Baltimore Sun's Orioles beat writer Jon Meoli on the Orioles decision to not bring Buck Showalter back for another season. (Kevin Richardson / Baltimore Sun video)
Far more than the man who left Camden Yards for the final time as manager Wednesday — Buck Showalter — went into the team's collapse over the past year, just as plenty more than him went into the ascent back to relevance that preceded it.
What became clear as the Orioles ceded their place among the perennial playoff contenders this decade and entered the phase of team-building that's meant to eventually lead to another such spell was that, as with all smart approaches, the way the Orioles developed into a contender under Showalter was eventually copied by the rest of the game.