O's: A Growing Threat in AL East

A few days ago, Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports wrote a great piece on the emerging Baltimore Orioles, with mentions of the Balticore, The Cavalry, and of course, DCLS favorite Baseball Jesus.

Here's an excerpt below, but be sure to check out the the entire article. Promising stuff.

The praise, almost universal, always comes with a disclaimer. Scouts love the Baltimore Orioles. They want to peg them as baseball’s great darkhorse of 2010, the latest team that can turn homegrown talent into long-term success. Only the scouts won’t go so far, not without a seven-word postscript.

If only they weren’t in that division.

Such is life in the American League East, baseball’s iron maiden, where even the most well-run upstart finds itself trapped underneath the enormity of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. The Orioles have spent a dozen miserable seasons thrashing about, the vortex of mismanagement sucking the life out of what once stood as a model franchise. And only now, under general manager Andy MacPhail’s stewardship, is the cannonball hole in the bow fixed and the ship ready for righting.