Last winter, hope was abound for the Baltimore Orioles. General manager Andy MacPhail had traded for accomplished starter Kevin Millwood to lead the Orioles’ young rotation. He acquired Mike Gonzalez to be a shut-down closer, and old friend Miguel Tejada to man third base until Josh Bell was ready. MacPhil had also taken a flier on Garrett Atkins, who had put up above-average to great numbers for a few years in Colorado before doing nothing in 2009.
These four players were to join current productive veterans Nick Markakis, Brian Roberts and Luke Scott, all of whom would surround young studs Matt Wieters, Adam Jones, Felix Pie and Nolan Reimold in the everday lineup. Millwood would help the young pitchers of the staff — Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Jake Arrieta and David Hernandez, among others – who would all make up most of the pitching staff soon enough.
Oh yes, hope was certainly abound. The Orioles were thought of on a national basis to be a team “on the rise.” Orioles fans hoped that this would be the year in which the string of 12 straight losing seasons was broken. A .500 season looked somewhat realistic. I personally thought 75-78 wins was realistic.
Then spring training started.
Brian Roberts, the team’s most valuable player for years, annouced that he had a bad back at the start of spring training. Oh, but not to worry — he was going to be ready by Opening Day and would nurse his back through the season. Roberts would be hitting leadoff and playing second base for his normal 156 games or so.
Yeah, so that didn’t work out so well. Roberts played in the first series of the year in Tampa Bay, but aggravated his back injury sliding into second base during the home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays. Roberts hasn’t been on a big league field since, as he’s undergone a series of odd setbacks during his rehabilitation at the Orioles’ complex in Sarasota, Fla. Roberts has started to play in Gulf Coast League games and says that he would like to be back by August 1.
One of the main reasons for the struggles of the Orioles’ young hitters has been said to be a lack of productive veterans around them. Well, the team’s most productive veteran coming into the season was Roberts. Once he went down, Jones, Wieters, and Reimold were surrounded by just three productive veterans — Nick Markakis, Scott and, unexpectedly, Ty Wigginton. The rest of the veterans like Atkins and Tejada either were or have not been productive.
Roberts’ departure has meant more to the Orioles than anyone could have possibly imagined when he first went down — no one quite understood the magnitude of the trickle-down effect that Roberts’ injury would have. No Roberts at the top of the order meant that the Orioles were left with no viable options at leadoff, especially given Pie’s injury. No Roberts on the basepaths means no one creating havoc for opposing pitchers. Roberts’ departure meant the Orioles were left with no one who the team could trust giving the green light to on the basepaths at all times. In a league where finding athletes up and down lineups is becoming more and more common, having no bona-fide base-stealers is, well, a problem.
The Orioles were replacing Roberts’ .355 career on-base percentage at the top of the lineup with Jones’ .313 career on-base percentage early in the year, and for the past eight weeks or so, Corey Patterson’s .292 career on-base percentage. Patterson has performed over his head with a .335 on-base percentage during his current stint with the Orioles, but still, Jones nor Patterson at the top of the lineup will get on base anywhere near the rate that Roberts does, and neither are as deft as Roberts is at base-stealing. Also, the fewer times the leadoff man is on base, the fewer times Markakis has men on base in front of him, and henceforth, Markakis, the team’s best hitter, doesn’t see many pitches to drive.
Moving to the bullpen, its issues began in spring training, as well. Gonzalez apparently pitched injured during spring training and to start the season. Gonzalez blew two of his first three saves, which became the catalyst of the Orioles’ 2-16 start. Gonzalez hasn’t pitched for the Orioles since he was placed on the disabled list, but has recently been rehabbing throughout the Orioles’ minor league system appears to be nearing a return to the big league squad. When he returns, though, he will find Alfredo Simon, Jason Berken and Hernandez at the back end of the Orioles’ bullpen.
Then Jim Johnson went down. So too, Koji Uehara. For the first eight weeks of the season, the bullpen was a disaster area. Injuries forced pitchers into roles that they aren’t accustomed to, and very underwhelming performances by the likes of Matt Albers, Cla Meredith and Mark Hendrickson led to the bullpen being one of the worst in the big leagues. Leads have been blown left and right (the Orioles are currently tied for second in the bigs for the most blown saves with 13). Bullpen implosions were all too common earlier in the season. Nothing is more deflating to fans — and I’m guessing to a team, as well — than going into the ninth inning with a lead and seeing it evaporate.
It took about 10 weeks for the bullpen to really get straightened out. Allow me to state the obvious — it shouldn’t take until mid-July to sort out a bullpen. But that’s what injuries and ineffectiveness can do. It’s what’s been happening for about 13 years.
Here’s the bottom line: With all that’s gone wrong on the way to a major league-worst 29-59 record, is the MacPhail rebuilding plan still on course?
My answer: Eh, ask me at the end of the season. Too tough to tell right now.
There’s so much that has gone wrong for the Orioles this season — a lot of it is freakish bad luck with some of the injuries and circumstances that have popped up (Scott’s injury on a home run trot is pretty typical of this season) — that it’s pretty difficult to make any rash judgments of the rebuilding project based on the first half of the season.
Sure, anybody would like greater team-wide progress at this point in the rebuilding project. But also note that to rebuild through the draft and international scouting takes at least four to five years, maybe up to six years in the American League East. 2010 is just the third full year of MacPhail’s Baltimore reign.
The centerpiece of MacPhail’s rebuilding project is young pitching; the current pieces that are up in the big leagues are Matusz (23 years old), Tillman (22) and Arrieta (24). This early into their careers, the most important thing for them results-wise is that they hold their own. The last thing anyone wants to see is a young pitcher go through is to constantly get hit around like a pinata by the beasts of the AL East. Matusz has certainly held his own (4.77 ERA, 4.29 FIP, 81.9% contact rate, 1.4 WAR), and in eight starts against the AL East (none against Toronto), Matusz has a 2.90 ERA. I believe that Matusz’s four pitches, all of which are above-average pitches that he can throw for strikes, is a good enough repertoire to shortly make him a front-line starter in the AL East.
Arrieta only has made seven starts this season and Tillman, five, so it’s tough to read much into those two starters at this point. But Arrieta certainly looks like he has a four-pitch repertoire that will play at the big league level, while Tillman’s major league outings for the most part have left much to be desired, but he has dominated at Triple-A. Tillman, though, has recently added a cut fastball to his arsenal, which, if he continues to develop it, should offset his straight-as-a-string four-seam fastball. The recent back-to-back outings from Tillman and Arrieta against the Rangers were certainly a pleasant sight, as the two pitchers combined to throw 13.2 innings of two-run ball (one earned). But the biggest thing for the rest of this season results-wise is for these three pitchers to hold their own, especially against AL East foes, whom they’ll be seeing plenty of in the coming years.
Specifically, though, I want to see these pitchers progessing significantly from now until the end of the season. I want to see them making adjustments from start to start and at-bat to at-bat because American League hitters will certainly be making constant adjustments to them. I also want to see them progress from start to start in regards to further developing their stuff (especially in regards to Tillman) and their consistency.
I want these three young pitchers — and perhaps a fourth in Zach Britton, currently at Norfolk, if he gets promoted in September – to cement their spot in the Opening Day rotation in 2011. I want there to be no doubt that these three or four pitchers belong in the AL East come Opening Day of next year (Matusz, though, showed he belonged a year ago).
So given that the Orioles should have three or four viable options for the rotation next year, and the continued growth of those in the bullpen — namely Hernandez, Berken and Simon – are the Orioles right on track with their “grow the arms” philosophy of MacPhail’s rebuilding plan?
I don’t know. The Orioles could produce quality arms for all five spots in the rotation and most bullpen spots, and it might only be good enough to finish 81-81 and in fourth place in the AL East, in say, 2012. But there’s where the big problem seems to lay, because the only way the Orioles can pull off a Tampa Bay Rays-type of ascention to the top of the AL East is on the back of cheap, young pitching. It’s truly the only way. The Orioles can’t buy their way out of this mess — not with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox in the same division.
If the young pitching may be on track and is an organizational plus, than the lack of progress from the young hitters is certainly a alarming concern. While the lack of productive veterans surrounding the likes of Wieters, Jones and Reimold, along with Wieters’ catching duties and Reimold’s Achilles injury are all possible reasons for the lack of progress of the three, it certainly isn’t total justification for the severe lack of progression among the three hitters.
There’s no reason on the planet that can justify Wieters, a highly advanced hitter through college and the minor leagues, having a .672 OPS at the All-Star Break. There’s no reason that can justify Reimold hitting .215 at Norfolk a year after being a legitimate AL Rookie of the Year with 15 homers. There’s no reason that can justify Jones swinging at everything and his on-base percentage dropping from .335 last season to .304 this season, concurrent with his walk rate dropping from 6.9% to a league-low 2.7%.
So what gives? There’s something clearly wrong organizationally with developing young hitting at the big league level. The constant theme – for me, at least (and I’m no scout) — has to be these three hitters’ inability to make adjustments. I feel like I’m watching the same exact approach with each hitter for every at-bat, even with Reimold was in the big leagues back in April and early May.
Throw in the fact that you can count the organization’s legitimate hitting prospects on one hand, and there’s clearly something amiss organizationally with developing young hitters. I just don’t know what.
Switching gears a bit, I believe the backbone of any rebuilding organization — the draft and international scouting, both of which have been markedly improved under MacPhail — still have to be improved. The draft and the international market are two areas in which the Orioles have no excuse to fully complete with the beasts of the AL East. Put as many resources as humanly possible into these two areas in the form of scouts, facilities, and dollars in order to sign as many quality young players into the organization as possible. Hell, make the commisioner’s office scream and holler about the absurdly high amount of money you’re spending in the draft. This is an absolute must.
But make no mistake about it — the Orioles’ organization is in much, much better shape than when MacPhail took over in mid-2007. At that time, the Orioles were in worse shape than an expansion franchise. Don’t let this disastrous first half distract anyone from that fact.
All statistics are courtesy of FanGraphs.
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Totally agree with you. Cheap, young pitching (cheap young talent in general), is the only way the Orioles will be able to compete in the AL East. You have to give these young arms time to develop though. People expect these guys to come up and be lights out. It’s not going to happen. Pitchers, especially an entire new staff of pitchers, will take time to develop. That’s what I want to see this year and next year. I want to see these young arms progress. At some point though, they are going to needs bats behind them to back them up.