope that I can get one of the first four.

Thoughts?

So...

There are two ways to look at the probable Orioles' drafting strategy with their top pick.  One is to look at the recent history, where in three of the last four years, they took the best player available - Wieters, Matusz, and Machado.  In the other year, they fell in love with one probable first round pick who was a reach at fifth overall but would be affordable, allowing them to spend more in the rest of the draft - Hobgood.

Early buzz has the Orioles fixated on Jed Bradley, the lefty out of Georgia Tech.  If true, this strikes me as a Hobgood situation all over again.  Bradley isn't anyone's fourth best talent in the class (and I agree that he's not) but should be relatively affordable and is a certain first round pick, so while he's a reach talent-wise, he's not a spectacular reach.  I don't think the Orioles end up taking Bradley though (and I hope they don't) - with a weak farm system, no supplemental picks, and the bad memory of the Hobgood pick (as well as the promising early returns from Manny Machado), I think they go all in for the best player available.

With the fourth overall pick, my first round board only needs to be four names long, but I'm considering five here: Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon, Dylan Bundy, Bubba Starling, and Trevor Bauer.  Cole and Rendon I expect will be gone, but if either of them fall into the Orioles lap, I can't see passing.  Bundy and Starling are the outstanding prep arm and bat of the class, and I think you could easily make an argument that they are the most talented pitcher and hitter of the class.  Bauer is a wild card.  I can't help but to think that passing on him might be passing on Lincecum all over again - another unorthodox pitcher with nearly major league stuff but durability concerns that are mitigated if you believe in his unusual workout methods.

I expect the top three picks to be (in some order) Cole, Rendon and Hultzen.  So my tough decisions:

1) Who do I like better, Bundy or Starling?  All things being equal, I prefer the bat and think that is what the O's need more, but Bundy is perhaps as or more advanced than Taillon was last year while Starling is quite raw, and the O's have ties to his family (Dylan's older brother Bobby is a pitcher in the O's system who was signed out of high school) which makes me feel like the O's have an inside track at signing him and a strong environment to help him thrive.  On the other hand, if I really believe that this is the draft to spend big because some form of hard slotting will be implemented in the new CBA, the ability to spread out Starling's bonus is a big advantage.

2) How do I rank Bauer?  Can I pass up on his upside and closeness to the majors in favor of a prep if I believe in him?

3) Am I underselling Bradley?  Should I give more thought to taking the pitcher the O's have been most rumored to like?

The first round will shape my strategy for the second; Jordan habitually takes a hitter with his second pick if he goes for a pitcher with his first, and vice versa.  Another reason I favor a bat in the first is that I like the pitching I expect to be available at 2:4 more than I like the bats.

With the Rule IV Draft roughly a month away, the Orioles are facing one of their most important decisions of the season: who to select with the fourth overall pick.  The Orioles have a lot of recent experience picking high in the draft, with notable recent successes like Matt Wieters, Brian Matusz and Manny Machado, but also with notable failures such as Matt Hobgood.  The importance of these draft picks is increased due to the Orioles continued lack of activity in international free agency, which we can expect to continue, despite what some scouts have described as one of the deepest classes of international talent ever becoming available this July.

Luckily for the Orioles, the Rule IV Draft in 2011 has been described as being one of the deepest ever, with many prospects who would be among the top picks in weaker years.  It will be hard for the Orioles to avoid selecting a player with the fourth pick who doesn't have the potential to be an elite talent.  Yet the 2011 draft is also filled with question marks.  Unlike the previous two draft classes, this draft lacks any individual who has asserted themselves as the standout in the class, and at present, it is nearly impossible to say who will be off the board when the Orioles make their selection.  The Orioles will need to be prepared for many different scenarios come draft day.  With that in mind, let's take a look at the candidates.

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It isn't about a divide between fans of traditional stats and sabermetric stats either; by the light of traditional stats, Mark Reynolds sucks, which is something that pretty much everyone here disagrees with.  These are false choices. All of us are, in our own way, hopeful for the future of the Orioles.  We couldn't bear to be fans if we weren't.

Since the metaphor was chosen, I'll sketch a simplistic rendering of the political landscape on the left since Obama ran for President.  Barack Obama was a candidate who used soaring rhetoric to argue for fairly conservative left-center policies, but who was able to capture the imagination of a population starved for inspiration after eight years of George W. Bush and decades of a bankrupt establishment running both political parties.  But what many upon many Obama supporters never understood is that their hopes far outstripped the rather modest ambitions of Obama, even before he scaled them back due to the scope of the financial crisis he inherited.  The hopes of those people, so out of tune with what they could reasonably have expected, were badly dashed by the reality, and they abandoned a fairly decent President and brought on massive Republican gains in the midterm elections.

After years of painful futility by the Orioles, Andy MacPhail arrived with a plan to restore hope to our franchise.  We would rebuild our team, trade away our best players for prospects, focus on the draft and player development and pitching, and buy the offensive players needed to complement our young core.  We bought into that plan, invested our hope in that plan, in the idea that here was a road out of the suffering our franchise had caused us.

This offseason, for better or worse, represents the abandonment of that plan, which such a short time ago was the source of all our hopes.  Our starting lineup will feature merely two ostensibly young players who were supposed to make up this core: Adam Jones and Matt Wieters, and Jones will be making millions as a first year arbitration player.  They will, according to every projected lineup I've seen posted here, be hitting in the bottom third of our lineup.  The rest of our potential young core will be relegated to the bench or to Norfolk.

We will feature few of our homegrown arms as well.  We will feature at best three young arms in our projected opening day rotation - Brian Matusz, Brad Bergesen, and one of Chris Tillman or Jake Arrieta.  Of these, only Matusz has shown real potential to be a front of the rotation starter at the major league level.  Our bullpen will reflect even less of a "grow the arms" plan; only Jason Berken will represent youth and homegrown talent in our pen, and he will not be expected to claim a late inning role.  You could reasonably claim that our young core in the majors is three players: Wieters, Jones, and Matusz.  And all three members of this core are coming off what can only be described as disappointing performances in 2010.

Meanwhile, it wasn't that long ago that we were largely considering whether or not to trade Luke Scott so we could have room in the lineup for both Felix Pie and Nolan Reimold to play everyday.  It wasn't long ago that the club explained its promotion of an obviously unready Josh Bell by saying that they expected him to play in 2011 at the major league level, and saw no harm to his development to allow him to play above his head in a lost season to get a feel for his new home in the majors.  These players no longer represent the Orioles' present nor do they seem to be considered a part of the Orioles' future.

So the question that I am asking (since I won't presume to speak for anyone else) is what exactly is going on here?

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This is almost certainly going to be a disjointed and somewhat rambling response to zknower's excellent post Deep Pockets Required for Success in MLB.  This is an indulgence on my part; I have no fundamental right to respond to his research, and it does not follow that because one person makes a good argument, someone else gets to make a counterargument.  That said, his article brought up many reactions in me that I felt compelled to put into words, so if you feel like reading a lot of them, please follow me below the fold.

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Baseball America recently published their top 20 prospects from the two Rookie-level leagues where the Orioles fielded affiliates in 2010, the Appy League and the Gulf Coast League.  No Oriole prospect was selected for either list, while every other AL East team had multiple selections (Red Sox 2, Yankees 3, Blue Jays 4 and Rays 7).

To some extent, this listing is deceiving - the Rays and Jays failed to sign multiple protected picks in the 2009 draft, and therefore had extra picks in 2010, which they used on easy to sign players who went quickly to rookie level clubs.  But it also reflects how the market for amateur talent has changed, and how the other clubs in the AL East are at the forefront of that change, while the Orioles have remained largely stagnant since the first wave of improvement under Andy MacPhail.

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This would be the final draft conducted by Jordan before Andy MacPhail's tenure, and MacPhail was brought in before the signings of this draft were complete.  It is also the draft where the Orioles selected Matt Wieters and Jake Arrieta, the first major overslot signing of Jordan's tenure.

It is also the first draft where Jordan lost picks due to free agent signings.  After having had supplemental first rounders in both 2005 and 2006, the Orioles did not have a selection from the fifth overall pick until the fourth round.  Because of this, the Orioles missed out on players like Mike Stanton, Freddie Freeman, and Danny Duffy.  Of course, another way of looking at it is that they missed out on players like Eric Niesen and Michael Watt, or on drafting and failing to sign Joshua Fields, who was taken with the Orioles' pick in the 2nd round and not signed by the Braves.

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2006 was the second draft undertaken by Scouting Director Joe Jordan, and the last draft he would conduct entirely without the influence of Andy MacPhail (MacPhail was not in place for the 2007 draft but was hired shortly thereafter and was involved in the signing process).  2006 is also the last season in which Jordan would have a supplemental first round pick.

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In order to better understand the current failures of the Orioles, as well as to see what the future will hold, it is useful to review the performance of our club officials.  Let's begin with Joe Jordan, Director of Scouting, by taking a comprehensive look at the draft results of the Orioles during his tenure.

Jordan was hired by the Orioles as scouting director in November of 2004.  Jordan had previously been a member of the scouting departments of the Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins.  He began his scouting career in 1997 as an area scout for the Expos before being named Midwest Supervisor in 2001. He moved into the same capacity with Florida when most of Montreal's front office staff moved to the Florida organization in 2002, and he was named National Crosschecker a year later.

Before that, Jordan was drafted as a catcher in the 19th round of the 1985 draft by San Francisco. He batted .213 for Everett, the Giants' Class A team in the short-season Northwest League in 1985, but was injured the following spring and was released at the end of spring training. He returned to his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, received his degree in 1987 and spent three years as an assistant baseball coach for the Sooners, 1988-90.  He spent seven years in the financial investment business before returning to baseball as a scout for the Expos in 1997.

Jordan was hired by the Orioles by former Executive Vice President for Baseball Operations Jim Beattie.

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I was ten years old when the efforts to integrate the management level of baseball began.  On April 6, 1987, the ABC news magazine show "Nightline" had a special honoring the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball.  One of the guests on the program was Al Campanis, General Manager of the Dodgers and a former minor league teammate of Robinson.  Host Ted Koppel pressed Campanis on the question of why, forty years after Robinson's debut, there were no blacks working in the Major Leagues as a manager or general manager.  Campanis' response would become infamous:

No, I don't believe it's prejudice, I truly believe that it's just that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager.

Pressed by Koppel, Campanis expanded on his remarks:

I know that they have wanted to manage, and many of them haven't managed. But they are outstanding athletes, very God-gifted and wonderful people … They are gifted with great musculature (sic) and various other things. They are fleet of foot and this is why there are a number of black ballplayers in the major leagues.

This wasn't some former era of American history.  This was barely twenty years ago.  Campanis, by the way, had made the decision to hire Tommy Lasorda as manager of the Dodgers over Jim Gilliam, the former Negro League star who was Rookie of the Year for the Dodgers in 1953 and was the Dodgers' first hitting coach.

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Joe Mahoney hit two home runs last night for Bowie in their 10-5 win over Binghamton.  At 6'7" and 255 pounds, Mahoney is literally the Orioles' biggest prospect, and his .823 OPS with Frederick and his .378/.410/.757 slash line in his first ten games at Bowie have raised a few eyebrows.  Might the gigantic Mahoney finally provide some power at first base for a power-starved Orioles team?

Mahoney grew up in Troy, NY, and went undrafted as a high school player and chose to attend the University of Richmond.  Mahoney started every game of the season at first base for the Spiders, and led the Atlantic 10 conference in doubles and home runs by a freshman with nine of each.  As a sophomore, his batting average improved by nearly .100 to .356 but he hit only five home runs, a disappointing season.  But in his junior year, the power came back in a big way, and Mahoney hit 17 home runs in sixty games.  The Orioles decided on Mahoney with their sixth round pick, 198th overall, in the 2007 draft, the highest draft position of a Richmond product since Tim Stauffer was selected in the first round by the Padres in 2003.

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Anthony Rendon is the presumptive #1 overall pick in the 2011 Amateur Draft, and the Orioles, currently the worst team in the majors, are in a prime position to have the #1 overall pick.  This is particularly true because the Orioles have the third-toughest schedule in baseball and the toughest in the American League in the second half; even if the Orioles improve their play, they could well end up with the worst record in the majors.

But while the hype for Rendon is growing, it has yet to reach Bryce Harper levels, and he remains something of an unknown at the national level.  Who is Anthony Rendon, and is he worth the acclaim?

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Early July.... a time for cookouts, fireworks, and sweltering heat.  And in the baseball world, a time for the signing of teenagers from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to contracts worth hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.

Last Friday, as most of us attempted to tolerate the boredom of our offices for a few more hours before we could rush to the boredom of traffic on the interstates and the security theater of the airports, the signing period for international free agents in Major League Baseball began.  The rules of international free agency are pretty loose - a player must be a citizen of a country other than the United States or Canada and must be sixteen years old on July 2nd.  And, well, those are the rules.

These rules, or the lack thereof, have changed the face of baseball over the last couple of decades.  In 2010, over 25% of Major League Baseball players received their original contract as international free agents, including Orioles  Felix Pie, Alfredo Simon, Miguel Tejada, Cesar Izturis, Koji Uehara, and Frank Mata.  As of today, three of the top ten position players according to WAR were international free agents (Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, and Adrian Beltre) as are three of the top ten pitchers (Francisco Liriano, Ubaldo Jimenez, and Felix Hernandez).  More and more, our national pastime is an international game.

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During the offseason, I argued here that the Orioles should have pursued Matt Holliday strongly as a free agent.  This suggestion seemed somewhat counterintuitive - the O's appeared set in left field with cheap young players with upside in Nolan Reimold and Felix Pie, and our concerns were our corner infield positions.  The Orioles did not appear to make more than a token attempt to sign Holliday, who resigned with the Cardinals for a massive $120 million over seven years, paying out $17 million annually.

The season is now half over.  Reimold and Pie have combined to play little for the Orioles in left, due to a combination of injuries and ineffectiveness.  Holliday, on the other hand, has the third highest WAR total (3.4) of any player in the National League, the eighth highest total in baseball, and the third highest among outfielders behind Carl Crawford and Josh Hamilton.  He has been more valuable to date, according to WAR, than his teammate, Albert Pujols.

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