Send More Paramedics

My *Current* Plan to Fix the Orioles in 2007 (option 1)

Goodbye Rodrigo Lopez, Bruce Chen, Russ Ortiz, Kevin Millar, and Widger

Trades Miguel Tejada, Kris Benson and Jay Gibbons to Anaheim for Aybar, Santana, McPherson, and Kotchman

Trade McPherson to Minnesota for Glenn Perkins and PTBNL

Sign Erubiel Durazo, Moises Alou, JR House, Randy Wolf, Tagg Bozied, Chad Bradford, Gomez, and Aramis Ramirez

Your current 2007 Orioles look like (new players in bold, role changes in italics, slashes represent a platoon):

C: Hernandez 1B: Kotchman/Durazo 2B: Roberts 3B: Ramirez SS: Aybar LF: Mora CF: Patterson RF: Markakis DH: Alou/Durazo Bench: Gomez, Stern, House, Bozied

SP: Bedard SP: Wolf SP: Santana SP: Cabrera SP: Loewen RL: Penn RL: Rleal RL: Britton RL: Perkins RL: Bradford CL: Ray

The rationale behind the above is as follows. The Orioles have found themselves hard-pressed to compete with many teams in acquiring top-notch free agents. Therefore, I am of the opinion that they should instead try to stock some young talent and sign older guys who are high risk and on the cheap. The one major downside is that any or all of Durazo/Wolf/Alou could be injured for a significant chunk of time. Therefore, some of the younger and/or less injury-prone options below might be a better idea. Further, with the above moves, the defense hasn’t significantly improved.

Other options: Seung Yeop Lee, Vincente Padilla, Platooning McPherson and Mora, Mark Loretta, Brandon Larson, Josh Phelps, Eric Munson, Bobby Hill

-m