Charm City Takes

My Preview of the 2015 Baltimore Ravens

By: Jeff McDonough

The NFL season kicked off last night in Foxboro with Brady and Gronk running roughshod all over the Steelers’ porous defense. For many fanbases around the country, and locally, the true kickoff to the season comes Sunday when 26 more teams begin their season, including your Baltimore Ravens.

The 2014 campaign was a rollercoaster ride for the Ravens. Injuries piled up in their defensive backfield and eventually forced them to play their 12^th option at cornerback. Yes. Seriously. Twelve. Ahem… Jimmy Smith, Lardarius Webb, Asa Jackson, Aaron Ross, Chykie Brown, Dominique Franks, Anthony Levine, Danny Gorrer, Matt Elam, Tramain Jacobs and Rashaan Melvin all had to struggle, get injured, cut or benched before street free agent Antoine Cason saw the field. That makes 12. The low point was when Ben Roethlisberger threw for six touchdowns vs. Baltimore on Sunday Night Football in Week 9. They astoundingly rebounded from this and returned to the playoffs after missing out on the postseason the season prior — the only such season in the seven year Harbaugh-Flacco Era. They promptly went back into Pittsburgh in the Wild Card Round and this time emerged with an impressive 30-17 victory, which marked the first time they had ever defeated the Steelers in the playoffs after failing in their first three tries. The Ravens even gave the eventual Super Bowl champs a hell of a run for their money in Foxboro before coming up just short. A seemingly sour season had ended on some really high notes.

So as we look forward to 2015, let’s break down what we have with this Ravens team, and take a look at all the position groups.

Requiem for a Dork

An Ode to Andy MacPhail, the GM Who Brought the Orioles Back to Prominence

By: Jeff McDonough

This moment in the 2015 Baltimore Orioles season could be remembered as the low point from which they rebounded, or as the beginning of the end from which they never recovered. Time will only tell — though I’m leaning toward the latter at the moment. On Wednesday, the O’s fell victim to a no-hitter for the first time in seven years at the hands of the Mariners’ Hisashi Iwakuma — the second Asian-born pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter after Japan’s Hideo Nomo, who also no-hit the Orioles back in 2001. This closed a turbulent West Coast road trip, where the team lost two games in extra innings — both due to a shallow bullpen that forced ineffectual relievers to remain in the game after they had walked the bases loaded.

With seven players set to hit free agency this offseason — including red-hot slugger Chris Davis, three-time All-Star Matt Wieters and dominant reliever Darren O’Day — this current era of success in Baltimore could possibly be coming to a close. Meanwhile, 90 miles up I-95, the Philadelphia Phillies — currently the worst team in baseball — are beginning a new era with recently-hired Team President Andy MacPhail in charge. He, of course, served in the same role in Baltimore for four years before Dan Duquette took over after the 2011 season. MacPhail was also the man behind the Kirby Puckett-Era Twins teams that won two World Series, serving as general manager from 1985 to 1994. He left Minnesota that year to become President and CEO of the Cubs and presided over the Sammy Sosa-Era in Chicago. While his dozen years there did not result in a championship like his previous post, he did usher in arguably the most successful era of Cubs baseball of the last 70 years — including the 2003 team that found itself five outs from the World Series before exploding into a million pieces.

MacPhail’s four and a half seasons in Baltimore were viewed as pretty unremarkable — both when they ended and while they were going on. Why wouldn’t they be? They were a “rebuilding” team that failed to win even 70 games for five consecutive years. It was the previous regime that had shown at least some promise — after the big signings of Miguel Tejada and Javy López — in the 2005 season, where the O’s were in first place as late as June 23 with four All-Stars before falling off a cliff after the break. And it is this new regime headed by Duquette that has seen the birds end their 14-year playoff drought with three straight winning seasons — and on pace for a fourth. The high water mark came last year after sweeping the Tigers in the ALDS, when the Orioles found themselves in the final four as Vegas favorites to win the World Series. Duquette was named MLB Executive of the Year, so you'd think this column would be all about his accomplishments, right? Well, there’s reason to dwell on MacPhail’s time in B-more, as I’d argue he, not Dan Duquette, is the person most responsible for this current era of Oriole prominence.

Always Sunny

How Bright Really is the 76ers' Future?

By: Jeff McDonough

Tank.

One may associate this word with warfare, or fish, or oil, or perhaps someone referred to as a “tank,” who can both withstand and mete out punishment.  In basketball, however, the word connotes something entirely different. In the context of the NBA, the word “tank” doesn’t evoke the typical thoughts of something big, bulky and robust — unless we’re talking about the albatross the league now has on its hands. The phrase “tanking” as we know it, comes from the boxing parlance for throwing a fight, or to spell it out even further, losing on purpose. And tanking in the NBA has become a hot-button issue, both for fans who see it as something pernicious to the health of the game, and to those who don’t enjoy the NBA and cite this as one of their reasons.

There are those who see the merits of tanking, however, both in the stands and in NBA front offices. It’s a common narrative that pops up among fanbases in any draft-based sport: we’re already having a losing season, so I’d like us to be as bad as possible to ensure the best draft pick. We see that type of talk amongst fans going through a long, tough year and who want to look toward the future. But when a team starts out the season saying that their Plan A is to compete for the league’s worst record from the jump — whether they’re saying it explicitly or with their personnel decisions — that’s a much more radical way of looking toward the future.

Even if you only have the most opaque awareness of the NBA, you are likely familiar with the fact that the Philadelphia 76ers stink. They lose A LOT. They have gone 19-63 and 18-64 the last two seasons respectively, losing 11 more games than any other team in that span. In early 2014, they tied an NBA record for losing 26 consecutive games. So maybe you’re thinking, “Wow, it’s time to clean house in that organization.” Well, these on-court struggles actually coincide with when the new regime took over, and local fans and ownership alike aren’t even discouraged because they say that this is all part of “the process.” And that process seems to involve not trying to win basketball games.