Base Hits: In the Company of Felix Pie, Risky (Arms) Business, More Japanese Imports and Minor Transactions

Hey Oriole fans! Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. Not a ton went on in Birdland last week but there were a few things I would like to comment on...

MASN's Steve Melewski reports that Andy MacPhail is willing to take a chance on some "high risk, high reward" arms like Erik Bedard and Ben Sheets this offseason. By proxy, I think you can include Rich Harden in that discussion.

If you can't get John Lackey, (and my other favorite to throw money at this offseason, Tim Hudson, is back off the market) this is not a bad way to go. A rotation of Erik Bedard, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Jeremy Guthrie and Brad Bergesen is actually, at least, a competent rotation to open the year with.

The Orioles can afford to take a chance on a short term deal on an injury-prone pitcher due to a lot of money coming off the budget and that there are the likes of Jake Arrietta, David Hernandez and Jason Berken in the wings to fill in those potential missed starts.

Besides, how funny would it be to bring back Bedard with Adam Jones patrolling center, Tillman following him in the rotation and Kam Mickolio warming up to relieve him?

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Speaking of trades, the Cubs have traded RP Aaron Heilman to the Arizona Diamondbacks for prospects.

What does this have to do with the Orioles? Last offseason, the O's traded SP Garrett Olson and RP Henry Williamson to the Cubs for Felix Pie. The Cubs in turn sent Olson and IF Ronny Cedeno to Seattle for Heilman.

So the Cubs traded away Felix Pie and Ronny Cedeno and netted minor leaguers Williamson (a minor league career 4.46 ERA), RP Scott Maine (a middling relief prospect) and 1B Ryne White (career minor league OPS .754). Hmmm. That's not a great haul.

Of all the players that traded hands in these deals, the Orioles got the best player. And it's not really close.

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The Orioles claimed C Craig Tatum off waivers from the Reds last week. The guy has a good defensive reputation and lately has hit lefties well. May be an interesting guy to watch in Spring Training since the backup catcher spot is currently unoccupied.

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Farewell to P Rad Liz who was removed from the 40-man roster and claimed off waivers by the Padres.

Liz certainly had his issues and may never develop the control to pitch at the major league level but the O's did him no favors last season by declaring that he would be groomed as a reliever and then procedded to jerk him back and forth from the rotation to the 'pen.

Good luck Mr. Liz.

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In my last installment of Base Hits, I wondered if Japanese pitcher Hisanori Takahashi would consider joining his former teammate Koji Uehara in Baltimore next season. Well, according to NPB Tracker, the Orioles are indeed interested in speaking with Takahashi about pitching for Baltimore in 2010. However, scouting director John Stockstill said that the Orioles would not offer him a contract until January if interested.

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I love flipflopflyball.com. In this graphic, you can see that Oriole starters pitched fewer innings than any other starting staff in baseball. Which is hardly surprising...

The Return of Radhames Liz

"He doesn't have to get real fancy with a whole lot of things and can just throw his fastball. And for short periods of time, I think he can keep his delivery intact."
- Dave Trembley on Radhames Liz's transition to reliever



I wholeheartedly agree with the Dave Mc's assertion over at Weaver's Tantrum that calling up Radhames Liz after only a couple weeks in the minors (between camp and play at Norfolk) to work on his transition to the bullpen makes very little sense.

He was down to work on two things: a repeatable delivery and better control (for Liz, these are closely related).

So how did he do? Lets look. This great tool over at BrooksBaseball.net is great and gives me a way to display this data when I don't have the time to make the graphs myself.

Liz's pitches in relation to the strikezone:




Note the fastball way up next to the title of the graph. This also doesn't show two pitches that ended up in the dirt.

Liz really didn't know where the ball was going Wednesday night. Even when he got the ball in the strikezone, it was up and not fooling anybody.

Liz's release points against the Rangers:



That doesn't look too bad until you compare it with Jeremy Guthrie's release points from Sunday's game:



Guthrie's release points are much more tightly grouped. It doesn't look like much but that's the difference between a guy with repeatable delivery and one without one. It's a cliche but it is a game of inches.

Early returns are that Liz still isn't ready and calling him up does a disservice to Liz and the club. Liz has the stuff to be an elite reliever and I'm not sure this helps his development. Chris Waters, Alberto Castillo, Jim Miller or even Bob McCrory would have been better choices for an injury callup.

Hopefully, Liz learns to swim in the deep end...and fast.

The Crystal Ball '09: The Rotation

After Jeremy Guthrie and Koji Uehara, the rest of the starting rotation for your 2009 Baltimore Orioles is a mystery. I still expect the Orioles to pick up a veteran starter to stick in the 3 spot in the rotation but for now, here are the most likely candidates to fill the three available spots.

Hayden Penn – Penn is going to get a fair shot at the starting rotation this season and I feel OK about that. Why? Outside of the top two spots, I’m not sure there’s anyone better suited for the job. He's probably the most talented guy on the list and he has had success at AAA, he just needs to stay healthy and get some major league innings under his belt.

Second, Penn had very good numbers when it comes to inducing groundballs. He induced grounders at a 48% rate in Norfolk and if you don’t include his shaky April, the rest of the year it was somewhere around 53%. That’s good. Why were his overall numbers so bad then? First, he didn’t strike out a lot of guys. Second, his infield was….well, let’s just say that there weren’t many plus defenders in that Norfolk infield. If Penn is getting grounders at a 50% rate in Baltimore, having Brian Roberts and Cesar Izturis behind him will serve him well. And as long as he keeps it in the park, the young outfield should be able to run down a lot of his mistakes. Penn only walked guys at about a 3 per 9 rate. If he can stay healthy long enough, he could become a valuable player in the rotation for ’09 and ’10.

Chris Waters – Waters is getting overlooked as a starter in ’09 but his rate stats from last season were only surpassed by Daniel Cabrera and Jeremy Guthrie last season. He found ways to get by with really limited stuff. He famously debuted pitching 8 innings of one-hit ball and later in the season pitched a complete game shutout in Toronto. He took his share of beatings but pitched into the 5th inning everytime and often pitched into the 6th or 7th. He’s a good candidate for a 5th starter, an innings eater who can cherry-pick some wins at the back of the rotation.

Mark Hendrickson - I've talked about what I expect from Hendrickson here.

Radhames Liz – He may not ultimately be a starter but he’ll be forced to be one this year, at least early. He's a flyball pitcher, not a good fit for OPACY unless his strikeouts dramatically increase and his walks come down. It would be nice if he could work out these issues in the bullpen but the Orioles probably won’t have that luxury. With a little luck, other candidates for the rotation will develop enough that he’s a reliever after the All-Star break.

David Pauley – Pauley is an interesting candidate. Coming over in a trade from the Red Sox for RP Randor Bierd, he has solid AAA numbers. He’s a groundball pitcher and induces a lot of pop-ups. His strikeout numbers in AAA were respectable too. At worst, he could be an innings eater. At best, he improves to be an league average starter in the second half?

Brad Hennesey/Brian Burress – A pair of soft-tossing waiver claims from the Giants organization.

Burress has shown a tendency to issue free passes and, when he finds the plate, serve up big home runs. Only a marked unexpected improvement in those tendencies or massive injuries to the rotation keep him on this team in 2009 (He was equally bad out of the bullpen in ’08).

Hennesey could be a sleeper. His former first-round draftee status has some comparing him to Jeremy Guthrie. I don’t see it. He’s never struck out batters at a very good rate, walks batters at an average rate and doesn’t induce enough ground balls to offset his mediocrity in those two categories. I suppose a change of scenery may help him but he’s a longshot.

Troy Patton/Matt Albers – Going into Spring Training 2008, I thought Patton had the best shot of any of the youngsters at cracking the starting rotation. As injuries mounted in the rotation, I thought Albers was best suited to move from the ‘pen and grab a spot as a starter. Why do I lump them together? They both suffered rotator cuff injuries before they could seize their respective opportunities. Patton underwent surgery, Albers opted for rehab. Both are now big question marks. If either are able to start a significant number of games in 2009, it will be gravy.

Hey, let’s not kid ourselves, this ain’t pretty. Guys like Brian Matusz, David Hernandez, Chris Tillman and Brad Bergensen are not going to show up in Baltimore until the second half of ’09 at the earliest. This list is what we’ve got to work with for the first few months of the season. There’s guys to dream on or root for but realistically the Orioles will be insanely lucky if one of these guys breaks out and put a choke hold on one of the spots in the ’09 Oriole rotation.

It's going to be a rough year for the putching staff...

Bye-Bye, Danny.

This is just a quick note to acknowledge the departure of Daniel Cabrera. The Orioles non-tendered him over the weekend and appear to have no interest in resigning him at all.

It's the end of the Cabrera era! I had always hoped that the O's would try Cabrera out in the bullpen once they gave up on him being a starter but I guess they thought it was not worth the $3-4 million that he would get in arbitration.

The problem is (and I've said this many times) that I don't know how you can get rid of Cabrera when he was your second best starter last season. I am all in favor of letting Cabrera go once it is apparent that he is no longer one of your 5 best starters. That time is not now. $4 million is a relative bargain to keep him on for one more season.

I'm not arguing that Cabrera is a good pitcher nor am I sure (anymore) that he will ever be a good pitcher. But he is still valuable to this team as currently constructed. This is a BAD MOVE.

There are two circumstances that would make this move OK.

First, there is a plan in place to take that saved money and use it as part of a pool of cash to bring in a couple of free agent pitchers. The candidates that are available are not very attractive but we'll wait and see.

Second, The Warehouse has credible evidence that our young pitchers are further along than they look. Garrett Olson and Radhames Liz didn't look like they were ready to take the next step to me. Brian Matusz may be on the fast track but his performance in Arizona didn't indicate he's ready to grab a starting spot out of Spring Training. Troy Patton and Matt Albers; I like the idea of giving these guys a shot but both are coming off of injuries.

I hope MacPhail is right. But I think we gave up on Daniel one year too early.