I want to express my thanks to Baltimore Orioles Vice President Mike Flanagan for taking the time out of his busy schedule to grant me this exclusive interview.  Additionally, several other people were instrumental in helping make this interview a reality; it's my understanding that these individuals prefer to go unnamed, but my sincere appreciation goes out to them as well; you folks know you are.  Thanks. --K.L.

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On the afternoon of Thursday, February 24 I had the pleasure of speaking at length with Orioles Vice President Mike Flanagan.  The exclusive 45-minute interview, which covered a myriad of topics, was conducted by phone, with Mike in Ft. Lauderdale and me in suburban Chicago.  What follows is a summary of that conversation.  (The questions asked were formulated by myself and a small group of other interested individuals; the decision as to which questions to ask and in what order were mine alone and were dictated in part by the nature of the interview itself.)

When asked what the Orioles needed to do to improve developmentally over the near term, “improved scouting,” international scouting in particular, was cited.  The upcoming 2005 Major League Baseball Amateur Draft is, I was told, widely regarded as an exceptionally deep one, and the Orioles are clearly targeting this draft as a key component in helping the franchise achieve its on-field goals in the coming years.

The Orioles plan going forward is to focus on what the organization feels is its forte:  developing its own pitching, and doing so in such volume as to be able to use the surplus to address its other needs.  Mike acknowledged that the team has had a much tougher time with position player development than pitching, but feels that the organization has turned a corner with regard to the quantity of young, talented pitching at the ready—and still progressing through the team’s minor league organization.  When asked why the franchise has had so much trouble developing its own position players, he said that many organizations seem to have a knack for doing one thing or the other well, noting the Red Sox’s consistent ability to produce hitters (but not necessarily pitchers in any great volume).  The Orioles, he told me, feel that the organization’s strength is in the area of pitcher development and capitalizing on that advantage is the key to the future of the club.  The goal is to “get young pitching, hang onto it and develop it” in depth.  The most successful of these young pitchers would become staff mainstays.  The excess would be used as bait to bolster the other areas of the team.  The free agent market would be used as an additional “supplement.”  But it was clear that internal development is viewed as the essential means by which the Orioles will return to perennial contender status.

It should be noted that the Orioles do feel that they have some legitimate position player prospects in the organization (Val Majewski and Nick Markakis were among the names mentioned), but without the depth they feel is desirable or necessary.  Pitching prospect depth is regarded as immeasurably better, however, and Mike told me that it’s clear, based on “the volume of calls” he receives from other organizations around baseball that the Orioles are not the only ones who are enamored with their young pitching talent.

I asked about off-season goals and was told that, each year, the Orioles draw up a wish list that is based on a model used to project toward a minimum total of 97 wins in forthcoming seasons.  The model, essentially, uses the previous year as a baseline and then attempts to project how many additional wins a variety of different upgrade scenarios will produce, with the goal of reaching the coveted 97-win threshold.  The model was described to me as “semi-sabermetric” (or “sabermetrics-plus”).  A realistic (rather than a “best case”) set of circumstances is discerned:  how many wins is a given player likely to add (rather than asking what the ceiling is for a player’s increased level of production).

Following up on the sabermetric topic, I asked about the organization’s reaction to a so-called “Moneyball approach” to organizational development (i.e. one that focuses primarily on statistical measures as a way of defining and recognizing player production, both in professional and among potential draftees in the amateur ranks).  It’s clear that, while the Orioles regard sabermetrics as valuable and undoubtedly relevant, they feel that there’s more that must be considered when evaluating players.  The Orioles organization, I was told, puts a great deal of stock into its player profiling system (a tool that has been outlined at some length in a number of mainstream media reports over the past 18 months and one that most other organizations don’t use), and typically combines the profile results with sabermetric measures.  The organization feels that the profiling system helps it to “better evaluate individual players’ real potential.”

I noted in the final Stats that Matter Most of 2004 that the Orioles made a colossal improvement in their ability to prevent runs (i.e. limited opponents’ runs) last year after Ray Miller took over as the team’s pitching coach in June.  I asked Mike if Miller deserved all of the credit and he said that Miller certainly deserved most of it.  The starting staff, in the two season segments, was “night and day,” he said, and that Miller clearly had “a Master’s in pitching.”  The success of the staff in the second half of the season is certainly not seen as some sort of fluke or aberration; the depth that the organization feels it has in the pitching ranks—and the on-field success at the major league level during the back end of the 2004 season—was cited as the main reason why the Orioles were less aggressive in the starting pitching market this off-season than many pundits felt they would be.

Among the young starting pitchers, only Matt Riley is out of options this year.  The Orioles feel that they have a tremendous amount of flexibility, as a result.  I was told that the staff at the team’s Triple-A Ottawa affiliate may be “very good” at the beginning of the 2005 season.   The team has a lot more arms with major league potential than they have slots on the big league roster; a variety of pitchers could end up in the big league rotation to start the season, could wind up in the bullpen in middle or long relief, or could find themselves starting at AAA.  Riley is the only pitcher who doesn’t fit into the flexible role fold.  I was told that the Orioles feel that Riley is putting more pressure on himself to have a big spring than any anxiety he’s feeling from the club.  Riley remains a candidate for the rotation or bullpen.  The “worst case” scenario, Mike said, is that Riley would be a valuable trade commodity as he’s a highly regarded entity around Major League Baseball.

Asked to comment on reports that have appeared in the mainstream media that Jorge Julio might not be ready for the season opener, Mike said that these reports appear inaccurate.  Julio is evidently suffering from forearm edema; he has already resumed throwing.  He’s expected to be ready to throw off a mound by mid-March.  The team expects that he will be fully ready to go when regular season action begins.  B.J. Ryan will be handed the closing chores until Julio is ready to pitch in games, but Julio is, I was told, still in a position to pitch his way back into the closer’s job this spring.  Ryan, it should be noted, was mentioned as the bullpen member last year who most stepped up when needed.  To the extent that there is a bullpen leader (and I was told that there isn’t one, necessarily), Ryan is the guy based on what he accomplished last season.

I asked if there has been any consideration given to switching 2001 first round draft pick Chris Smith, whose four years of pro ball have been plagued by arm injuries, from the mound to a position player slot (where Smith excelled in high school).  I was told that it has been discussed, but that the focus with regard to Smith is making sure that he’s healthy (something he apparently was, at last report).  The organization evidently has no qualms about moving players from one position to another if it’s felt that this is the best course of action, so this is something that evidently will be kept in mind in Smith’s case in the future.

I questioned whether we would see more “fire” this year from Lee Mazzilli—who a number of fans and others criticized last year for being too inert.  I was told, unequivocally, that more animation from the Orioles’ manager was highly likely in 2005.  “It’s in his personality,” Mike said.  He went on to speculate that last year’s passivity was a function of Maz’s unfamiliarity with virtually every aspect of his situation:  he was engaged in a new job, in a new city, with a new organization, with entirely different expectations.  Last year, was a “getting his feet wet” experience, I was told.  This year he’s presumably far more familiar with the situation and should be much more “himself.”

With the apparent upswing this off-season in the incidence of MLB front office executives traveling to meet with prospective free agent signees, I asked if this tactic was something that the Orioles would consider employing in future negotiations.  I was told that this is the sort of thing that’s assessed on a case-by-case basis.  The Orioles made such an offer, apparently, to Vladimir Guerrero during the 2003-04 off-season (Guerrero declined).  In the case of Carlos Delgado, who was the recipient of several such visits earlier this off-season before signing a contract with the Florida Marlins, the first baseman only asked for such meetings with teams with whom he had little familiarity (mostly NL clubs).  In the case of the Orioles, he evidently felt that he knew the organization well enough to make such a meeting unnecessary.  While acknowledging that some of these trips can be productive, the Orioles view many of them as little more than window dressing—substantively meaningless acts that give fans of the clubs involved the impression that the front office is leaving no stone unturned in its effort to sign a particular player.

I asked about the widely held public perception that Peter Angelos is a meddling, hands-on owner to the extent that little, if anything, is approved without his personal imprimatur.  Was that a more or less accurate assessment, I queried, or was it a gross embellishment of reality?  It is, I was told, a “gross embellishment.”  Mr. Angelos is not uninvolved, but the notion that he’s micromanaging every decision is “inaccurate.”  Mike said that the key in dealing with ownership is to keep those at the top informed as to what is going on—what the baseball part of the front office is thinking, who they’re thinking of pursuing, who they’re thinking of letting go, what the overall strategy is and so forth.  An end-of-season session is held for this purpose each year.  As long as the ownership principals don’t feel blindsided, I was told, there is little if any friction.

Mike went on to tell me that he thinks that the effect of the “Washington issue” (i.e. the transfer of the Montreal Expos to the District of Columbia during this off-season) has been “substantially underplayed” to date.  He explained the apparent contradiction between Mr. Angelos’ statement in October of last year that the presumed move of the Expos to Washington wouldn’t keep the Orioles from major spending this off-season and the fact that the Orioles mostly kept their hands in their collective pockets when all was said and done.  I was told that the October statement was made with the expectation that the issue of compensation—to the Orioles—for the move would be resolved in short order.  That hasn’t happened.  Mike said that he was particularly “proud” of how Mr. Angelos had handled the compensation issue specifically because he—Angelos—hadn’t simply taken the proposed one-time nine-figure payoff.  That, it was stated, would have been the easy way out.  Instead, as a function of his long-term commitment to the Orioles franchise, and to the fans of Baltimore, Mr. Angelos insisted on a formula that would provide for ongoing, long-term compensation to the Orioles franchise since, the thinking goes, the impact of the new Washington franchise on the Orioles would be ongoing.  Rather than taking the easy, and personally profitable, way out, this explanation concludes, Mr. Angelos was more concerned with the enduring health of the franchise.  And that apparently is what is holding up a settlement in this matter.  As a function of the uncertainty of any settlement, the Orioles found it impossible to accurately project their debt based on projected future spending and revenues.  As a result, the franchise was concerned that any major outlay of cash over the long-term (read big money, long-term contracts) could find the club running afoul of Major League Baseball’s newly enforced debt service rule and thus find itself paying heavy fines down the road which would further restrict the team’s ability to field a competitive ball club.

When asked about the effect of playing in the same division with two teams (Yankees and Red Sox) whose revenues the Orioles are unlikely to ever be able to match, Mike was matter-of-fact.  “If we all do our jobs,” I was told, the Orioles should be able to compete.  It was a case of making more out of less.

Asked about the possibility of establishing something of a rivalry with the Washington franchise, Mike conceded that such a thing was probably inevitable to some degree, but emphasized that the “focus is to the North,” meaning the Yankees and Red Sox.  The Nationals, after all, don’t play in the same division, or even the same league, as the Orioles, so that wasn’t something for the Orioles to concern themselves with.

On the subject of resolving the Orioles’ longstanding spring training complex issue, I was told that it was an “ongoing” matter.  Things are always “bubbling” on this subject—discussions have been held about an expanded complex in Ft. Lauderdale and other communities in other parts of the state have also been mentioned, but it doesn’t appear as though any sort of an announcement on this topic is imminent.  Mike pointed to the irony of the Orioles having perhaps MLB’s most viable during season major/minor league affiliate arrangement (with only one affiliate being more than a few hours from Baltimore and some expectation that the single outlier would be dealt with in the foreseeable future), and the least viable pre-season structure.  (The Orioles are the only major league franchise that holds major and minor league spring training camps in different locations.)

Finally, I asked Mike if there was anything that he’s learned in his current position, as a front office executive, that would have assisted him during his on-field career.  He said that the most significant difference was the varying economic perspective of the two roles.  As a player, he stated, your primary concern is with yourself and that includes economic considerations.   But as an executive in a franchise’s front office, concern frequently centers around things that players rarely concern themselves with, such as the number of years a player has until he’s arbitration-eligible or until he qualifies for free agency.  Many transactions are made with these kinds of factors squarely in the minds of the executives carrying out the moves, but were not the sorts of thoughts that went through his mind as a player.

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