BUSTER OLNEY NAILS IT WITH THE ORIOLES ANGST

The last few days of the MLB Winter's Meetings have been exciting for this Orioles fan. They filled major holes in the infield by trading for Mark Reynolds and JJ Hardy and also resigned their closer Koji Uehara. But honestly I can not get too excited because the Red Sox signed Carl Crawford for a billion dollars after trading for Adrian Gonzalez. And the Yankees will probably sign Cliff Lee because like the Red Sox they overpay for everybody. ESPN'S Buster Olney sums it up perfectly to how this Orioles fan feels even after the major moves....

"If they were in the American League West, we'd be talking about if X, Y and Z happened, maybe they would contend. But in this division, they are 100 miles away," Olney said. "They have so far to go upstream, it's like watching a salmon at the mouth of whatever river. … That's why, in my own feeling, I wish baseball would realign and take out the divisions. The Rays' window may have just closed for good.

"There is a huge gap between [the Yankees and Red Sox] and the rest of their division. It's almost like it has to be a combination of brilliant work by someone like [Rays GM] Andrew Friedman with luck to get one of the other teams in the mix. For somebody that covered that team, I feel bad. You just have this huge generations of Orioles fans waiting to be inspired and I can't see it anytime soon."

Until there is a hard salary cap the game is always going to be in favor of the major market teams. The two shitbirds (Yankees and Red Sox) should honestly just join as one team. There is no difference between them. They have formed into two perfect Evil Empires. And it's not their fault because Bud Selig is too fucking dumb to do anything about it. As long as he is getting paid and the owners are cashing it in he could careless about competitive balance. And please don't give me the argument about how their have been 8 different World Series Champions in 10 years. The playoffs are a crap shoot. Anything can happen. The problem is over a 162 game schedule it's not fair for the Orioles, Blue Jays, and Rays to have play 19 games each against all the other teams in the AL Beast.

If they aren't going to do a hard cap then realign the divisions like Olney says. The Mets, Cubs, Phillies, Red Sox, and Yankees can all be in the same division. Let them beat the shit out of each other and spend the most money to win the division.