Andy Macphail

Maybe it's a little early to start passing around the credit for the Orioles' surprising, uplifting and just plain fun first half of the 2012 season, but this could be a clear case of better early than never. The O's have exceeded expectations, and it's easy to point a couple of fingers in a couple of obvious directions. Buck Showalter clearly has changed the culture both on the field and in the clubhouse, so you can put a big gold star on his photo in the Orioles yearbook. New baseball operations guru Dan Duquette has made a couple of dynamic moves to upgrade the starting rotation, so his impact is easily measurable, even if he tried to acquire just about everybody with a pulse during the offseason.

It was a calculated risk. The Orioles have opened the season with what manager Buck Showalter willingly concedes is an "unconventional" bullpen, which could leave him and baseball operations chief Dan Duquette with some explaining to do if the starting pitchers aren't able to provide enough good innings to keep the relievers fresh. The Orioles do not have a true long reliever to pick up the slack if the starters again make a habit of stalling in the early and middle innings. That might change over the next few weeks - as circumstances dictate - but the team clearly is hoping that the rotation will go deep in enough games to make it a non-issue.

A couple of months after moving its pro scouting department under one umbrella that would focus primarily on amateur scouting, the Orioles have decided to put a little more emphasis on monitoring the minor leagues. The change is based more on logistics than any switch in philosophy, Orioles amateur scouting director Gary Rajsich said. In December, Dan Duquette, the Orioles' new executive vice president of baseball operations, announced that six of the club's eight pro scouts would be joining the amateur side as part of the organization's concentration on improving its annual draft.

Major League Baseball announced today that Joe Torre has stepped down as executive vice president of baseball operations to join a prospective ownership group that will be among those competing to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers. So there's a high-profile opening in the commissioner's office. And around here, that means one thing: Andy MacPhail's name will be floated as a candidate. In fact, within minutes of the official announcement, at least one writer mentioned MacPhail as a replacement possibility.

It was a year of soaring highs and mind-numbing lows in local sports. And of course when you talk about the lows, at least on a tragicomic level, one name comes instantly to mind: Kegasus. Kegasus, you'll recall, was the flabby centaur with a nipple ring and 1980s Hells Angels hair at the center of the Preakness infield ad campaign. He (it?) urged race-goers to be "Be Legendary" in their partying, presumably by getting mega-hammered and waking up hours later, wondering where they left their pants.

Desperately lagging in the world baseball market, the Orioles are attempting to step up their international efforts, and this weekend might serve as a primary example of that change in philosophy. An Orioles contingent — to include manager Buck Showalter, new executive director of international recruiting Fred Ferreira, international operations director David Stockstill and new bullpen coach and Dominican Republic native Bill Castro — will attend a private workout Saturday morning in the Dominican by 26-year-old outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, a Cuban defector.

Dan Duquette hasn't revealed a whole lot about the backroom machinations that are taking place during his first winter meetings as the Orioles' new baseball operations guru, but it's fairly obvious that he wants to make something happen before his front office contingent heads back to Baltimore on Thursday. The big question is whether he has enough inventory to acquire a significant player or two without putting a big dent in the team's youth movement. "I think we have the wherewithal to make a couple of deals," Duquette said during his news briefing Tuesday evening.

New Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette has begun the reconstruction of his front office, announcing the hiring of a new amateur scouting director Monday while re-assigning pro scouting director Lee MacPhail IV, one of the top lieutenants in the club's previous regime. Long-time scout Gary Rajsich, who was most recently the Toronto Blue Jays professional crosschecker and spent years with Duquette in Boston, was officially named to replace Joe Jordan, who left the Orioles' amateur scouting post in October to join the Philadelphia Phillies.

New Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette has been working this week to bolster his front office, and now, at least theoretically, he'll have another hole to fill. Matt Klentak, the club's 31-year-old director of baseball operations, accepted an assistant general manager position with the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday. He will be working directly with new Angels GM Jerry Dipoto, who interviewed in October for the Orioles' top executive job that eventually went to Duquette earlier this month.

The Orioles organization announced this past week that they are bringing the "cartoon bird" back. In reality, the current state of this club is no laughing matter. Dan Duquette was recently named the executive vice president of the team. There may a change in the front office, but more years of mediocrity lay ahead for the Birds, who struggle mightily each season to achieve a .500 record. Andy MacPhail left a frustrated man, not being able to change the fortunes of the club during his tenure here.