Photo Credit: Keith Allison 

Leading Off

Bird’s Eye View joins you off-cycle to bring a lack of insight and baseless opinion to the Nick Markakis situation. For those of you living under a rock, the Orioles (former) longest tenured Oriole signed a four-year, $44 million deal with the Atlanta Braves. At one point, it was impossible to think of Markakis in another uniform, but reports this week showed the two sides growing  farther and farther apart, until ultimately, his return was considered a long shot.

 

#TheNickMarkakisWatch

This effectively ends #TheNickMarkakisWatch, and leaves O’s fans divided on whether the club made the right call in letting Markakis escape in free agency. As with Nelson Cruz’s recent departure for gr$$ner pastures in Seattle, there is a mix of emotion from the fan base. Some applaud the move, others are infuriated. Here are BEV, we’re directly in the middle. From a baseball analytics perspective, this is a player the Braves overpaid for, and one that can be replaced. On an emotional level, we wanted Nick back in the orange and black, and will miss rooting for him.

Much debate has been made as to how good a player Nick Markakis actually is. The stat heads claim that he’s a middling offensive player, and sub-average defender. The “back of the baseball card” crowd praise his Gold Glove defense, steady dependability, and ability to hold down the leadoff spot in a potent offense. One source we trust, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS  are not kind to Markakis:

And here’s Markakis ZiPS in ATL. Poor ZiPS can’t even imagine someone wanting to give Markakis 140 games in ’16. pic.twitter.com/KLlatpaKxh

— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) December 4, 2014

So the real concern is how much he’ll be on the field, what he’ll bring while he’s there, and whether that is worth the $11 million he’ll make each year.

The Orioles thought it wasn’t worth the investment. Good, bad, or ugly, that was their assessment. So they let him walk.

 

Fine, So Now What?

With the departure of Markakis and Cruz, the Orioles have holes in left field, right field, and DH. To replace Markakis, there are a couple of options left on the free agent market:

* Nori Aoki

* Michael Morse

* Colby Rasmus

We talk through the options, and what rabbits the front office is most likely to pull from the free agency hat. The team also has a number of in-house options to fill the hole in right field, even on a platoon basis:

* Steve Pearce

* Alejandro De Aza

* David Lough

* Dark horse minor leaguers

The best of this group is probably a split between Pearce and Lough, where Pearce gets a lion’s share of the at-bats, hoping that he can follow up on his strong 2014 campaign. And really… David Lough can’t get any worse, right? Right?! Then there’s Door #3 – the trade market. Trades are a tough thing to project, particularly since we don’t have anything to go on, other than wild speculation. We’ll leave that to the Twitter Teen Squad, but here are a few rumors that have been bandied about. We don’t consider any of them likely:

* Matt Kemp

* Carlos Gonzalez

* Justin Upton

* Yoenis Cespedes

* Bryce Harper

 

Closing Thoughts

First, don’t freak out. It’s OK to feel emotion. It’s OK to miss Nick Markakis. But let’s remember to give Dan Duquette and his front office the benefit of a little doubt. This is the regime that turned fourteen losing seasons into three consecutive winning seasons, complete with two playoff appearances.