O's Add 10 New International Scouts

[Jordan Tuwiner]

http://orioles-nation.com/blogs/baltimo ... al-scouts/

Fred Ferreira, the Orioles’ new Executive Director of International Recruiting, has added 10 new international scouts, according to Steve Melewski of MASN Sports.

These scouts will be working in Venezuela, Curacao, Guatamala, Holland, Costa Rica and The Dominican Republic.

Very encouraging.

[ofahn]

A first step in the right direction.

[Rising O's]

I love to make fun of that MASN blog guy for his oft used phrase "highly regarded" when the Warehouse feeds him the BS about the people that work there. Maybe we will finally have some "highly regarded" people working in the Warehouse, that will be respected outside of it too.

[TuckerBlair89]

EXTREMELY encouraging. This is something that needed to be done 10-20 years ago. Better later than never though.

Duquette is slowly but surely getting the scouting and developmental roles in the organization fixed up. We will have to wait and see the true meaning to all of this, but as of now I am finally happy for once with the developments in the organization.

[Why Not?]

I have to wonder why this is being done now and not before. Did McPhail/Flanny/Beattie/Duquette 1.0 not understand the value of this? Or did Duquette 2.0 press the correct button to get PGA to hand over the necessary money?

[ofahn]

I have no way of knowing whether it was his intention but, although MacPhail did improve the team in small gradients, what he REALLY improved was the profitability of the team. Starting from his first full season(2008) he lowered payroll and other costs up to and including cutting two farm teams last year. It wasn't until the 2011 season that the payroll was back to the 2007 level.

[DougDE]

The effort was a failure but McPhail attempted a rebuilding project and inevitably during one of those your payroll is going to go down for a while

[ofahn]

The effort was a failure but McPhail attempted a rebuilding project and inevitably during one of those your payroll is going to go down for a while

Yes, BUT a full fledged rebuilding project normally spends MORE on Rule 4 draft and international players. MacPhail increased spending on Rule 4 by about 3M a year and might have spent a total of 2.5M on international signings while he was here. That's not what I would call using the savings to rebuild.