Orioles Notes: Payroll, Pujols, Guerrero

Earlier this week, The Baltimore Sun published highlights of Orioles GM Andy MacPhail's address to a group of Baltimore School of Law students.  MacPhail covered a wide range of topics and today the paper has published even more of his comments pertaining to the club..

• Someone in the audience asked if promises were made three years ago by ownership that some of the cash generated by the creation of MASN would go toward increasing payroll.  MacPhail says that he instead told ownership to keep payroll down and invest in the farm system.  The GM's reasoning was that the O's will never be able to spend like Yankees and Red Sox and MASN can't generate money the way NESN (Red Sox) or YES (Yankees) can.
• The O's would go beyond their budget to sign a special player under the right circumstances, or, as MacPhail phrased it, "the perfect storm".  The GM cited the club's $140MM offer to Mark Teixeira after the 2008 season as an example of that.  When someone asked if Albert Pujols could represent a similar perfect storm, MacPhail shot down the daydreams of optimistic Orioles fans everywhere by saying, "The likelihood of us stepping out to the degree that [Pujols] is looking at, for any one player, is remote at best. I read that he's looking for $30 million a year, and I just can't see how that's going to happen."
• The club never anticipated increasing their bid for Vladimir Guerrero's services to $8MM.  While MacPhail didn't discern another active bidder at the time, he felt that the Rangers could jump back into the mix if they were to trade Michael Young.  Because of that, the GM increased his bid in order to "make the right deal."
• The Orioles hope to make strides in international scouting, particularly in the Dominican Republic and in Venezuela.