Jusssst a bit outside: the Baltimore Orioles preview

Duty calls to preview the MLB season with up to 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams. At bat: the Baltimore Orioles.

1. What would Wieters do: A .500 record might not be in the offing for the O's, so the main question is what switch-hitting catcher Matt Wieters will do in his first full season after hitting .288/.340/.412 as a rookie.
   
   
2. Over-under on wins: 74½
   
   
3. Take the ... Over. They'll clean out enough bad teams to override suspect pitching (MLB-worst 5.15 ERA last season). An 11-win improvement is scalable.
   
   
4. Good young pitching, but they've been burned before: Rookie left-hander Brian Matusz represents hope the way Daniel Cabrera and Adam Loewen did for a time.
   
   
5. A fair shot: Oriole Post also wants a balanced schedule (like the one that existed from 1983-93 when the Blue Jays were winning. FanGraphs also summed up how hard it is for a non-Evil Empire team (or the Rebel Alliance down in St. Petersburg, Fla.) to make the playoffs out of the AL East:
   

   "(Baltimore GM Andy) MacPhail needs to continue to hit home runs on trades, have every draft pick pan out, and they need to stay completely healthy – if all those things happen, they could challenge for the AL East crown in a year or two, until their core gets so expensive that they’ll struggle to surround them with enough quality players to keep up.
   
   "It’s the crappiest situation in baseball, outside of Toronto, anyway."
   

   (Thanks.)
   
   
6. Another comparison of an ornithological variety: Twenty-eight of their first 35 games are against teams which finished above .500 last season, including 12 in a row vs. the Yankees or Red Sox. So, expect a season arc that resembles the 2008 Blue Jays, but without the manager getting replaced by the guy who was around in the glory days. That being said, a hologram of Earl Weaver in the dugout would be cool.
   
   
7. Working class zeroes: Somewhere, late Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz is smiling, since a dispute between telecoms means basic cable subscribers have to go to the ballpark if they want to watch the Orioles live.
   
8. Feb. 8, 2008: The day GM Andy McPhail traded Erik Bedard to Seattle. Including subsequent flips, netted the Orioles the good Adam Jones, a third baseman in waiting in Josh Bell and some potential arms in Kam Mickolio and Steve Johnson.
   
   
9. That ... that doesn't make any sense: Aging Miguel Tejada is hitting cleanup in a lineup that includes DH Luke Scott (115 OPS+ last season) and the young turks, Nick Markakis (109), Nolan Reimold (117) and Jones (106).
   
   
10. The 40-25 club: Markakis (finally learned to spell it!) is in select company, since the list of players who have had 40 doubles in a season by age 25 includes Albert Pujols and Carl Yastrzemski.
    
    
11. Checking out: The Orioles are 25-59 after Sept. 1 during Dave Trembley's tenure. It's like they figure the Triple-A season ends on Labour Day, so theirs should too.
    
    
12. A biography yet unwritten: Their Triple-A affiliate in Norfolk, Va., has a 78-year-old general manager, Dave Rosenfield. His first GM job was in 1956.
    
    
13. Priced to move: Scott gets lumped in with the Orioles' young core, but he turns 32 this summer. Some NL team would love his right-handed bat.
    
    
14. The method to the badness: The Orioles' sub-mediocrity has kept leadoff man Brian Roberts from being that pesky, scrappy, gritty white dude that broadcasters extol endlessly until you just wish Joe Buck was dead. It's nice to just get to appreciate Roberts as an overachiever.
    
    
15. The law of diminishing returns: It seems to be kicking in with de facto No. 1 starter Jeremy Guthrie, who throws hard but oh-so-straight.
    
    
16. Mispronunciation-based pun alert: Outfielder Félix Pié's name is not said the way you might think.
    
    
17. More proof the medium is out of control: Reading a MLBTR post asking if the Orioles should give 23-year-old catcher Wieters a contract on the order of the deal Joe Mauer got from the Minnesota Twins. It is only Wieters' second season, can't that question wait?
    
    
18. Take out that Moeller: Cutting backup catcher Chad Moeller (which has raised a ruckus) leaves the Orioles with Wieters and Craig Tatum, who have a combined 122 games' MLB experience.
    
    
19. A story that writes itself: Discussing whether super-ute Ty Wigginton can be a power hitter again. Short answer: He's never been that good.
    
    
20. Fondly remembered: The Orioles' first two World Series titles included the irrepressible Moe Drabowsky, who was known to slip a goldfish into the opposing team's water cooler.
    
    
21. OK, why is Peter Angelos going to hell: He's the owner who didn't want Jon Miller as his announcer or Davey Johnson as his manager.
    
    
22. Would you believe: Right-hander Kevin Millwood has an ERA+ of 108 for his career, which is similar to the 109 Jack Morris had at the same age, 34.
    
    Please use this next January when people make the same thin Hall of Fame case for Jack Morris.
    
    
23. June 14, 1987: Yes, that's the date Newman references in the Seinfeld episode with Keith Hernandez, but it lives infamy in Orioles-Jays history. That was the date when Baltimore's present-day pitching coach Dave Schmidt, then a pitcher, threw seven-plus innings to help snap the Jays' franchise-record 11-game win streak.
    
    
24. Small world: Manager Dave Trembley once played senior baseball for the Kingston Ponies. The coach of that team was Toronto Sun baseball writer Bob Elliott. True story.
    
    
25. Not a coincidence: One of their celebrity fans is Joan Jett, who like her favourite team rocked in the late 1970s and early '80s and has kind of been a memory ever since.
    
    
26. PECOTA says: 78-84, fourth AL East, 797 runs scored, 831 against.
    
    
27. In English please: They are the No. 1 seed in an imaginary tournament between all the fourth-place teams.
    

Why only 27? Time is running out and it's been 27 years since their last pennant.

Bleeding Tricolour: Rejoice, just once, the battle is still at hand

Please keep in mind every 24 hours, the world turns over on someone who was on top of it yesterday.

Nevertheless, apparently some Western Mustangs followers have added crow to their diets, instead of crowing about a victory, as TSN football analyst Duane Forde related:

"The Queen's Gaels' thrilling come-from-behind 27-26 victory over Western last Saturday ended any chance the Mustangs had of finishing first in the OUA standings this season but, for this analyst, the implications are much worse. Had UWO won the game, my CFL on TSN colleagues Chris Cuthbert and Jock Climie, a pair of Queen's grads, would've been forced to incorporate the Mustangs' traditional purple and silver into their wardrobes during this weekend's broadcasts. However, the Queen's victory means that I will be wearing the gold, blue, and red of the Gaels during Friday night's Toronto-Hamilton game. Misery apparently loves company, as I'm told that fellow Western alumni, Andy Fantuz of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Tyler Scott of the Argonauts lost bets to their current CFL teammates and Queen's products, Rob Bagg (Riders) and Brad Smith (Argos)."

There's no word what the stakes were between Toronto Blue Jays interim CEO Paul "Western Will Definitely Win" Beeston owes Sun Media baseball writer Bob Elliott (Kingston native whose father and daughter graduated from Queen's).

Two seasons ago, when Laurier beat Queen's, Argos running back Bryan Crawford went on Mike Hogan's show on The FAN 590 and sing an ow-my-freakin'-ears rendition of Take Me Home, Country Roads.

It's all about who was the better man on that day; ain't no final victories.

(Cross-posted from cisblog.ca.)

DocWatch: If they took our Halladay, where to?

When something is out of your hands, you might as well mine it for humour.

At the very least, that's the intellectual justification for posting on Roy Halladay, whose next home start could come Friday vs. the Tampans at Rogers Centre (or not). He proved himself a friend of gamblers and Seamheads who will take baseball any way they can get it but can take only so much of Sportsnet's telecasts by needing only two hours, 15 minutes to six-hit the Boston Red Sox. With the Bostonians' propensity for arguing balls and strikes, you could say, "It was vintage Roy Halladay and the Red Sox brought the whine."

After the 3-1 win where he threw only 27 balls to 33 hitters, Halladay's WHIP is 1.07 and his strikeout-to-walk ratio is a sick 113-17. A 3:1 ratio is solid, 6:1 would fit right in on Ridiculous Day down at the deli. There's the damn trade talk, though, and Phillies prospect Michael Taylor does offer a ton of potential.

"The Phillies remain nearly everyone's favorite to land star Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay, and the teams are believed to have advanced to the point where they have discussed several of Philadelphia's top prospects — including outfielder Michael Taylor, shortstop Jason Donald and pitcher Carlos Carrasco — although, there's no evidence yet that the Phillies are relenting on top pitching prospect Kyle Drabek.

"If Philly agrees to surrender Drabek, one competing executive said, 'they might get (Halladay) real quick.' " — SI.com

Under the heading of "thanks, Captain Obvious," the optics of trading within the division — GM-cest — are so bad the possibility should not be considered. A Jays fan should figure out which team would be an acceptable destination, just as Nordberg's wife in the first Naked Gun movie was told not to wait too long to fill out those organ donor cards. It also helps if the reasoning, so-called, is completely random and as irrational as possible. It's also irrespective of what the Jays might get in return, since that is J.P. Ricciardi's concern.

1. Milwaukee Brewers — It works on so many levels. The Jays were pwned by the Brewers long before the term was coined, the Brewers seem to have sucked up to Canada and Milwaukee is cool in an avocado-coloured furniture kind of way.
   
   You would never hear this in the Toronto media whose baseball memory only covers the years 1989-93, but two small-market Midwestern teams, the Brewers and Kansas City Royals, have hand on the Jays, in the Costanzian sense, and it can never be rectified. The Royals, of course, eliminated a two-game deficit in the 1985 playoffs and kept the Jays out of the World Series. Two years later, when the Jays and Tigers engaged in one of the great divisional races of the pre-wild card era, the Brewers played spoiler by sweeping a late-season series in Toronto. That is tough to avenge, since the Brewers were liberated from the American League (coincidentally, Bud Selig used to be their owner) and moved to the NL in 1998. The only way is if there's a Milwaukee-Toronto World Series.
   
   The Brewers also have a Canadian GM and assistant GM, Doug Melvin and Gord Ash, and B.C.-born bonus baby Brett Lawrie will be a fast-riser through their farm system. It's like they're cosying up to Canada.
   
   Last but not least, Milwaukee might seem like a hick town. Well, there are two kinds of hick towns, the ones which are dull and boring (ahem, where I do live again?) and those ones which are quirky. This is coming from a guy who's never lived there, but Milwaukee falls toward the latter. Brewers fans sing the obscure second verse of Beer Barrel Polka just to be different. It's assumed there's a bit or irony in Green Bay Packers football fans wearing those Cheeseheads (if there's a God in heaven, it better be ironic, because those people get to vote). Besides, anyone hard up for a liberal oasis can always drive over to the nearby state capital, Madison, where one learns not to even bat an eye at women picketing topless. Point being, Milwaukee is OK.
   
   
2. L.A. Dodgers — Dodger Stadium's park factor is 94 for pitchers, which in the short run might help Halladay shave a few points off his earned-run average. That might help in some future Hall of Fame election. They also have the best chance of advancing to the World Series, an event that was played in Canada a couple times in the 1990s.
   
   The big caveat is that it would just be a question of when L.A. Times clown columnist Bill Plaschke would start using Halladay as a political football in his regularly scheduled anti-Manny Ramírez screeds. Doc is not a political prop or a rhetorical splitting wedge. It demeans him when columnists do that, something certain people in Toronto did not pay heed to the past three years when they were cracking on A.J. Burnett.
   
   
3. Philadelphia Phillies — The most "logical landing spot" (John Heyman, SI.com) for Halladay is also the place where, fire up the old refrain, they booed Santa Claus/cheered when Michael Irvin broke his neck/boo when couples get engaged on the video screen. The greatest living baseball player, Michael Jack Schmidt (548 home runs and he never took a steroid or judging ballplayers or more recent vintage who did), also got booed once in a while.
   
   Point being, though, that's all cliché and stereotype. Perhaps the reason they boo in Philly because they care unconditionally. That's more than can be said for certain northeastern U.S. cities which, not naming names, barely noticed they had a NFL team before 2001.
   
   The Phillies have a decent shot at returning to the World Series. Pat Gillick works for them. Matt Stairs is there. What's not to like?
   
   
4. St. Louis Cardinals — Good god, no. What comes to mind with St. Louis is a Deadspin user saying last week that while Busch Stadium is always a sea of Cardinal red, most of those fans are wearing "cheap $11 jersey T-shirts of some average white player."
   
   
5. Chicago White Sox — Their owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, is the World Series-cancelling, NBA dynasty-dynamiting plutocrat whom Gary Bettman would rather have as a NHL owner than Jim Balsillie, who actually wants to spend money on a team. That takes care of that. The White Sox are the 10th-richest team in baseball, but act like they're a small-market underdog next to the cross-town Chicago Cubs.
   
   
6. Detroit Tigers — Make your own joke about the Michigan economy, but don't be too cruel. Geographically speaking, Detroit is too close for comfort for a Jays fan, even if it's out of the division.
   
   
7. Texas Rangers — Imagine trading a player to a team whose owner is hemorrhaging money. This is not a serious suggestion, but it's hard to get one's mind wrapped around the idea that the Rangers are even allowed to make such a trade in the wake of MLB giving them a bailout.

More teams will be added in accordance with whatever teams Ken Rosenthal swears are "flying under the radar."

Related:
As trade deadline nears, Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay on everyone's list (Bill Madden, N.Y. Daily News)

Zen Dayley: Cito and the DH thingy, Part 2

Sports And The City pointed out something that works as a follow-up to Friday's post about Cito Gaston getting away with botching a double switch. Jeff Blair noted in his column today

"Despite managing in the NL, Alou loved the designated hitter because it made managing the offensive side of the game more interesting.

" 'Strategy,' he told me one time with a frown. 'What's the strategy in having a guy with a bat in his hand not knowing how to use it? What play can I put on besides a bunt?' "

That cuts right to the heart of the matter. There is little strategy involved when the decision is dictated by the player's limited skills. Pitchers are OPSing a sub-sub-McGlovin .358 (ironically, their AL counterparts are doing slightly better, .369). This is better than having a NPH (nondescript professional hitter) in the lineup why?

As Bob Elliott noted, it was not the first time the Jays won a game in Philly despite Gaston not making a move out of Baseball 101, to use Mike Wilner's term.

A lot of the in-game decisions managers make comes out in wash, regardless of how much Seamheaded analyzing-to-death occurs after the fact. The Jays got out of it after going into the bottom of the ninth with only two pitchers left and a slim lead against a team which was very capable of forcing extra inings (the Phillies are far and away the NL's best-hitting team). The rub is you cannot logically credit Gaston just because it did not blow up in his face. It's like ascribing genius to someone who forgets to lock the front door of his apartment, goes out for a few hours and returns later to find out his place did not get burgled.

Gaston, via Blair, admitted as much:

" 'I thought about it, and then after I went to the mound, you couldn't do it,' Gaston said Friday night before the first game of a three-game series against the Nationals. 'You have to approach the umpire first and I went to the mound first. I had intentions of it (a double switch) but I screwed it up.

" 'The way it turned out was okay. But it's something you think about."

One can only imagine the fallout if Boston's Terry Francona or the Yankees' Joe Girardi goofed by not going to the umpire to make the substitution. Incidentally, both of those managers, as did Gaston, played in the National League, so they should be familiar with how it's done. Baseball is not as widely obsessed over in Toronto and we just figure, hey, Cito knows what he's doing, even when he admits he did not know what he was doing.

(The other time in Philadelphia, as you likely know, was that famous 15-14 slugfest in Game 4 of the 1993 World Series. The Blue Jays, aided and abetted by a near-historic meltdown by Mitch Williams, won a game where they were down by five runs with only five outs remaining.

Gaston just knew his guys would pull off greatest late-inning comeback in a World Series since 1929 in the eighth inning, so that is why he let reliever Tony Castillo bat for himself one inning earlier. Of course, if you were 16 years old, a Jays fan, and had been watching Mitch Williams self-destruct throughout the 1993 playoffs, you probably figured the good guys still had a chance.)

It's a couple days old, but FanGraphs' Dave Cameron has a look at the Jays' first-round draft choice, righty pitcher Chad Jenkins:

"The Blue Jays love groundball pitchers almost as much as I do, but the ones they've had success with have developed good secondary stuff. That's going to be the key for Jenkins as he gets into Toronto’s system. If he can refine his change-up and make it a real weapon against lefties, he has a chance to be one of my favorite pitchers in a few years. If he can’t, I hope he likes hanging out in the bullpen."

Related:
Second-guess Cito Gaston at your peril. Even when he appears to be wrong, things tend to work out for him (Bob Elliott, Sun Media)
Of double switches and Expos nostalgia; Cito Gaston's mistake on Thursday afternoon in Philadelphia ended up working out for the Blue Jays (Jeff Blair, globesports.com)
Felipe Alou is wise (Sports And The City)

Zen Dayley: Cito and the DH thingy

Plus more Vernon Wells vitriol and a short dissertation about tradition...

Just another day from the "Cito Gaston is not the brilliant tactician I thought he was" files. The same manager who complained about pitchers having to bat in National League parks after closer Scott Downs injured his big toe running out a ground ball almost ended up running out of pitchers on Thursday because he did not double-switch in the eighth inning in order to, wait for it, avoid the pitcher's turn in the order. As Mike Wilner put it:

"The Baseball 101, incredibly obvious, only correct move - especially since the Jays only had two pitchers left in the bullpen ... was to bring Rod Barajas in to catch as part of a double-switch, with (Jason) Frasor coming in to bat in the 8th spot and Barajas, the new catcher, batting ninth and leading off the ninth.

"Instead, Gaston only brought in Frasor, with the intention of having him lead off the ninth inning if he had been able to hold the lead." (The Phillies tied the game.)

" ... It was a ridiculous non-move to make, and almost cost the team the game. If Gaston didn't realize that the double-switch was the move, then one of former National League manager Nick Leyva or former National League coach Brian Butterfield should have been screaming in his ear. Just terrible.

You know the rest of the story. The Blue Jays ended up winning, 8-7, by the margin of Barajas' pinch-hit home run in the ninth inning (a fastball up and away that he hit over the centrefield fence 401 feet from home place). The dude who replaced the dude who was replaced by the dude who hurt himself running to first base (duuuuude, just say Jeremy Accardo got the save) ended up getting the save. The Jays won the damn game to complete a series sweep of the World Series champions (which was probably just an evenout since they could not be as bad as they were last weekend vs. the Florida Marlins), so what is it to anyone if the manager and his coaches flunked Baseball 101?

There is much less receptiveness for playing armchair manager when the team ends up winning the game. However, talk about a manager flirting with disaster The amusing part, speaking personally, was arriving at work shortly after 4 p.m., having forgotten the Jays had a day game and assuming it was over. It took all of 10 seconds to establish that the score was tied and, hey, what was regular catcher Barajas doing batting .in a day game after a night game? It seemed strange it had come to that point. It was even stranger that Gaston, after saying, "My pitchers don't take batting practice every day and don't run, so things like this are going to happen," would risk putting another pitcher in that situation only two days later. But hey, he is the manager.

To be fair, he did have a point

Gaston's rant did blow the dust off the DH debate. Whether it should be in both leagues, or just used for all interleague games (there is no political will to change it, since the AL is dominating once again in the interleague play contagion).

Not to over-intellectualize it, but one's position might hinge on a working definition of tradition. It seems like to some tradition connotes doing something the way you believe it's always been done just because. Tradition, though, means something is handed down, passed over to another generation. It's more like a trust to keep and if there's a way to improve on it without making a radical change, you do it.

Sun Media's Bob Elliott, to whom this author is very indebted, wrote a follow-up column on the skipper's comments. Elliott quite rightly pointed out that it was a bit of a CYA move to complain about Downs getting hurt. As he noted, the Jays knew interleague was coming. Downs had also hit before, plus running to first base should not be beyond a pro athlete's grasp. Plus, the Jays had left a lot of runs on the table.

"Gaston had every reason to be angry, but not at the National League designated hitter rules.

"He could have been angry at Alex Rios having a brain cramp and neglecting to tag with the Jays down 3-2 in the eighth when Marco Scutaro lined to left-centre.

"Or he could have been angry at the Jays hitting 2-for-17 with men in scoring position, or leaving 15 men on base in regulation."

Those were all good points. The rub is eight of those 15 stranded runners were a byproduct of starting pitcher Ricky Romero batting in a real game for the first time in his professional career. Romero struck out three times. On eleven pitches. José Bautista or Kevin Millar would have stood a far greater chance of driving in a couple of those runners.

The craw-sticker, though, was the closer, "Pitchers hit in the NL, and it's how baseball was created." That is very well and good. However, the counter to that is that the players would still go without gloves if everything was done according how baseball was created.

Games and sports evolve. Football pays a lot of lip service to tradition. However, with regard to specialized roles, they stopped asking the quarterback to double as a free safety generations ago. You don't see the starting split end (as wide receivers used to be called) coming off the field to get his kicking shoe on before he tries a field goal, straight-ahead style.

The best compromise as an American League guy is that the NL is free to keeps its antiquated rules. It's not necessary that the so-called senior circuit swings with the times. It just can't impact on any meaningful game affecting an AL fan's favourite team, or any game of significance. Sound fair?

P.S. ... about Vernon...

What was that about how Vernon Wells' production (his OPS is down to .676) might be about as good it gets?

"Of course, there was no mention of something most sentient Jays fans have already contemplated, that maybe this is as close to as good it gets for Wells. Five minutes of reading The Hardball Times or FanGraphs combined with a willingness to reason will show anyone that 40% of the way into a major league baseball season, a player's production has usually close to finding its own level, just like water."

Take it away, Fangraphs:

"ZiPS doesn’t see Wells improving all that much this season with the bat, ultimately finishing with a .254/.310/.400 line. The projected 15 HR and 18 SB help elevate the wOBA to .316, but a below average rate like that coupled with a UZR perhaps on pace to be worse than -15 runs makes Wells a replacement player. In a full season in 2007, Wells produced just 1.2 wins. He added another 0.8 more last year albeit in just 108 games. This year: -1.0 wins. Rios is proving that he can be a good, not fantastic player, while Wells is showing that he does not deserve a starting spot in the big leagues, let alone one at such an important position." (Emphasis mine.)

OOLF Hot Audio: Bob Elliott

Had the opportunity to welcome the Toronto Sun's Bob Elliott last Friday on Kingston's most listened-to hourlong sports talk program, to discuss all things Jays. Figured it was best to start sharing the few legitimately big-shot guests I'm able to get on my rag-tag radio show with the wider blog audience.

Plus, it can't hurt to diversify the blog-radio offerings in Jaysland. Where's my hosting and advertisement, The Score?*



*Nowhere. As it should be.