Recap of the Orioles/A’s Series and The Week Ahead

After losing the first 2 games of the series against the scorching-hot A’s, the Orioles, behind Wei-Yin Chen, were able to win the last game of the series 6 to 1. Chen pitched 5.2 innings and struck out 12. With the win, Chen improves to 9-6 on the year.

To recap the series the Orioles started the series against Oakland on Friday night, where Zach Britton faced off against A’s rookie right-hander Jarrod Parker. This game went back-and-forth, with the A’s getting off to a 5-0 lead by the 2^nd inning. However, the O’s rallied back with a homerun by Chris Davis in the 2^nd inning and a homerun by Adam Jones in the 5^th inning. Jones homerun put the O’s up 6-5. In the 6^th inning the A’s pinch hit Seth Smith for Johnny Gomes and Smith hit a base-clearing double to put the Athletics up 8-6. However, the O’s battled back in the 8^th inning and eventually took the lead 9-8. The A’s came up in the 9^th against O’s closer Jim Johnson, who has pitched extremely solid this season, and scored six runs off of him. The O’s fell 14-9.

In the second game of the series, Tommy Hunter squared off against Bartolo Colon. The game was kept scoreless until the 4^th inning, when smoking-hot A’s OF Yoenis Cespedes hit a two-run homerun off of Hunter. Hunter, who has been plagued by the long-ball all year, gave up another homerun to A’s 1B Chris Carter in the 6^th. The O’s lone run came in the 9^th inning when Nick Markakis homered.

Thankfully for the Orioles, Chen was able to put together a great outing today and Matt Wieters finally showed some sign of life with a three-run homerun in the 3^rd inning off of A’s success-story Travis Blackley. Recently-acquired Omar Quintanilla also homered for the O’s.

(Another note from the today’s game is that the Orioles started OF Lew Ford in left-field today and he batted 5^th. Ford hasn’t played in the big leagues since 2007, when he was a member of the Minnesota Twins. It’s great to see Ford make it all the way back to “The Show”.)

However, the two losses against Oakland did hurt the O’s in the Wild Card Standings. They are still 2.5 games back of Oakland and Anaheim.

The Orioles have some very crucial games in the upcoming week. If the O’s want to stay at the top of the playoff hunt they must win both series against the Yankees and the Rays.

The next week could really determine whether the O’s stay in the playoff hunt or return to their former ways of being at the bottom of the cellar in the AL East. 

The Impressive Orioles

As many of you knew, I was out of town for the beginning of this month travelling in China.  I had a great time, but I also missed some phenomenal Oriole baseball and my favorite thing in the baseball world - position players pitching.

Best. Thing. Ever.

Along those lines, I was reading Buster Olney's blog from today and saw a unique anecdote - the Orioles have made 22 roster changes since that game.  On May 6th the Orioles played the Boston Red Sox in a 17 inning contest where Chris Davis emerged with the victory throwing 2 phenomenal innings in relief.  Since then, the Orioles 25 man roster has been a revolving door with players moving up and down, hitting the DL and generally moving about the organization.

Olney also points out that the Texas Rangers have yet to make a roster move this season, riding a healthy roster to a AL-leading 23 wins.

The most impressive thing to me about the Orioles season thus far, is that they've gotten so far despite having to overcome countless hurdles.  Just in case you weren't keeping track, let's talk about a few of the hurdles they've jumped over:

The Orioles are 8th worst in BB%, 8th worst in K%, and currently have 7 guys on the DL.  Tsuyoshi Wada had Tommy John Surgery 4 days again and is out for the season, Taylor Teagarden was moved to the 60-Day DL 5 days ago and Brian Roberts may or may not be back in the next calendar year, oh and we lead the AL in errors.

Honestly, the most impressive thing to me is that the Orioles have won 22 games in spite of all these difficulties.  Zach Britton, considered one of the O's best pitchers coming into the season has yet to throw a pitch for the big league team.  Brian Roberts, our highly paid star second baseman hasn't played significant time since the Bush administration but the revolving door of utility guys (Betemit, Andino, Tolleson, Flaherty) who have replaced him have been a spark plug for the team.  The Orioles atrocious defense has lead to 23 unearned runs scoring, and yet the team hasn't been hurt by its pitching.

The team is 11-9 at OPACY, and 11-5 on the road this season.  They are 12-7 against the AL East and an impressive 6-1 against the AL Central.  The only division the team has struggled against is the West with the powerhouses in Anaheim and Texas resulting in the O's 4-6 record against the West division.  They are 5-3 in 1-run games, and 4-2 in games that go to extra innings.

Are the Orioles this good?  Well no.  At this pace they'd win 99 games and likely make the playoffs fairly easily (given the extra wild card and what not).  However, the fact that they're winning despite all these difficulties is impressive and bods well for the future.

I was more bullish on the O's and guys like Wei-Yin Chen this offseason, putting the over/under at 74 wins for the team.  I think they'll make that number, and have a decent chance at breaking .500 for the first time in - way too long.  So far it looks like they have a legitimate shot to fulfill that promise I saw early on.  I'm excited because if they can fix some of these flaws, then they have a very good chance to continue this success throughout the season as guys get healthy and start to come back form the DL.

Directions to Success

I'm not going to repeat the number.  I know that I don't need to tell you how many years it's been.  That's not why I'm here, and quite frankly, I hope most of you are tired of talking/reading/thinking about it.  What I am here to do though, is pontificate on the next Orioles winning team.  No, you know what, let's get crazy and talk about the next Orioles playoff team.  Let's talk about the directions to success.  (I'm not sure that's the right 'success').

The Situation
It took, on average, 97.8 wins over the past 5 years to win the American League East.  Wow.  Let's be honest with ourselves, the next O's playoff team likely gets in via the wild card.  The average win total for the first Wild Card (WC1) over the past 5 years has been a still impressive 94 wins.  However, there will now be two wild cards, and the average win total for the second Wild Card (WC2) was just 88.6 wins.  Well there's reason for optimism there, as the total number of wins required for the WC2 is more than 5 wins less than WC1.

Who's the competition?  The next O's team to make the playoffs is realistically looking 3 or 4 years down the road.  Assuming that, the roster will likely look very different than it does today.  However, individual players are merely cogs in the system that drafted, developed, traded for and signed them.  Looking at the teams as systems, the major competitors in the American League for the O's time frame are likely to be: Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays, Royals, Indians, Tigers, Rangers, Angels and Mariners.

Don't get me wrong here, I wouldn't be surprised (at all) to see the tigers become less competitive in 2014 and have the Twins become a force to be reckoned with.  I'm just saying that given what we know, these teams seem to be in a strong position going forward (with emphasis on the O's projected timeline).

Your Baltimore Orioles
The O's offense is actually respectable ranking in the middle of the pack of the AL in wOBA and wRC+.  Let's assume Wieters settles in offensively to be slightly better, Machado is everything we expect and the team makes a few moves to fill in holes as they emerge.  This puts the team up in the top 5 range in the AL, plenty good to compete with the better offensive teams.  Not to mention the O's would likely have at least one impact bat just emerging (Jon Schoop) and maybe more.

Where the O's struggle is pitching.  Specifically developing young pitching, and having it stay healthy.  Let's assume Matusz has figured it out (which isn't really a safe assumption until games that matter come around).  I'm not even going to attempt to project the rotation for 2014 or 2015 right now, but let's assume that it features 3 top pitching prospects in Britton, Matusz and Bundy.  These guys will help make up the core of a rotation that, if they all develop as they once were believed to, is pretty darn good.  The rotation could feature young guys with a lot of potential like Parker Bridwell.  It might not.

Changes to 'Our System'

Wei-Yin Chen should probably work on his release point...

This is the area that the O's stand the most to gain from.  The O's have already begun revamping the player development system by introducing a long toss regimen to help strengthen pitcher's arms.  I'm a believer in long toss, and that's honestly a personal decision that you have to make I guess.  All I know is that two things benefited me as a young baseball player.  The first was keeping the same regimen over the length of a season or multiple seasons.  The second was long-tossing.  For me, it built arm strength and reinforced good mechanics.  It's incredibly difficult to long toss with poor mechanics.

Here the O's have made a conscious effort to introduce programs from the top down on both sides of the ball to have continuity across all levels of the system.  Rick Peterson and Mike Boulanger have a lot of work ahead of them but I believe that this overhaul has been long overdue.  Additionally I would be remiss if I didn't mention Brady Anderson and his emphasis on fitness, and the positive impact it will inevitably have on the players coming up through the system.

The Goal
I have an opinion on who the O's should draft when it rolls around later this summer.  In reality though, it doesn't much matter who they draft if he comes into a broken system that can't properly develop players.  I want Bundy, Machado, Schoop and everyone else to succeed.  It is through them that the O's will be successful as they will be the hot shot rookies to Matt Wieters' veteran wisdom.  We know our weaknesses, and we know which teams are likely to be good.  We know what we have in house, and we know where the opportunities are.

It's going to take a lot more than drafting good players to get to 89 wins.  It's going to take a serious focus on player development.  The top prospects of years past (Adam Loewen, Billy Rowell, Daniel Cabrera) haunt this organization.  We can't go back and fix them, so it's about time the O's started making sure that we don't live through the same nightmare twice.  I think they're finally starting to get it.