Baltimore Orioles: Crazy Baseball Season Straight Ahead
Spring training for the Baltimore Orioles has set up an expectation for local fans that 2016 is going to be a crazy and wild season.
It has affirmed the anticipation that this is indeed going to be a powerful lineup, particularly for the long ball. Even with many of the top power hitters in the lineup having fewer repetitions at the plate as compared to the regular season, the Orioles have hit 36 homers in 28 games. Only two teams have more this spring.
At the same time, spring training has also more than slightly triggered the greatest concerns of Orioles fans. The starting pitching in particular has been even worse than feared. The numbers are simply ghastly. The team ERA of 6.49 is by far the worst in all of baseball, and a WHIP for the pitching staff of 1.77 in nearly unimaginable.
The pitching cannot possibly be this bad for the regular season, can it? Well, no, not really. Actually, the spring season in all of baseball has higher numbers for offense and worse pitching stats than in the regular season. There are only five teams in MLB that currently have a team ERA under 4.0, with the best being the Rays at 3.31 and the Nationals at 3.32.
But even with all of the runs that the Orioles have been scoring in recent days, their team batting average of .260 ranks 26th in MLB spring training, with the OBP of .322 (equal to the regular season average of all teams) as 25th in rank. It is interesting to see that the Yankees are dead last in both of these categories.
In comments both to me and of those that I read online, I can see that Orioles fans are attempting to calibrate their hopes and expectations for the 2016 season. And most people find themselves dealing with a sort of fandom bipolar syndrome — of being excited about the lineup potential and the way Mark Trumbo and Joey Rickard look to add a lot of punch, while also fearing that the rotation might not be capable of any sort of bounce-back season whatsoever.
Clearly there are going to be a lot of highs … lots of home runs and high-scoring games. But there could be some terrible lows, multiple experiences of frustrations as in yesterday’s game where the Orioles gave Gallardo an early three-run lead, only to see him give up five runs in the second inning.
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But let me ask this? Would you rather that the Orioles be a team like the Tampa Bay Rays? A team with solid pitching that struggles to score? Maybe some people like that. Maybe the true baseball purist likes a low-scoring game. Maybe that person is also a big soccer fan.
Of course, I’d most like a team that scores a lot of runs while routinely shutting down the opposition. Give me the top power-hitting lineup in the league and four 20-game winners! OK, yes, that hasn’t happened around Baltimore since I was a teenager, and I now have eight grandchildren. But honestly, I’d rather see a team with some offensive pop and pitchers that can be developed.
But the reality is that there are going to be many days where the opposing pitcher really has some nasty stuff working. And while the O’s hitters might run into a couple pitches, overall, those games are going to far more likely end up as losses for the good guys in orange and black.
It simply looks like a wild and crazy season ahead. Really, we’re supposed to somehow be able to predict where this team could finish? Anything is possible.