Granted, we have some time to make moves still, but I was asked by Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus to send in what I thought would be the starters at this moment for next year's O's. Take a good, hard look at these guys with their names all together.
C: Ramon Hernandez
1B: Kevin Millar
2B: Brian Roberts
3B: Melvin Mora
SS: Luis Hernandez
LF: Luke Scott
CF: Jay Payton
RF: Nick Markakis
DH: Aubrey Huff
SP: Erik Bedard
SP: Jeremy Guthrie
SP: Daniel Cabrera
SP: Adam Loewen?
SP: Garrett Olson? Troy Patton? Matt Albers?
CL: Jamie Walker, I guess
My God. Some rebuilding. Exactly one of the starting nine could be considered a young talent, and he's also the only one I'm certain will put up above average production. I'm fairly sure on Roberts, too, but a prolonged slump is hardly out of the question with him. It wasn't but 2006 when he was struggling to maintain league average offense.
The rotation past Bedard could be a trainwreck the likes of which even we have not seen. Or it could be fairly solid. Who knows?
My real problem, though, is that this rebuilding is only sort of in motion. I mean, I know it takes time to even get these things kickstarted, but we're a ways off. The starting nine is stacked with declining (or worse) oldsters (Ramon, Millar, Mora, Payton, Huff), and the best we could really hope for out of Luke Scott is "pretty good," I figure. I do prefer him as the starting left fielder to, well, anyone that's started in left for us in recent years, but that's not saying much when the competition includes Brandon Fahey and Ed Rogers. The best we can hope for from Hernandez is that he hits .250/.300/.350, probably.
It is not too hard to see this team being a complete and utter disaster, taking our losing to a new level. The silver lining is that MacPhail does seem to have something resembling a vision or even a useful agenda. But if this group lost 100 or even 10 more than that, I wouldn't be shocked.