Annual Dissing of the Baltimore Orioles Starting Early this Year
Oct 5, 2014; Detroit, MI, USA; ; Baltimore Orioles players celebrate their win in the locker room after defeating the Detroit Tigers in game three of the 2014 ALDS baseball playoff game at Comerica Park. The Orioles move on to the ALCS with 2-1 win over the Tigers. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports
With any job or endeavor, experience over time brings additional insight and perspective. And having done this Baltimore Orioles daily writing gig now for multiple years, there are a number of cyclic and annual patterns that are observable.
One of these annual routines that is as predictable as Punxsutawney Phil being pulled out of his crate by a couple of creepy-looking guys in tuxedos is what I have come to term “the annual dissing of the Orioles.”
For a lot of years, it was difficult to work up any sort of justifiable anger at the predictions of baseball prognosticators that the Orioles would once again be the cellar dwellers of the AL East. Even if the O’s got off to a decent start, something would go wrong and they’d suck again.
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But the signs of a sea change were all there in 2011, particularly at the end of the season. The 2012 turnaround with 93 wins did not just happen out of the blue for anyone who had serious baseball eyes and followed the team whatsoever. Maybe 86 or 87 wins would have been more realistically in focus, but a new era was clearly in the works.
Yet they were predicted to be horrific yet again before that 2012 season began. I’ll not go back with you and dig up the quotes of so many who wrote that the Orioles remained hopelessly predestined for the basement, institutionally doomed with no hopes of any possible change on the horizon.
So, with the dawn of 2013, the theme was that the Birds were a one-year wonder. Certainly there were disappointments as the bullpen in particular melted down when needed most. Even so, there were 85 wins in the final column.
And the approaching theme of 2014 was the old war horse story that starting pitching wins divisions, and the Baltimore Orioles had nothing but a third-rate rotation … a collection in reality of fourth and fifth starters, if that. After 96 wins, the second-best record in the sport, and a sweep in the playoffs of a team with three Cy Young winners, every skeptic has now been answered, right?
After all, for 2015 the Orioles return the entire rotation that carried them to 96 wins in the season past, and that does not include a $12.5 million guy who had a bad year historically. The only relief loss is a player who was only available for the final one-third of the season. And three all-stars – Chris Davis, Manny Machado and Matt Wieters – who combined to miss a total of 251 games are returning to the regular lineup.
But the losses of two outfielders are deemed to be deadly as the new campaign approaches. While one of them did hit 40 home runs, the rest of the team tallied 171 which would be good enough as second-best in the league. And the other player, while a nice asset for the team, was a slow leadoff hitter with an average OBP for that slot and diminishing power.
Fueling the annual dissing is the additional fact that the Orioles have not added any big names beyond Travis Snider and Wesley Wright. At the same time, the Blue Jays and Red Sox have each added a number of players deemed top talents by conventional wisdom and performance.
Somehow, for some people who even get paid to write about these things, those additions to the Red Sox, for example, are clearly in their minds enough to erase a 25-game deficit to the Orioles in 2014. After all, there is precedent for a worst-to-first move by the Sox – as seen in 2013. And that precedent, along with their additions, is more objective than the second-highest win total of any team in baseball over the past three seasons. That is incredible.
This is the first of several of these doom-and-gloom articles I’ll share with you before the season begins – again, it is more predictable than the return of robins in your front yard. None of these earliest prognosticators are very impressed with the AL East.
Baseball Prospectus, having learned nothing from predicting the Orioles to finish last in 2014, has them back in the basement for 2015. The entire division is seen to put up only eight wins above .500, with the Orioles last in 78-84. They see the Red Sox and Rays tied for first with 86 wins. You read that correctly – yes, the Rays.
FanGraphs also calls for the Orioles to be in the basement with 78 wins and Boston in first with 89 wins, four more than the Jays. At least neither of these sites have a Yankees bias, which is somewhat amazing.
And another site makes a number of written predictions for the 2015 season, the first three being: 1. The Yankees have their first losing season in 20 years, 2. The AL East will be the worst division in baseball, and 3. The Red Sox will win the East by default – their rotation being merely decent enough to squeak out a title. Of the Baltimore Orioles they say …
"The Orioles, the 2014 division champs, lost Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis in free agency, and haven’t made any significant additions. Baltimore is really banking on Matt Wieters and Manny Machado returning to health and being very productive, and it really needs Ubaldo Jimenez to pitch like he did for the Indians in the second half of the 2013 season."
So it’s all about the losses of Markakis and Cruz. I’m so weary of this theme.
For many of these sites, it is also all about computer models that don’t believe the Orioles rotation can possibly repeat 2015 and do not credit much improvement potential for quite a number of returning and young Orioles players. But, as much as I love computers, they can’t hit or throw, at least not yet. And as much as I love the mathematical geekiness of the game of baseball, I am yet to be sold on the computer metrics where so many have grown to place their faith with an elitist confidence and attitude.
There will be more dissing of the O’s to come from the experts, and I recognize my place within “other media types” … as categorically termed last week by a near and dear Orioles beat writer. Honestly, I did not have the Orioles winning the division in any of the past three years, but neither did I have them in the basement. And they won’t be in the basement in 2015 either. Predicting that just makes your computer look stupid.