Base Hits: 3/20/2009

The Matt Wieters hype has gotten so out of hand, it is now being parodied Chuck Norris-style over on this thread at Baseball Think Factory. A few of my favorites:



"When a pitcher plunks Matt Wieters, the ball is awarded first base for enduring the pain."



"Matt Wieters took batting practice this morning. There were no survivors."



"Matt Wieters is so great that Curt Schilling was rendered speechless."



"Matt Wieters swings both ways? No. Both ways swing Matt Wieters. Matt Wieters swings a redwood tree trunk with three different endangered species of owl living on what would be the barrel of a normal bat."

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Wayward O is laying out his Divsional Previews including the AL East. Suprise pick? Royals win the Central!

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Another great entry of The Eutaw Street Chronicles by Matt at Roar from 34.

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Sixteen Gold Gloves goes all Paul Harvey on us. First, she meets Cal Ripken, Jr. and now...the rest of the story.

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Jay Trucker is no fan of Orioles in the WBC. Also, the Orioles want Guthrie to come back to Ft. Lauderdale.

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I participated in an AL East chat at Beyond the Box Score yesterday and tried to represent the Orioles well. Some Rays fans seemed to think that I should fear B.J. Upton more. Upton: good hitter, not a feared hitter. End of story.

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Ben from Oriole central just can't throw away his Daniel "Dirty Bird" Cabrera poster...

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FanGraphs has been doing organizational rankings and the Orioles are ranked #16 in baseball. Usually the O's end up somewhere in the high 20's. Wasn't it last season that the Orioles were assumed to be one of the worst frachises in the world of sport?

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Happy Birthday Chris Hoiles! Hoiles could've been a contender...for the 1993 AL MVP.

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Song of the Week: Marah with "The Dishwasher's Dream" Have a good weekend! Let's go Mountaineers!

Base Hits: 2/13/2009

I had to give a tip of the hat to Desert O at Weaver's Tantrum who did a fair job of arguing that Rich Hill's control problems may have been injury related and Rick Ankiel-like mental blocks may have been overstated.

A well argued premise that seems to been given credence by Hill himself during an interview on The Hot Stove show in MASN. Per Roch Kubatko's blog:

Hill said the injury, to a "little joint" in his back, often occurs when attempting to lift something heavy.

"I tried to compensate so I could compete," he said. "It kept building and building, and every start it would get worse and worse.

"I blame myself for continuing on and trying to fight through it."

So a tip of the hat to Desert O. Nobody who writes about the Orioles had made that assertion before him. Well played sir, well played.

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Just in time for Valentine's Day, Garrett Olson is moving on with his new partner while removing reminders of the old one:

But Thursday morning (Garrett Olson) spent time getting rid of the last vestiges of his Baltimore Oriole pitching career.

He took a black magic marker and filled in all the orange on his pitching cleats, orange being the dominant color of the Orioles. Actually, Olson did it with one pair and clubhouse worker Pete Fortune did it with another pair. It was sort of a paint-by-number thing.

Olson eventually will get properly color-coded shoes inclusive of the Mariner blue and teal. But for the moment, ''I didn't want to go out there wearing the orange,'' Olson said.

This is the baseball version of removing the old pictures with your ex-girlfriend in them before bringing over a new prospect for dinner. Good luck looking for happiness Garrett...

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MASN has released their schedule for televised Spring Training games...only 4 Oriole games on the schedule. LAME.

Look, the Orioles are most certainly going to be a losing club in 2009 and the one thing fans have to look forward to are the young prospects. So let us see them play! This schedule could easily be doubled. I guess I'll be reduced to watching other teams during Spring Training...again.

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Write your own punchline. Feel free to leave them in the comments for this post!

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The Orioles have signed another Japanese pitcher, this time former Chiba Lotte Marine farmhand Ryohei Tanaka. According to a translation from NPB Tracker, Tanaka said "I was surprised. When I heard, tears came out." Given the state of recent Oriole teams, one has to wonder whether they were tears of sorrow or joy...

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Pitcher and catchers report on Sunday! Spring is nearly here!

Base Hits: 11/7/2008

You know, I always thought that Keith Law of ESPN had extreme views when it came to completely disregarding postseason awards. I'm beginning to come around. This is a quote from Keith in regards to Chase Utley being passed over for a Gold Glove this season. It can be fairly applied to the decision to deny Nick Markakis his first Gold Glove as well:

If GGs weren't already a complete and utter joke, unworthy of even a moment of our attention, then that's where they are now.

I'm really beginning to agree.

I stated earlier this week that Nick might get bumped by Torii Hunter based on rep alone and I was right. But even I didn't see a choice so lame as Ichiro.

Neither Hunter nor Ichiro are bad fielders but they are far from the best. The best argument you can make for them is that they are average. Neither is even close to Markakis. Not even a little bit. See my other post. They're not even in the conversation.

Of course, how could we put much faith in a system that awards Derek Jeter more career Gold Gloves (3) than Cal Ripken (2)?

Rob Neyer, another ESPN baseball writer, probably summed it up best:

It's hard to escape the conclusion that the managers and the coaches just don't give a damn about the process. It's a strange thing, to care more than the actual voters about the Gold Gloves. But year after year, it sure seems like we do.

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The prospects in Hawaii are all playing really bad baseball. It's far too depressing to post about as I can find no silver lining on any of these clouds. The Baltimore Sun's Dean Jones, Jr. offers all the ugly details.

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Also at the Sun, Jeff Zrebiec reports that Mr. Reluctant wants to try to return to the Orioles as a starter next season.

Fine by me. The official slogan for the 2009 Baltimore Oriole rotation should be "We'll Take Anybody". Anybody with one arm and can walk to the mound should get a shot.

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John Sickels had these observations after watching Matt Wieters in the Arizona Fall League:

1) This won't come as a surprise to you, but Matt Wieters is really, really good. He is a cross between Joe Mauer and Mike Piazza. The only things that could hurt him would be injury (always possible) or a really severe case of Young Catcher Stagnation Syndrome (seems unlikely to me).

Nice to hear it!

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What the hell. I'm reviving the Song of the Week. Here's Marah performing "The Dishwasher's Dream". I'll warn you in advance that the lyrics reference "a Yanks winning streak". Have a great weekend!

Base Hits: 8/15/2008

Wow! Busy week at work. Where has the week gone? But I figured I'd check in for Friday...

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It's hard to get real excited over a player like Lou Montanez (at least his upside) but it's hard not to like the guy. Hey, it's rare but late bloomers do happen in baseball. See Howard Johnson. Or Jeremy Guthrie.

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You know, this whole Hayden Penn thing is a real drag. Every time he looks like he's about to get a break, he suffers another injury.

I'm still rooting for the guy but the truth is that he hasn't been the same pitcher since he had surgery to remove bone spurs in his elbow in May of 2007. Look at his numbers in the minors since his fantastic 2006 run at AAA.

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One year ago, I was biting my nails and prepping a scathing post attacking the Oriole front office and Peter Angelos for failing to sign Matt Wieters. This year, I have no such angst.

I actually have confidence that the Orioles will sign their top pick Brian Matusz before the mid night deadline. Apparently, so does everyone else:

Eric (Albany): Only 3 of the Top 10 picks have signed....of the 7 left how many don't reach an agreement?

Jim Callis: I did an Ask BA on this that you can check out at baseballamerica.com, too. I think of the 11 unsigned first-rounders, 10 eventually will sign. Allan Dykstra's hip condition worries the Padres, so that deal might not get done. As for the rest of the guys, we're in the rhetoric stage where the clubs say they have to be financially realistic and the players say they really will consider going back to school. Don't buy it, I think they'll all sign.


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Peter Schmuck: Matusz was in Baltimore yesterday for a physical, so it's down to the final dollar figure and roster conditions. Since I don't believe the kid is going to leave several million dollars on the table and risk his valuable arm on another college season, I'm pretty confident something will be announced late this afternoon. Hope they don't make us sweat it out all night.



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Roch Kubatko: It will be a major shock if the sides reach an agreement late tonight and Matusz's signature winds up on a contract. But it's expected to happen tomorrow before the midnight deadline. Both sides sound very confident.

I feel much better than I did last year. I hope my trust is not misplaced.

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Grimace(s) of the Day:

The collected grimaces of Shin-Soo Choo, Franklin Gutierrez and Jamey Carroll after the Orioles score 8 runs in the 8th last night.

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Aubrey Huff clears waivers. Hurry up and trade him before he remembers he's Aubrey Huff and not the second coming of Boog Powell.

Also clearing waivers were Kevin Millar, Jay Payton and Jamie Walker. You've got to trade walker for anything decent. If the O's have one area of depth, it's the bullpen. Jay Payton could actually be a useful right-handed bat off the bench for a contender. Ditto for Millar.

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The creator of Orioles blog Weaver's Tantrum, Desert O aka Dave aka Vegas has now hiked more than 1500 miles from from Georgia to Massachusetts. I encourage all in the oriole blogosphere to head over to his other blog, A Bite of the Appalachian, and post some words of encouragement. (BTW, it's a fascinating read...)

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Song of the Week:

Sticking with Chicago-based bands from the early-90's, Urge Overkill with "View of the Rain". Later...

Base Hits: 8/8/2008

Looking back on the week that was, Rob Neyer of ESPN.com wrote about the improbable performance of Matt Waters. It's part of ESPN Insider so here's the main text:

Waters' masterpiece for O's quite a shocker

I'd like to embrace the utter unlikelihood of what Chris Waters did last night.

As we see in a sidebar here, Waters became just the sixth pitcher in the past 50 years to throw eight-plus innings with no runs and one hit in a major league debut.

--snip--

Waters isn't even supposed to be in the major leagues. Look at the ages for each of those pitchers; before Waters, fellow Oriole Milacki was the oldest to make a similarly spectacular debut … and Waters is more than three years older than Milacki was. And although Milacki might not have been a Grade A prospect when he reached the majors in September 1988, that summer he'd gone 12-8 with a 2.70 ERA for Triple-A Rochester.

Just looking at the ages of the other pitchers on this list, it seems likely that all had done impressive work in the minors. We do know that Marichal's a Hall of Famer, and we know that May won 152 games in the majors and was still pitching at 39.

Waters, though?

He's not built like a pitcher. He's listed as being 6 feet tall, 170 pounds, which means he's probably 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds. The Braves did like him enough in 2000 to draft him out of South Florida Community College in the fifth round. After initially pitching well as a professional, Waters stalled out; four years after being drafted, he was still pitching in Class A, and wasn't pitching particularly well. And after an unimpressive Double-A season (2006), the Braves cut Waters loose.

Last year, pitching for the Orioles' Double-A team, Waters went 8-9 with a 4.49 ERA. Before this season, he wasn't even listed among the Orioles' top 30 prospects, and he shouldn't have been. He is (or rather, was) a 27-year-old Double-A pitcher with yawn-inspiring numbers.
This year? Finally, Waters blew through Double-A: 5-0 with a 1.69 ERA in six starts. Then came a promotion to Triple-A, where he … stunk: 3-6 with a 5.70 ERA in 18 games.
So why did he get the call to the majors, finally? In Waters' last start for Norfolk, last Thursday against Lehigh Valley, he pitched seven innings and gave up one hit.
That's right. In what must be the greatest week of his professional life, Waters has given up two hits in 15 innings.

All of which is unlikely enough. Just as unlikely: Waters already is enjoying a significant major league career. He won't be the best pitcher on that list and probably won't match Steve Woodard's 32 career wins. (Interesting tidbit: After three years out of baseball, Woodard is pitching in the minors again, and you never know.)

However, I do give Waters a 50-50 chance of catching Billy Rohr, who finished his career with three major league wins.

Good stuff. But Neyer rarely disappoints.

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Chad Bradford got traded to the Rays. Hard to evaluate the trade until we see who we get back but Bradford was the only free agent reliever from the 2006 offseason who did not disappoint.

But Dave Cameron at FanGraphs.com reminds us that submariner pitchers are fun. And he's right! Sometimes we get so caught up in the winning and losing, we don't appreciate a guy until he's gone. But it was nice having another submariner on the team. I mean, who didn't love Todd Frohwirth?

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John Sickels reviewed his preseason list of Oriole Top Prospects on his Minor League Ball blog.

It's a mixed bag but Matt Wieters continues to crush minor league pitching and Nolan Reimold looks to be close to the big club as well.

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Song of the Week:

I recently bought the re-issue of Liz Phair's classic 1993 album Exile in Guyville. Reissue. They let it go out of print! Criminal!

It's reasons like these that the major labels deserve whatever is coming to them.

Here's "Stratford-On-Guy" from said album. Enjoy.

Base Hits: 6/27/2008

"That's how you're gonna beat 'em, Butch. They keep underestimating you."

- Butch Coolidge (Pulp Fiction)

Dateline Chicago: O's Just the Second Team to Take Series From Cubs at Wrigley in 2008

When Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella saw his interleague schedule, he was relieved.

The Cubs were matched up against the American League East this season, but didn’t draw the Yankees or the Red Sox. Turns out, he should’ve been worried about the Rays and the Orioles...

The Cubs (49-30) won two of three at Toronto but dropped five of six against the surprisingly good Rays and Orioles.

“I thought maybe we caught a break,” Piniella said. “But this was before we played Tampa Bay and Baltimore.”

They keep underestimating you Orioles. That's how you're going to beat them!

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Buster Olney talks with some Oriole players as they continue surprise this season. And he's honest enough to admit he only had this team winning 56 games this season.

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I wonder how long Sam Perlozzo will be able to hang on to his coaching gig in Seattle? Doesn't look like Perlozzo's sunny disposition is helping anything out there.

But Dave Trembley is certainly helping things in Baltimore. A good article about the Orioles skipper over at Pressbox Online.

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Win Share data on the Trade Tracker is updated now. The Tejada and Bedard deals continue to look great in the short term as well as the long term.

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I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier but the Orioles are eliciting some great reaction shots from the opposition. So here's today's Oriole-Inflicted Grimace of the Day:

This Jason Marquis grimace is courtesy of an Aubrey Huff double in the third inning of yesterday's game.

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Want to learn more about the newest Baby Birds? Nobody is doing it better than Camden Depot as they look at each draft pick the Orioles made in 2008. (Well, at least the first few picks...)

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Song of the Week: A sons from Canadian indie rockers Arcade Fire. This one's called Rebellion (Lies). Have great weekend and let's sweep the Nats!

Base Hits: 5/30/2008

Red Sox come to town tonight! Oriole record at Camden Yards: 16-8 Red Sox record away from Fenway: 11-19. So you're tellin' me there's a chance... I'm going out on a limb here and saying that the starting pitching matchups actually favor the Orioles. We'll see if that turns out to be the case...

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I kept meaning to get over to Camden Depot and check out what they had to offer so I finally did. What Crawdaddy and stotle are writing over there is excellent. It's so good they make me want to quit blogging! Just for example, check out their continuing coverage of the upcoming amateur baseball draft from the Oriole's perspective. They are good men. And thorough.

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A portion of I-395 will now be known as "Ripken Way". There's an obvious joke here somewhere about "The Ripken Way" but I'll be damned if I can think of one...

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A post over at Firebrand of the American League (Red Sox blog) that discusses Boston's woes on the road but throws in this little jab: The Red Sox have a chance this weekend against a floundering Baltimore Orioles team to make a statement and move that road record three games closer to .500. Floundering? The O's are 7-7 over the last two weeks. We just won a series! More than the Red Sox can say. Granted, Baltimore is 2-4 over their last 6 but the Red Sox are 1-5! And we're floundering? OK, OK, I have a statement... The Orioles have a chance this weekend against the uber-floundering Boston Red Sox to move that home record 4 more games over .500. (That dude even got the number of games in this series wrong...) And when I say floundering, I mean really floundering. They make actual flounders appear to walk upright by comparison.

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For the Song of the Week, I was going to go really country this week but I stumbled across another band from Austin, TX that is clearly not country at all. This is Ghostland Observatory with "Sad Sad City" GO O's! BEAT THEM SOX!

Circles of Losing, Trends, Three True Outcomes, Melmosity and More

Last night will go down as a Circle 2 loss in Ben's 9 Concentric Circles of Losing: Not Enough To Win.

They had their opportunities. The Orioles had plenty of chances last night to win the game but couldn't get that extra hit, that long sac fly to score the man at third or that timely extra base hit to take the series from the Yankees.

On to Tampa. Tampa has greatly improved this season but not for the reasons people were predicting during the preseason. It was supposed to be the young offensive talent that was to carry this team to playoff contention. Instead, it's been the young pitching while the offense has still been trying to find itself. The good news for the Orioles is that the Rays pitching has slipped a bit after a stellar April. This is hardly an unbeatable team.

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Three True Outcomes - the Three True Outcomes in baseball are the strikeout, the walk, and the homerun. These are the outcomes that don't involve the defense or footspeed. It's just batter vs. pitcher to determine the outcome.

Some batters have embraced this method more than others to become legends of TTO. For the Orioles, Mickey Tettleton comes to mind. Elsewhere, Adam Dunn, Rob Deer and Jack Cust have embraced this "all-or-nothing" approach while still maintaining a good batting eye. So I decided to grab what I believe to be the highest TTO average seasons in Oriole history. The only two Orioles I knew that I would see on this list were Mickey Tettleton and perhaps Sam Horn. Some of the names were surprising.

                   Year   AB   HR   BB   SO   TTO%
Mickey Tettleton   1990  444   15  106  106   51.1%
Sam Horn           1991  317   23   41   99   45.5%
Mickey Tettleton   1989  411   26   73  117   44.6%
Jim Gentile        1961  486   46   96  106   42.6%
Cal Abrams         1955  309    6   89   69   41.2%
Boog Powell        1964  424   39   76   91   41.2%
Boog Powell        1966  491   34   67  125   40.5%
Jeff Manto         1995  254   17   24   69   39.5%
Chris Hoiles       1993  419   29   69   94   39.3%
Randy Milligan     1990  362   20   88   68   39.1%

 

As expected, Mickey Tettleton is the TTO king and Sam Horn comes in with the second highest TTO% for a season in Orioles history. Tettleton was so much fun to watch and would routinely walk and strikeout over 100 times each during a season, a rare talent. He was sent to Detroit straight up for P Jeff Robinson, one of the worst trades in the history of the franchise. Tettleton was a productive hitter for several years after the trade and Robinson...well, you probably know about Robinson.

Sam Horn had the potential to be a Tettleton-type slugger, albeit with more power. He never developed that batting eye to let the really bad pitches go.

Jim Gentile. A classic example of a TTO season was 1961. Should have remembered that. Also should not be surprised that Boog Powell show up on this list a couple of times.

Who is Cal Abrams? Abrams was a backup OF who played all three defensive positions for a terrible 97 loss team. He seemed to realize that while he was still a good fielder, his ability to hit was really slipping. So he seems to have decided not to make outs and walked a remarkable 86 times in only 407 plate appearances. It wasn't enough. 1955 would be Cal's last full season in the majors.

It seems that a 30-year old Jeff Manto arrived in Baltimore with the idea that he had better start swinging for the fences if he wanted to stick in the majors. In a way, he was right. 1995 was his best offensive year (108 OPS+) but he paid the price by striking out 69 times in 89 games. He was off to Boston the next year and went back to a more contact-making approach.

Chris Hoiles had a real breakout season in 1993 (the fact that he was not considered for the MVP that year is criminal...). When he made contact, good things happened but he struck out 94 times.

Randy Milligan was a mild surprise. I never remember Milligan as a guy with the skill set to draw 88 walks.

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I watched Miami play Georgia Tech last night and saw top prospect Miami 1B Yonder Alonso. He hit two homers but looked terribly mismatched against the lefty relievers they deployed against him. Miami can flat out hit throughout the lineup.

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The Wayward Oriole has made a significant scientific breakthrough. He can now measure Melmosity.

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Song of the Week: The Replacements - "Bastards of Young" Enjoy!

Base Hits: 5/9/2008

Sucker that I am, I am now solidly back on the Daniel Cabrera bandwagon. Complete game? Only one walk? Oh yeah, I'm on the D-Train.

As if to highlight his bad luck at the plate, Ramon Hernandez lined out hard his first two at bats and hit a grounder deep in the whole behind third where Tony Pena, Jr. made a great play that robbed him of a single. His only hit was a fluky broken bat single to center. I'm guessing he'll take them any way he can get them these days.

I'm starting the Church of Freddie:

Amazing what being a shortstop not named Hernandez or Fahey will get you in 2008. So happy to hear the Bynum is now the starting shortstop...

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I was watching the Royal feed of the game last night. The announcers said that Brian Roberts had won a Gold Glove which, of course, has never happened. How can you get something like that wrong?

Also, they talked to Royals pitcher Brian Bannister twice during the game. Bannister is going to make a great coach or GM when he's done playing. The guy has a lot of knowledge about the game and is able to communicate it wonderfully.

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OK, OK. I was wrong about John Maine. How was I supposed to know he would develop a strikeout pitch? Crap.

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The Oriole Trade Monitors are updated with the latest Win Share data from this season. The Bedard and Tejada trades were obviously made with an eye to the future but the Orioles are getting equal value for the present as well.

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Coming up next week, more analysis of the shocking turnaround of Daniel Cabrera, how Brian Burres continues to prove me wrong and more BHI stuff.

Song of the Week: Feeling rather political with the national elections gearing up. Here's James McMurtry, one hell of a songwriter. Have a great weekend!

Base Hits: 5/2/2008

Well, that sucked. The Orioles lose their first series in over two weeks and now hit the road for another brutal west coast roadtrip. Since the big league club isn't so hot, let's look at the farm. TopProspectAlert.com has started doing minor league stat line updates every morning. Here's the Orioles' highlights from last night:

Chris Heintz - BAL 3-4, RBI, .368avg
Mike Costanzo - BAL 2-4, 2B, 3B, 2R, .213avg
Bradley Bergesen - BAL 8IP, 1ER, 6H, 1BB, 1K, WIN 0.60ERA
Kyle Schmidt - BAL 7IP, 1ER, 3H, 1BB, 5K, 3.32ERA
Anthony Martinez - BAL 3-4, HR, 3RBI, R, .284avg

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Randor Bierd goes on the DL which is really not good. Bierd has been one of the bright spots this April and looking like he would be at the core of the new young relief corp. Get well Randor. We'll see you in June.

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Dave Rouleau of Baseball Digest Daily has a post about Nick Markakis. Well, actually he has a post that pulls liberally from a story the Baltimore Sun ran. I missed the story in the Sun but it's a heartbreaking story of how Nick lost one of his friends far too soon.

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Just saw Ironman and it was excellent. Robert Downey, Jr. is an excellent Tony Stark, Jeff Bridges is a credible bad guy, Terrence Howard was great and even Gwyneth Paltrow had her moments as "the girl" which is not an easy task. Better than the first Spiderman. Go see it. (as if it needs my endorsement...)

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Song of the Week: A co-worker loaned me the new Erykah Badu album and it is shockingly good! Here's "Honey" off the album entitled "New Amerykah". Great concept for a video but this isn't even close to being the best song off the album. Have a great weekend!

Erykah Badu

Roberts Saves The Day

It's becoming a recurring them for the 2008 Baltimore Orioles. Pitcher gets hit early, bullpen circles the wagons and holds down the opposing batters, Orioles bats chip away until team is within striking distance and then a big blow allows them to take the lead. Last night, The Truth struck back in the 7th to give the Orioles the lead. And according to Yahoo Sports, he did it with his eyes closed.

When are they going to fix that?

Anyway, that wasn't enough as Ichiro tied the game with an unlikely two run homer and left it to Brian Roberts to hit a equally unexpected solo shot in the top of the 8th to give Baltimore the lead for good as George Sherrill closed it out for his 8th (?!?!?!) save of the year. Yes, Sherrill is on a pace for 50+ saves this season.

Adam Loewen is reporting forearm pain which explains a lot. His delivery was all over the place this season. He essentially gave a mea culpa and asked for the team to give someone else a shot in the rotation. I imagine the Oriole will DL him and that Matt Albers gets a shot to start for awhile.

Yawn. I had to go in and work late last night which allowed me to watch the whole game on my laptop but very much has me feeling like a nap this afternoon.

Being lazy, here's the Song of the Week and I'm signing off. "Landed" by Ben Folds. Later.

The Truth Hurts...the White Sox!

Adam Jones. I call him The Truth. For one, he speaks it and for another...he just looks like The Truth on the ballfield.

Tonight he came through is the biggest of situations and had a walkoff single in the 10th driving in Kevin Millar for the winning run.

The O's are playing .500 ball over the past 6 games.

Anybody else sick of "Spanky" Huff yet? Could he come up smaller in big situations? According to Baseball-Reference.com, he's only hitting .125 in "clutch" situations and only .071 when the game is tied. Can't we unload this guy somewhere?

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I have to recommend a post from Oriole Central for the second straight day as Ben looks at the Orioles who hit "garbage homeruns" and correctly identifies Jay Gibbons as a guy who goes yard when it doesn't much matter to the outcome of the game.

I have to agree about Gibbons. I was going to (still am at some point) write a post about the five biggest hits of Gibbons career with the Orioles but was quite surprised to see how few dramatic moments Gibbons actually had to, say, Miguel Tejada. A slugger like Gibbons should make a little more impact on a game over the course of several years.

Anyway, Ben's post has given me an idea for a series on former O's and their clutch performances (or lack thereof). Look for more on that later.

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We are through 10% of the games. I decided to take a look at how hard our bullpen is being worked versus last season.

Walker 80 G, 43 IP
Bradford 70 G, 57 IP
Sherrill 60 G, 57 IP
Safarte, 60 G, 67 IP
Bierd, 50 G, 100 IP

Here's the pace the five main relievers were on when I blogged about the bullpen on May 3rd, 2007:

Baez - 81
Bradford - 91
Parrish - 81
Walker - 86
Ray - 81

I was afraid that the bullpen was on its way to burnout yet again but this year's pace looks to be a bit more sustainable.

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For this edition of Song of the Week, I'll be recommending three versions of one great song. Don't ever say you don't get your money's worth here at Dempsey's Army.

The song is called "Such Great Heights" originally written and performed by SubPop label band The Postal Service back in 2003.

Here it is:



Next, a live version of the song by the sporadically brilliant Ben Folds:



Finally, a way more laid back version by Iron and Wine.



Have a great weekend!


The Postal Service

Ben Folds

Iron and Wine

No Tase Yo, Bro

A great post by Matt Taylor at Roar From 34 about Orioles first base coach John Shelby and his ties to the glory days in Baltimore.

I have found it ironic that since John Shelby was hired that our first base coach and our third base coach, Juan Samuel, were both on the field the last time the Orioles won the World Series...but that Samuel was on the losing end of things with the Phillies.

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Tampa Bay Rays reliever Al Reyes (perhaps their best reliever) was arrested early Friday morning after an altercation at a Tampa nightclub. Reyes was punched in the face and after bouncers grabbed the man, Reyes started swinging his arms at anybody near him and spat blood at bystanders as well. ("Spanky" Huff was right. The nightlife is much better in Tampa. I never used to get blood spit on me in Fells Point...)

But there's more...

...Reyes got into a fight with another man, Eduardo Mora...

Mora...hmmmm. Could Melvin Mora have sent one of his relatives to provoke a known drunken hothead so Melvin would not have to face him this weekend? Coincidence?

Further investigation shows that Melvin is 2-4 with a homer against Al Reyes in his career ruining potential conspiracy theory...

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SC of Camden Chat has his nominations for the 2008 Oriole Magic Mix Tape. Brilliant. And SC has been doing regular posts about the O's minor league teams that provide a quick one-stop shop update for the Baby Birds.

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No Scott Kazmir, no Matt Garza, no Cliff Floyd, no Rocco Baldelli, probably no Al Reyes, perhaps no Willie Aybar...a good opportunity to put a hurtin' on the Ray. Let's go O's!

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So for this week's version of Song of the Week, I felt like going for a little jazz. This is the John Coltrane Quartet performing "Afro Blue". You have to get past the credits and the cheesy jazz critic leaning on the piano and smoking his pipe but besides that it is outstanding. Known mostly for his work on the tenor sax, Coltrane take a swing with the soprano sax on this one but this ain't no Kenny G! The rest of the quartet (McCoy Tyner (p), Jimmy Garrison (b) and Elvin Jones (d)) were outstanding musicians in their own right but quite underrated with Coltrane looming so large. Have a great weekend!

More Prospects...

After reading Alex Eisenberg's article in The Hardball Times that featured Chorye Spoone, I decided to check out his blog to see if any other Oriole prospects were mentioned.

Among guys he sees as potential breakout players (meaning Top 10 prospects) this season are Frederick Keys pitcher David Hernandez and soon to be Key Bobby Henson.

Hernandez was certainly not on my radar but indeed had a solid but inconsistent year. Henson is only 20 and tore it up as an Ironbird last season. Heaven knows we could use all the middle infield prospects we can get.

Recent acquisition Chris Tillman is also featured as one of the most underrated prospects in baseball.

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The new baseball season is getting me thirsty for some beer from Maryland. No, not Natty Boh. I can get Clipper City brews down here, maybe I'll go pick up a 12 pack this weekend. Anybody out there drink Clipper City? Recommendations?

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A quick thought on Tampa Bay: I watched the Wednesday game again last night, at least the parts I missed. I will reiterate that I don't see how the Rays are going to take a giant leap forward this season until they can improve their defense. Especially up the middle. Errors, knocking the ball around, dropping balls before the throw...stuff that gives a mediocre lineup like Baltimore too many chances to beat you. What's going to happen against really good teams?

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I've got some ideas on deeper analysis for the team so I'm going to go work on those now. With no game last night, pretty slow for Orioles news.

Here's the Song of the Week feature I'm going to start up. Nothing to do with the Orioles at all, just some of my favorite bands/songs as a diversion.

This week, everybody's favorite Indie rock kings from Manitoba, The Weakerthans. This is "A Civil Twighlight" from their latest album "Reunion Tour". Enjoy.




The Weakerthans