BALTIMORE (AP) — The Baltimore Orioles have fired executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette Custom New York Rangers Jerseys , who launched a belated rebuilding effort in July after the team failed miserably from the start.The announcement came Wednesday night, hours after manager Buck Showalter was told by the club he would not return in 2019.Baltimore went 47-115, the worst record in Orioles’ history. Both Duquette and Showalter had contracts that expired at the end of this season.Duquette joined the Orioles in November 2011 and put together a team that ended a franchise-record run of 14 straight losing seasons by reaching the playoffs in 2012. It would be the first of five successive seasons in which Baltimore finished at least .500. The Orioles won the AL East and reached the Championship Series in 2014 before earning a wild-card berth in 2016.Following a 75-87 finish last year, Baltimore struggled from outset this season. In July, Duquette tore apart the roster by swapping Machado, Zach Britton, Jonathan Schoop and several other veterans for 15 minor league prospects and international signing bonus slot money.Duquette’s tenure in Baltimore featured the crafty signing of free agents Nelson Cruz and Mark Trumbo, both of whom led the majors in home runs with the Orioles. But Duquette also signed right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez, who went 32-42 over the length of a four-year, $50 million contract, and Baltimore is still paying the price for the seven-year, $161 million deal offered to slugger Chris Davis before the 2016 season.Davis batted .168 this season www.officialsenators.com , the lowest batting average by a qualifier in major league history, and he struck out 192 times over 128 games.Duquette replaced Andy MacPhail as Baltimore’s overseer of baseball operations. Before that, the 60-year-old Massachusetts native enjoyed successful tenures with the Boston Red Sox from 1994-2001 and the Montreal Expos from 1987-93. The Red Sox reached the playoffs three times under his guidance. For Colin Campbell, going from Mike Keenan’s top assistant to head coach of the New York Rangers wasn’t a big move.”I just had to move 10 feet to another office,” Campbell said.Logistically it was simple, but in every other way it was an almost-impossible task. Campbell took over the Rangers after they ended a 54-year drought and paraded the Stanley Cup down Broadway because Keenan left in a contract dispute.It’s a similar situation to the one Todd Reirden is walking into after the Washington Capitals promoted him from associate to head coach to replace Barry Trotz mere weeks after winning the Cup. Reirden is just the fourth new coach in the past 30 years to assume control of a Stanley Cup champion, a unique opportunity that presents problems Campbell, Scotty Bowman and Dave Lewis know well from their experiences.Lewis succeeded Bowman after being his associate coach with the champion 2002 Detroit Red Wings, and Bowman stepped in for ”Badger” Bob Johnson after he led the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Cup in 1991 and had to take a leave of absence to fight cancer. All three had to balance the opportunity of taking over with the expectation of following a Cup-winning coach and the ensuing pressure.”Besides replacing a legend, to be equal, you have to win the Stanley Cup, so it was a big challenge Ottawa Senators T-Shirts Authentic ,” Lewis said. ”I was looking forward to the challenge, actually, of taking over a team, taking over a team that won a Stanley Cup and try to accomplish the same thing. I knew it would be very difficult.”Or as Campbell pointed out: ”You can only tie. You can’t do better. Tying’s pretty good. You have to win a Cup just tie your performance from a year before.”No pressure, Todd.Only Bowman – who already had five Cup rings from the Montreal Canadiens’ 1970s dynasty – pulled it off and repeated. And even that was a different set of circumstances because as director of player development, Bowman only agreed to coach the Penguins until Johnson was able to resume coaching or succumbed to cancer.”We wanted to have him keep fighting for his life,” Bowman said. ”When he passed away, we had not had a great start that second year. We had the Stanley Cup hangover, and the people that ran the team – the owners and that – they didn’t feel it was a good idea to put a guy in in November, early December. I only agreed to do it until one of those two things happened. But then when he passed away, they didn’t think it was easy for a young guy to come in that didn’t know the team. So I said, `OK I’ll finish the season.’Reirden is far more like Campbell and Lewis in that he was Trotz’s top assistant and the de-facto candidate to step in when change happened. Campbell and Lewis had plenty of experience and were familiar with players like Reirden Ottawa Senators Hoodies Authentic , but neither had been an NHL head coach before and had to learn on the fly.”Being an assistant coach, you communicate differently, you just organize things differently,” Lewis said. ”You can’t do is you can’t change your personality. The players know you as an assistant coach. They know you as a human being and how you react to things at an assistant level. So I guess the biggest adjustment is how to react to things as a head coach. … When you’re a head coach, everything falls on your shoulders.”For some, that’s a natural fit. Bowman stepped right into the NHL with the expansion St. Louis Blues in 1967-68 and led them to the Cup Final three consecutive years.Nine rings later, it’s clear the legendary Bowman just had a knack for this thing that helped him win with three different teams.”When you’re an assistant coach, the thing is you’ve got to put your foot down right from the start,” Bowman said. ”You’re no longer an assistant coach.”That’s just the beginning of the advice for Reirden, who at 47 has coached in the American Hockey League and spent eight years behind the bench as an assistant with Pittsburgh and Washington. When Trotz resigned and joined the New York Islanders, Reirden was the only candidate to be the Capitals’ coach – and now it’s his time to figure it out.”It’s a challenge,” Lewis said. ”There’s no easy head-coaching jobs in the National hockey League. He knows the team. He’s been with them when they’ve been successful. He’s been with them when they’ve stumbled and had some failures. Just be yourself is my only advice that I can give.”Campbell waited out a half-season lockout in 1994-95 and so badly wanted to win his head-coaching debut on banner-raising night – when he only found out after warmups captain Mark Messier would be in the lineup. Knowing a thing about pressure under the New York spotlight Ottawa Senators Hats Authentic , Campbell hopes Reirden doesn’t pile up too much of it on himself.”There would be pressure on Barry if he came back,” Campbell said. ”Don’t try to be like Barry. They were a goalpost from being down 3-0. They’re a good team, a deep team, but it’s tough to win the Cup. He knows that team, he knows those players. He doesn’t have to change anything. But he’s got to be Todd, not Barry or anybody else. He’s been around long enough. Just don’t put undue pressure on yourself, that’s all, because it’s tough.”—