Baseball's battle of the beltway wraps up this week with both the Nationals and Orioles owning losing records. While the six-game series has provided plenty of chills and thrills, what spills out of this matchup isn't as much what's happening now but the road ahead.
Both teams have had rough seasons thus far; while the Nationals lost 25 of 34 games to start the year, the Orioles flirted with .500 before starting June by losing nine of eleven. The Nats appear overmatched and talent-poor; the O's feel mistake-prone and look like their under-executing.
Both teams reach their current point from different directions: While Washington is recovering from being baseball's Quadruple-A team (aka Montreal Expos), Baltimore is the home of a once-juggernaut (3 world championships with ten playoff appearances from 1966 to 97) that's dissolved into irrelevancy with eight straight winning seasons.
The two franchises current position in the standings is where their similarities end; the Nationals direction is clearly on an upswing as they boast a youthful unit (24 of 33 players under 30--including 14 of 18 pitchers) and you could say three building blocks already play in DC (Ryan Zimmerman, Austin Kearns and Ryan Church).
The Orioles upside is not as bright: only Nick Markakis (age 23) and Brian Roberts (29) provide hope for the future among position players while Melvin Mora and Miguel Tejada are both on the wrong side of 30. And the pitching staff is either old, injured or both.
To top it off, the O's are in this hopeless short and longterm place despite a 95 million dollar payroll (as opposed to the Nats 37 million dollar salary structure). With a new stadium on the horizon, we may very well see more seperation between the two franchises-- and sooner rather than later.
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