O's progress is in eye of the beholder

The Orioles' rebuilding program marches slowly on, and there is only one thing that is absolutely certain as the team passes the quarter pole in this difficult transitional season:

The view is not the same everywhere in the ballpark.

From the stands, it looks like another train wreck. The club is solidly anchored at the bottom of the American League East standings and, at the current pace, will not end up with 70 wins this season.

From the general manager's box, everything is pretty much on schedule. The trick is getting that train to arrive before what remains of the dwindling fan base becomes too disillusioned to make the rest of the trip.

In case you were wondering, president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail is not second-guessing the decision to sign Adam Eaton, even though the Orioles released the 31-year-old right-hander Friday after an unproductive run of eight starts that included just two victories and only one truly solid performance.

He's not second-guessing the deal for multi-tool outfield project Felix Pie, even though the club may ultimately abandon that experiment. He's not kicking himself for choosing not to show any interest in three-time Cy Young Award winner Pedro Martinez after the World Baseball Classic.

Of course, plenty of fans are second-guessing him. Anybody in Philadelphia could have told him that Eaton would be a bust and anybody in Chicago could have told him that Pie wouldn't suddenly figure things out.

Now, he appears to be the only idiot in Baltimore who didn't know Nolan Reimold was ready on Opening Day and Chris Tillman - at least until suffering a tight groin Saturday - was ready for prime time.

This is where MacPhail's face twists into that frustrated how-many-times-do-I-have-to-tell-you schoolteacher look. The Orioles are less than two seasons into his plan and this particular season has a very particular transitional purpose. That's why he's not willing to rush Matt Wieters and Tillman and some of the other top prospects into the fray. Wieters will be here in the next week or two and the others will come when the time is right, not because the club needs a marketing boost.

The Orioles took a flier on Eaton because he was a low-cost (almost no-cost) option that bought a little more time for the front office to develop the building blocks of the future away from the glare of the major league spotlight. That's also the reason MacPhail brought in Mark Hendrickson. Do you honestly believe he was banking on either of them winning 17 games this year?

"Time helps you make better decisions," MacPhail said Friday. "There is no certainty that your decisions are going to work, but the more time you can let things percolate, the more likely you're going to come to a decision you're comfortable with."

Now, before you start rolling your eyes and wondering whether Andy can get any more conservative, at least understand that he's not sitting up there dispassionately watching the train hurtle off the trestle.

"I have the same reactions as everybody else," he said, "but I have to temper that with what I think is in the best interests of the Orioles long-term. I think there is only one path that will get this organization where it wants to go."

That path has already been laid out. MacPhail arrived here with one primary goal - to refurbish an Orioles player development system that was once (albeit a long time ago) the envy of the major leagues.

Based on the amount of public whining about all the young players who ought to be up here right now, he apparently has made some real progress where there was almost none the previous decade or so.

"Things don't change overnight," he said. "We really have made more progress than what you could have reasonably assumed."

The next step will be to assimilate those young players over the next year and fill some key holes in the roster with quality free agents.

Fans have a right to be skeptical after 11 straight losing seasons, but MacPhail has resisted any attempt to mollify them with a window-dressing move like spending $5 million-plus to sign Martinez.

Things look grim right now, so much so that some fans wax nostalgic for seasons like 2005 and last year, when the Orioles hung around for half the season before plummeting into a competitive abyss. MacPhail would prefer to turn that around this year and head out of 2009 moving in an upward direction for a change.

In the meantime, he apparently is willing to take the heat.

Listen to Peter Schmuck weeknights at 6 on WBAL (1090 AM).

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