Did Ripken’s streak come at the price of sacrificing the Orioles many years of higher performance, as a team? My argument is that the focus totally shifted from winning to pennants to just Cal and keeping his stats up.
Skipping the details, I offer one point supporting this arguemtn that morale of the team, as a whole, greatly especially suffered in the years under the Ripken dynasty (Sr, Jr, Billy).
I think his retirement will help the Orioles re-focus on what the primary objective is. Once a competitive team, it has gone almost 20 years without showing much potential. People seem to forget, but even Cal himself, at one point, started belly-aching how he wanted to be traded if the team wasn’t going to be a contender! That’s a fine thanks!
He’s a great guy, but I think it went too far for too long.
For the vast majority of the streak, Ripken put up numbers superior (often vastly superior) to those of an average shortstop. I think it’s safe to say that the orioles would have been worse off in almost every season during the streak without him.
The orioles management (GM and owner) has been inept for a long, long time. Keeping Ripken around (during the streak, you can make the argument that they’d be better off with someone else since then) has been one of the few things they have done right.
There was critcism during the latter part of Ripken’s career that his lack of rest days was hurting his performance. Rob Neyer, I believe did a study on espn.com comparing his performance in games after a day off (team did not play), versus games in which he played the day before, and it showed no appreciable difference. It was probably about 2 years ago, I’m not sure if it’s archived or not.
I grew up with Mark Belanger(sp?) and Kiko Garcia at shortstop for the Orioles. Mark was known at the time for being the greatest defensive shortstop in the league (fewest errors, etc.) But, it was also true he was the weakest batter. In contrast, you could always Kiko for errors (although I don’t know the exact stats off-hand).
However, he made up fot it with a respectable batting average.
All in all, you had a united team pulling for one cause. Although a controversial manager, I think Earl Weaver had a lot to do with this chemistry. Also, there was money to afford a good balance of talents on the team. And, I cannot deny the farm system was better then than today.
“Kids” my age still wonder if the Orioles can return to the World Series without Earl Weaver? In contrast, kids today ask if there’s a team without Ripken, Jr. It’s sad the Orioles put their eggs in one basket (no pun intended).
I say the Orioles will persevere, but the painful wait for a turnaround will continue on. If one man defines a team, then maybe it’s trying to tell upper management something. Hmm…I once thought there were 9 men on a team!
Yeah…I’m not seeing how having Cal on the team hurt the Orioles. His offensive and defensive numbers were always above average, and I’m sure he was a role model as far as work ethic is concerned. I’m not sure where you’re coming from…
I don’t think Cal’s numbers would have come under such close scrutiny if not for the streak. Other veteran players experience slumps and play their way through them without nearly as much criticism and cries of, “Sit him down! He’s hurting the team!” Of course, this comes with the territory, but it wasn’t always valid.
And of course the 1996 and 1997 Orioles, of which Cal played an integral part, we playoff teams, and might have been world champions in '96 but for Jeffrey Maier.
I don’t recall the Orioles EVER losing a close pennat race since they won the World Series in 1983, except for 1989. EVery year they were either way out of it or, in two years, made the playoffs. So you would be very hard pressed to show any time the Orioles missed a playoff berth they might have made if Cal had taken a few days off… except…
The one year they missed by a hair was 1989; they lost to the Blue Jays on the next-to-last day of the season in a couple of heartbreaking losses (they lost one of those games when the winning run scored on a wild pitch. Ouch.) The Blue Jays were ten games behind Baltimore at one point that year. Intrestingly, 1989 was Ripken’s WORST year of his career to that point. So did he get tired in 1989 and cost the Orioles the one or two games that might have gotten them into the postseason?
Maybe, but I should point out that:
Despite the closeness of records, the Jays were a WAY better team, and fell behind only because of a Jimy Williams-led fiasco start. They were a terrific team in the middle of a long string of championships, while the Orioles were kind of flukey. The Orioles won more games than you would have expected from the available talent - look at their lineup and it’s full of Cal Ripken and a bunch of has-beens and never-weres - so it’s to their credit that they were even close.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to blame Cal Ripken for losing the division to Toronto when there were plenty of worse players on the team. Why blame Cal but not blame his brother, or Larry Sheets, or Bob Melvin, or DAve Schmidt?
I don’t see how Cal’s streak sacrificed anyone ELSE’S performence; the Orioles were not so obsessed with Cal’s performance that they forgot about the rest of the team. They were a bad team for much of his career because they twice allowed the team to grow too old to compete. The post-1983 team never added any youth and imported fossils to stay afloat, with predictably disastrous results. The post-Gillick team did exactly the same thing, and imploded just as badly. That’s what killed them.