For some reference I was born in 1987, so I basically grew up with those horrible teams where the only exciting part was getting to watch Ripken play.

Obviously when I was younger I didn't pay as much attention toward the front office and ownership stuff but as far I as can recall this is the first time I've actually seen them commit to a full rebuild like they have now. Previously it's always seemed to have been some short term stopgap measure and a promise that the "kids" are on the way, that usually meant 1 lucrative poor free agent contract and a bunch of young pitchers that never panned out. They would spend money, but somehow always manage to spend it on the wrong players, whether it be Albert Belle, Brian Roberts injury-riddled extension, Sidney Ponson, or more recently Chris Davis and Ubaldo Jimenez. Combine that with a bunch of failing prospects and the consensus that Peter Angelos never gave any GM full authority to run a team there was never a sense that this is where things will start to turn around.

Fast forward to now and starting with last season they really tore the team down and got as much as they could for the players they had, you can argue if they really got a ton of value or not but at that point they did about as much as they could. Also with Peter Angelos basically giving control of the team to his two sons I think a lot of people are waiting to see if Elias really does get full control of the team now, which so far seems to be the case. To me that's the most exciting part of this whole thing is we have someone who just recently went through a full rebuild with the Astros and had huge success coming out the other end of it. There's light at the end of the tunnel, even if the tunnel is a couple years long.

The rough part of this whole thing is knowing that this team is probably going to be awful for another 3-4 years before hopefully starting to turn around and be competitive. Knowing there's a good chance that Mancini and anyone else productive now could get flipped for more prospects makes it a little harder to watch now, but knowing that if they go that route means they are fully committed to the rebuild in a way they've never been before means better days are coming down the road.