Orioles Totally in Denial if They Think Firing Assistant Coaches Solves Their Real Problems

The Baltimore Orioles had a historically bad 2019 season, yet still finished behind the Detroit Tigers in terms of baseball's worst record. Despite the mass exodus of talent and lack of farm system, the Orioles are making changes-- but they happen to be head-scratching ones.

Sources told The Athletic's Dan Connolly on Thursday that the O's are not renewing the contracts of first base/outfield coach Arnie Beyeler and assistant hitting coach Howie Clark.

Clark was the only guy left over left from ex-manager Buck Showalter's coaching staff. As for Beyeler, he lasted just one season with Baltimore, and has now been shown the door.

If only these moves had a chance to do even a single thing to fix the Orioles organization and give their team a chance.

The franchise was burned by horrible contracts, with Chris Davis' arguably being the worst in the league. Davis is being paid an annual salary of $17 million, and in exchange, the former slugger has batted under .200 for the past two seasons. Not to mention that the team was so capped out that they opted to trade away a bona fide superstar in Manny Machado because they had no way of signing him to a contract extension.

As you guessed, none of that has anything to do with assistant coaches.

Granted, this all came from previous general manager Dan Duquette. The team hired Mike Elias to fix the many problems left by the old regime, based off his experience in building the Houston Astros organization to the top of the league. So far, it has proven to be a very lengthy process.

And no, firing assistant coaches aren't going to make an immediate impact on this Baltimore Orioles team. It's simply rearranging the deck chairs.