No team in baseball is doomed to failure, but some teams have it harder than others. Success isn’t impossible for the Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Pittsburgh Pirates, and the like, but it is difficult. Based in either relatively small or widely dispersed cities, and supported by fans who have had the hope beaten out of them, these sad sack teams can’t afford to make many mistakes. It’s frustrating to watch them make the same errors again and again, but the frustration is tempered by the knowledge that even if they did everything right they’d still have a hard time of things, as the Minnesota Twins and Oakland Athletics do.

What’s truly frustrating is watching a team with enormous natural advantages run out pathetic teams year after year for no reason other than idiocy and incompetence. By this standard, the Baltimore Orioles have been the most frustrating team in baseball for a decade. Based in a region with about as high a concentration of wealth and power as can be found in the world, blessed with a heritage to match that of nearly any other team, and playing their home games in a beautiful and beloved ballpark, there’s no reason for the Orioles to be bad, and yet they are, year after year after year. They haven’t won more than they’ve lost since 1997.

The main reason for this is the overbearing presence of owner Peter Angelos, a sort of half-cocked George Steinbrenner who’s vetoed trades and signings, allowed family members to intervene in the baseball operations shop, and insisted on unworkable arrangements like splitting the general manager’s job between two men. This is a shame, because for a baseball owner, Angelos is a prince. His refusal to consider using scab players during the 1994–95 strike was admirable, he’s always invested money in his team, and while interfering in baseball decisions may not be wise, it is within his rights, and it’s probably better than being an absentee owner.

This being the problem, this has been a fascinating week for the Orioles. Forget the dismissal of manager Sam Perlozzo, the seventh manager Angelos has fired in the last 14 years; Perlozzo was a cipher. The real news was the hiring of Andy MacPhail as the team’s chief operating officer.

MacPhail is one of the most powerful and respected men in baseball. As general manager of the Kirby Puckett-era Minnesota Twins, he won two World Series rings. As president of the Chicago Cubs from 1994 to 2006, he oversaw the extremely profitable renovation of Wrigley Field and the surrounding area, the building of a wonderful farm system, and the team’s first victory in a postseason series since 1908. His father and grandfather are both in the Hall of Fame.

Before taking the Orioles job, MacPhail was widely thought of as one of the two or three really serious candidates to succeed Bud Selig as commissioner. One can be certain he didn’t take this job with the intention of merely serving as Angelos’s face.

This is great news for baseball, because the Orioles, assuming they’re run competently, should be able to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox every year, starting as soon as 2009.

The Orioles have had three basic problems for the last decade. The first is that they haven’t had a good farm system, the second is that they generally haven’t signed star players, and the third is that they’ve nonetheless spent money. What this has led to is an awful roster consisting mainly of average players of average age making average salaries, and some really crummy players.

Among the contracts they’re paying out this year are $8 million each for starters Kris Benson and Jaret Wright, $3 million each for relievers Chad Bradford and Jamie Walker, $5 million each for outfielders Jay Payton and Jay Gibbons, and $8 million for Melvin Mora. All of these players have their uses, even at these prices, but you can’t build a team around midlevel players making market salaries. This is basic common sense: Two $8 million no. 4 starters are nowhere near as valuable as a $16 million ace and a fringe no. 5 starter.

MacPhail, having overseen the building of two very good farm systems, is a good bet to build a third, and the way he’s spent money on stars like Puckett and Sammy Sosa shows that he’s very aware that in baseball, two nickels don’t add up to a dime. Because the Orioles have money and as long as they’re simply run soundly, they’ll be competitive once they’ve flushed the pipes of players like Wright and readied the farm system to start producing some cheap, usable talent.

In the meantime, don’t expect any dramatic changes. One of the many problems with having so many average players making average salaries is that they have no trade value whatsoever; if MacPhail is even able to con someone into taking the likes of Payton off his hands, it will count as real achievement. Even Miguel Tejada, the team’s superstar shortstop, probably doesn’t have much value on the market; no contending team both needs a shortstop and can afford Tejada.

Almost by happenstance, though, the Orioles do have some assets. Twenty-three-year-old outfielder Nick Markakis has a chance of developing into a true no. 3 hitter, young left-handed starters Erik Bedard and Adam Loewen are capable of fronting the rotation for the next five years, and 25-year-old closer Chris Ray should be able to hold down the job for that long, too. That might not be a core of talent to rival those brewing in Arizona or Tampa Bay, but when paired with Angelos’s cash and MacPhail’s brain, it looks a lot like cause for worry up and down the East Coast. The Angelos Orioles are dead; the MacPhail Orioles already look intriguing.

tmarchman@nysun.com