Dysfunctional Orioles put Manny Machado market on edge
WASHINGTON — Manny Machado said his cell rings with calls or texts too often to grow uneasy each time that this could be the one alerting him to the inevitable:
That he is no longer a Baltimore Oriole.
Machado wore his familiar No. 13 Oriole uniform on Monday while talking to reporters. But there is a decent chance he never wears it in a game again. Baltimore begins the second half Friday and there has been a buzz the slugger will be traded by the time play resumes.
However, executives from multiple teams pursuing Machado cautioned that the Orioles situation has enough dysfunction in it to make certainty very uncertain.
“It’s Baltimore,” an official from an interested team said. “Ask me every 15 minutes and I’ll give you a different answer.”
Orioles GM Dan Duquette is running point on negotiations. But vice president of baseball operations Brady Anderson also is invested both with power and the ear of ownership. Ah, yes, ownership, the patriarch, Peter Angelos, is not as involved in the daily running of the franchise. His sons John and Louis are more involved. Add in that manager Buck Showalter also has a huge personality and — like Duquette — has an expiring contract and there is a forum for dysfunction.
“There are a lot of different agendas from a lot of different stakeholders with the Orioles,” one executive said. “It is the weirdest negotiation I have ever been part of and I am not the only one that feels that. In most trade negotiations there is a clear organizational alignment or direction decided beforehand. Everyone either agrees or they come to what they are going to do and everyone buys in. I am dealing with Dan, but my impression is that there are many voices involved. I assume one day I will get a call that we got him or read on Twitter who did. It is strange, not a normal back and forth.”
The growing perception within the game is that the Phillies might be most aggressively pursuing Machado and that the Brewers and Dodgers also are working hard with a few other teams on the outside seeing if Machado falls to them. The Yankees seem to be in that category.
But another executive said, “I would not assume they are just down to one or two teams. They are talking to a lot of teams about a lot of players and you might assume that a team is on Machado and that team is really on Zach Britton.
“I think their goal is to trade their walk-year guys Machado, Britton, [Brad] Brach and Adam Jones, but they are not hanging up the phone if you ask on [Kevin] Gausman or [Dylan] Bundy or [Jonathan] Schoop.”
