The Baltimore Orioles had a problem.

In 1996, the Orioles soared to the playoffs on a monster offense that scored 949 runs. Not only was this the best offense Baltimore would ever put onto the field, it was an offense that has been topped only a few times during baseball's modern era. New Oriole Robbie Alomar teamed up Rafael Palmeiro and Brady Anderson to create one of the very best lineup fronts we're likely to ever see. But it wasn't enough to cover up the woes of the pitching and defense, which surrendered 903 runs. The 2000 Orioles are the only iteration to top that number since the franchise moved to Baltimore.

Until Derek Jeter and the 2009 Yankees captured the World Series crown, no team had ever achieved that ultimate success with a 35 (or older) year old shortstop. The position is just too demanding for a veteran with a lot of mileage to continue to play it at a high level. The position is also cornerstone to the entire defense; a bad shortstop will inevitably lead to a porous defense and then to a lot of runs allowed. Having an aging shortstop is akin to trying to fight with one hand tied behind your back. And as it happened, the 1996 Orioles starred just such a 35 year old shortstop.

Cal Ripken had stopped being just a baseball player for a couple of years by this point. By the time the first ticket to the game on September 6, 1995 was sold The Legend of Cal Ripken, Jr. had overtaken his actual contributions on the field. In one sense that's too bad because it underrates his incredible talents, but in another sense why not? Baseball needs bigger-than-life heroes and villains. There could never be a better hero than the tremendous shortstop with the blue collar attitude of "come to work hard every day" at a time when the money athletes were making was coming into the spotlight.

Cal Ripken was bigger than the Baltimore Orioles. That was a big problem.

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Rebuilding the bench, which had been a disaster for Baltimore in 2011, was one of new Oriole General Manager Dan Duquette's offseason tenets. The decidedly unsexy decisions to bring on the likes of Nick Johnson, Jai Miller, Taylor Teagarden, and Endy Chavez were never going to be game-changers, but there was some mild enthusiasm to be found in the moves. Chavez in particular was seen as a wonderful improvement. This was an established veteran, a good and versatile defender with some speed who wouldn't completely embarrass himself at the plate. Compared to 2011's under-cooked adventures of Felix Pie (worst player in MLB in 2011, via wins above replacement) Chavez alone could bring the Orioles an extra two wins.

It is May 8th and Chavez actually looks worse than Pie somehow. Last year Pie hit a meager .220/.264/.280 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) in 175 plate appearances. Chavez sits at .127/.172/.145 in 60 PA. Chavez has also been thrown out stealing twice without yet swiping a bag. If his offensive production does not pick up, the Orioles will have managed the improbable: downgrade from the worst player in baseball.

Okay, so the thing is that it's early. It's like really, really, really early. When you ask a national writer why he's not giving the Orioles more respect (baseball prospectus still gives the O's less than a 5% chance of making the playoffs) the answer is: it's freaking early. The odds that Endy Chavez is suddenly done as a major leaguer are not nothing, but they certainly aren't over 80%. But where exactly are those odds?

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It was the baseball game that couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

At first, it was a game about a starting pitcher struggling with his command and getting knocked around. Jason Hammel, who flirted with a no-hitter against the Minnesota Twins, simply was not that same crisp pitcher right out of the gate. He fell behind his batter batter 3-0. By the time he had bases loaded with two outs in the second inning and the imposing figure of Jose Bautista standing in the batter's box, Hammel had thrown 54 pitches and the Orioles were down 2-1.

Then, Brett Lawrie decided to do his best Adam Savage impression on the phrase "fortune favors the bold", attempting to steal home. He was thrown out easily, ending Toronto's opportunity to put the knock-out punch on Hammel. And suddenly, for one reason or another, everything was different. Hammel breezed through the third inning on fifteen pitches. He breezed through the fourth on fourteen pitches. The fifth only took him twelve pitches.

Meanwhile, Chris Davis proved his scouting report highly accurate by destroying a hanging mistake pitch for his first home run of the season, giving the O's a 3-2 lead in the fourth inning. The game was now about a pitcher settling down and the Orioles cruising to a victory on the back of a clutch homer.

Enter from stage left: Matt Lindstrom, who promptly pitched into a meltdown with an assist from noted non-Reynolds third baseman Wilson Betemit. Betemit missed a highly field-able ball for an error. That would have been the second out, and the inning would have ended on Eric Thames' fly-out, but instead Thames was credited with a game-tying sacrifice fly, and the inning ended with the Jays up 4-3.

Betemit then completed his impression of Mark Reynolds by lining a home run in the 8th off Casey Janssen to tie the game back up. So we settled in for yet another game of bullpen attrition. After the marathon Yankee series, I'm beginning to worry about bullpen attrition myself.

Enter from stage right: Nolan Reimold. Now, for the past three years a lot of us Oriole bloggers have been waiting for this exact kind of opportunity for Reimold. The guy has power and on-base skills, and those are kind of the two things you really want from baseball hitters. He pulled a monster clutch two run home run off Francisco Cordero in the top of the ninth to give the Orioles the lead, and you know what? When Reimold is The Guy, it is extra awesome for me.

Then Jim Johnson came on and pitched a quick ninth inning despite a defensive misplay from first baseman Ryan Flaherty. Funny that, a closer with an ability to close games without a lot of drama.

Jake Arrieta tugs on his cap, as he always does before a pitch, and steps on the pitching rubber. Denard Span steps into the batters box and readies in his stance. Matt Wieters sets up down and away. Jake Arrieta pumps in a 94 mile per hour fastball, down and away. Span doesn't offer at it, taking strike one. The 2012 season finally begins for the Baltimore Orioles.

Arrieta's gem on Opening Day set the theme for the weekend: pure and utter doom laid down upon the Minnesota Twins, courtesy the Orioles' starting rotation. Even those fans who don't hold much hope for the 2012 season - with much of their ennui coming from the heretofore sorry state of the rotation - had to be warmed by the performance of Jason Hammel, Tommy Hunter, and Jake Arrieta.

The other side to that coin is that the O's were facing the Minnesota Twins, an offense that plated the second fewest runs in the American League in 2011 and then watched their three best hitters leave through free agency. The Minnesota model that Arrieta saw on Friday afternoon featured just four established major league hitters with a career OPS over .740 against right handers. Two of those hitters, Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer, are possibly still in recovery mode from various injuries. One of the others, Josh Willingham, is himself a right-hander. Arrieta has limited righties to just a .652 OPS in his career so far, compared to .859 versus lefties.The Twins also did not walk very much in 2011, preferring a high-contact approach.

The deck was stacked in Jake's favor, as it was the rest of the weekend - Hunter even had the fourth righty-masher, Ryan Doumit, sit against him. Did that innate advantage especially matter on Friday afternoon?

Wieters signals for another fastball and sets again, low and away from Span. This one sails away, not even close and the count goes to one-and-one. The story with Arrieta in his career is not that the other team beats him, it's that he beats himself. His stuff has always been good but his ability to rein it in and command it for quality outings is what holds him back. Wieters sets up inside for the third pitch, but this fastball comes in high and tight. Arrieta is close to falling behind his first batter. Wieters sets up down and away again, and the fourth fastball comes in high again and catching plenty of plate. Span hits it, a weak tapper back to the mound. He's out, an easy one-three.

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Here at Camden Chat we offer our sincerest congratulations to Brian Matusz for somewhat improbably recapturing a starting job on the 2012 Orioles Opening Day roster. Matusz dealt with a horrific year filled with injuries, coaching changes, and conditioning problems in 2011, and put up one of the worst seasons ever. But that's all for the history books now, because Brian Matusz is back! He's had a healthy and encouraging spring training, and I can see the glimmers of hope for him creeping in around Birdland.

But two questions remain: what exactly were Matusz's issues in 2011, and what measuring stick can we use in the early goings of 2012 to figure out just how "back" he really is? If you are on the Twitter and follow the various Oriole reporters, the answer you might have in mind is that his fastball velocity was down in 2011, but it's been back up this Spring, and as long as it's up he should be a good pitcher. I disagree with this analysis.

Previously on Camden Chat, we learned that Brian Matusz's struggled in 2011 against left-handed batters, and that it wasn't based on his fastball. Instead it was shoddy command, particularly of his primary offspeed pitch the slider, which drove down his strikeout rate and drove up his home run rate. Today we'll look at his performance (or lack thereof) against right handed batters.

We divided Matusz's career into five distinct time periods when we last looked at him, so let's stick with it. The periods are his introductory tour in 2009, the first half of 2010, his outstanding second half of 2010, June 2011 when he was clearly still affected from his season-opening DL stint, and finally August/September of 2011 after his return from a trip to AAA Norfolk.

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I posted the start of this as a comment over at The Loss Column on a post about Mike Mussina entering the Orioles Hall of Fame and immediately realized that it was one of those rare moments where what I'm trying to say actually comes across. I know a lot of you out there don't feel this way, and I respect that. This is my story, and this whole thing really cuts deeply into who I am, not just as a baseball fan, but as a person.

And really, this is why we induct people into the Hall of Fame, to remember and to celebrate them and their impact on ourselves. So I wanted to share with you all.

I lived in Rochester, NY for six years and spent a lot of the disgustingly hot summers up there watching Yankee games on YES because that’s what was on. It wasn't entertaining; spending your life rooting against a team – especially a wildly successful one – isn’t remotely satisfying.

It got to the point that I could feel myself becoming less of an Oriole fan and more of a Yankee hater. You might think those come in one package, but they don’t. I cared less about the Orioles getting better and more about the Yankees getting worse. I’d celebrate their losses, especially in the playoffs, with far more glee than any Oriole win would give me.

I hated that feeling.

Living in anger and hatred, even on as trivial a scale as sports fandom, really blows. I blamed New York for the sorry state of the Orioles and I wanted revenge somehow. I wanted to watch the Yankees fall apart and experience what I've been through rooting for the O's. But then I did two things: One, I realized the sorry state of the Orioles has nothing to do with the Yankees, or Mike Mussina, or Mark Teixeira, or anybody except the Orioles themselves. Two, I stopped wallowing in my anger and stopped obsessing about New York and starting loving the Orioles again.

I mean, I still root against the Yankees, don’t get me wrong, but screw’em, who cares about ‘em? I’m an Orioles fan – I root for the Orioles and I celebrate the Orioles. And when I made that conscious choice, I found that – damn it – I loved Mike Mussina again.

You know, when I was first learning to love baseball, it was because of Moose, Chris Hoiles, Brady Anderson, and of course Cal Ripken.I can't honestly say I remember much if anything game-wise from when those guys were around, but I do remember playing in my parents' backyards and pretending to be each of them. I'd mimic Cal's weird batting stances, check the runner on first before pitching like Moose did, slug grand slams like Hoiles, and even bat left-handed, bat perpendicular to the plate, like Brady. Those four guys are why I fell in love with the game, and so are the very definition of Orioles, because without them I'd be a completely different - and lesser - man.

I hope that the six year olds of today have found their heroes on this team, too. I'm not sure I would have.

When Moose goes into the Orioles Hall of Fame, I will be there toasting him, cheering him , and wearing my late ’90s Mussina t-shirt that I still have after all these years. The Orioles that I knew and loved, the Orioles that I miss so dearly, will feel whole and re-united again. For at least a little while.

Yesterday, Orioles LHP Tsuyoshi Wada pitched in an exhibition contest against the Minnesota Twins. It didn't go well; Wada struggled with his command and was knocked around a little bit by a Twins lineup that featured six regulars: Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Denard Span, Alexi Casilla, Ben Revere, and Jamey Carroll. That's not murderer's row, but it is a major league lineup.

It wasn't a good game for Wada in a dual sense, as he has a limited number of opportunities to prove to the Orioles that he should be the fifth starter on Opening Day over competition from Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Dana Eveland, and Alfredo Simon. After the game, Wada waxed apologetic for his poor performance (from Roch Kubatko's blog):

It didn't go that well. I'm not satisfied.

I wasn't able to throw correctly with my normal form today. The first-pitch strike with the fastball I pitched was hit easily. I have to work on it more.

If I keep pitching like this, I know I won't be able to throw and be in the starting rotation, I might not even be able to throw in general (for the Orioles) if I keep up throwing like this. I have to work on it.

I was missing a lot of two-seamers in the second inning. I couldn't throw a strike, a lot of walks in that inning. That inning wasn't good. I feel really bad for the position players about it. I said sorry about it.

I was trying to have fun today, and it wasn't awkward or anything. I liked the atmosphere, I was really looking forward to pitching today. That's why I feel sorry for the crowd that came here to watch me.

That's a little bit of a different take from the usual pro ball player rebop, which is kind of nice if a little jarring. Manager Buck Showalter and catcher Matt Wieters both more or less dismissed Wada's down attitude, saying that, hey, it's Spring Training, we believe in Wada's stuff, he's going to get some more chances to show it off.

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A while back now, I saw a panel at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference featuring Bill James, John Walsh, John Thorn, John Dewan, and Dean Oliver. The topic on hand was re-working box scores to more accurately reflect reality while at the same maintaining the casual fan-friendliness of the existing boxscore. Specifically, we now have the ability to actually change the win statistic for pitchers into something meaningful, that can maybe help bridge the paradigm gap between sabr-friendly and old-school fans.

The ability to evolve any given statistic that the panel referred to has to do with the vast and ever-widening social facets of the internet. Basically, Bill James and the rest of the panel argued that if we were really serious about re-defining the pitcher win, we could viral market a replacement for it. Because of the democratic nature of the internet, any such evolution would naturally undergo many different mutations until it became something that everyone could agree upon.

The idea of improving the win stat might seem trivial, but I really don't think it is. The sabrmetrics-based paradigm gap I referenced is perhaps the biggest issue facing baseball writers and broadcasters today, as the more stat-headed among us among us end up rolling our eyes, shouting at the television or computer, or just tuning out completely when the writers that either can't or don't care to understand the theories advanced statistics expose. Meanwhile, the less stat-headed among us inevitability do the exact same thing when some nerd starts talking about Bayesian Expressions and Markov Models and all kinds of algorithms. There needs to be a bridge here.

So, consider this my initial concept of an improved pitcher win, and please take this ball and roll with it in whichever direction you think it ought to go next, even if that is perhaps backwards in my little opinion.

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Real quick: today the Orioles sent Matt Antonelli, Armando Galarraga, Brad Bergesen, Steve Tolleson, John Hester, Scott Beerer, Jason Berken, and Dontrelle Willis to minor league camp. Brian Roberts and Zach Britton were unsurprisingly put on the 15-day disabled list. None of these cuts were surprising in the paradigm of my post earlier today on where things stand. The updated Spring Training battles are:

Backup Catcher: Taylor Teagarden vs. Ronny Paulino. Paulino would require a spot on the 40 man roster, though as long as Teagarden is not healthy the job would appear to be his.

Last Bench Spot: Jai Miller vs. Nick Johnson vs. Keeping an extra reliever. Johnson would also require a spot on the 40 man roster, though if Miller loses the job then he would be designated for assignment to create the roster space.

Last Rotation Spot: Brian Matusz vs. Tsuyoshi Wada vs. Chris Tillman. Dana Eveland and Alfredo Simon are also options, but either would be pretty big surprises, despite Tillman and Matusz's ability to be sent to AAA Norfolk.

Bullpen Spots: Matt Lindstrom, Pat Neshek, Zach Phillips, and Darren O'Day are all vying for spots that don't exist unless the bench is left short or the Orioles only take two of Matusz, Eveland, Wada, Simon, Tillman, and Luis Ayala north with them. Of that group, only Matusz and Tillman can be optioned to the minors. Simon and Wada have dealt with injuries most of the spring but appear to be healthy at this point. All of the above candidates (Lindstrom et al) can be sent to AAA Norfolk this season. Neshek is not on the 40 man roster, so he would require a corresponding move.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, there's a game tonight on MLB.TV, or the Pittsburgh channels if you're out in Western Pennsylvania. Old friend (unless you're a member of the media) Monsieur Erik Bedard starts for the Pirates as he prepares for their Opening Day. Tommy Hunter gets the nod from the Orioles.

Your lineups, courtesy MLB.com's Britt Ghiroli:

ORIOLES

Nolan Reimold LF
J.J. Hardy SS
Nick Markakis RF
Adam Jones CF
Matt Wieters C
Mark Reynolds 3B
Wilson Betemit 1B
Ronny Paulino DH
Robert Andino 2B

PIRATES

Alex Presley LF
Jose Tabata RF
Andrew McCutchen CF
Neil Walker 2B
Garrett Jones 31B
Rod Barajas C
Pedro Alvarez 3B
Clint Barmes SS

Somewhere on a back field at the Orioles Spring Training complex in Sarasota, I like to imagine Steve Tolleson and Scott Beerer are flipping a coin and noting that they've gotten heads now seventy-six times in a row. It's making them question everything. Were they even real before Spring Training began? Will they still exist when they've been long forgotten, like the Eider Torreses of days gone by? They flip the coin again. Heads.

Meanwhile, on the main stage the Orioles roster is taking form. A few specific roles are up for grabs, but day by day the picture becomes clearer. With just nine days left until the Opening Day roster must be finalized, where exactly does everyone stand?

Positional Starters

Not much to report here. We knew heading into camp that the starting nine were going to be Robert Andino, Wilson Betemit, Chris Davis, J.J. Hardy, Adam Jones, Nick Markakis, Nolan Reimold, Mark Reynolds, and Matt Wieters. There have been trade rumors surrounding Reynolds, but it's very unlikely that he's going anywhere before the season starts. Nobody got seriously hurt, and Brian Roberts has not yet recovered from his concussion problems, so the starting nine is exactly who we thought it would be.

The Bench

Backup Catcher

Taylor Teagarden was one of the Orioles' premier moves this past offseason, but he's dealt with back issues and has played just twice this spring. The last time he caught was back on March 6. Ronny Paulino didn't arrive in camp until three weeks after pitchers and catchers reported because of visa issues, has emerged as the de facto backup in Teagarden's absence. If Teagarden makes a roaring comeback and avoids the disabled list, the job is still his, as he is out of minor league options and Paulino is on a minor league contract.

Fourth Outfielder

This was never much of a battle, though neither Endy Chavez nor Jai Miller can be optioned to the minor leagues this year. Chavez is by far the more accomplished player and stronger defender, and has even been looked at as a possible platoon/leadoff option by manager Buck Showalter.

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Throughout the Spring, LHP Zach Britton has been in recovery mode for shoulder inflammation. At the end of May 2011, Britton's ERA sat at 2.93, but his numbers began to decline soon thereafter. He was sent back to AA Bowie after a shellacking in Boston on July 8, with his ERA now at 4.05. He returned to the big leagues after 3 minor league starts, made two more disastrous starts giving up 10 earned runs in 5.2 innings, and then landed on the disabled list with shoulder inflammation.

At the time, Britton said he had been dealing with shoulder discomfort since June 28th against St. Louis. The Orioles' doctors diagnosed him with inflammation and was prescribed rest. He came back off the DL after 17 days and then pitched straight through the rest of the season, making 8 starts with a 4.47 ERA.

The wisdom of having him pitch at all in September is certainly something to question, but at any rate Britton has still been dealing with the soreness and inflammation in his pitching shoulder this spring. It has gotten to the point that he has been to see noted surgeon Dr. James Andrews - doctor to the baseball stars! - who found no structural damage in the shoulder. That's good news; there will be no surgery for now. Instead, Dr. Andrews prescribed a relatively new treatment called Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) Therapy.

PRP Therapy involves taking a sample of the patient's blood, separating the platelet-rich plasma in it via centrifuge, and then injecting the plasma into the patient's injured area, which for Zach Britton would be his left shoulder. Platelets are very small blood cells created in bone marrow which are a principal partner in physical healing of wounds, facilitating clotting to form seals around injuries as well as increasing tissue regeneration and - to the point at hand - reducing inflammation. The platelet-rich injection theoretically adds a lot of healing ability to areas of the body that normally have a poor blood supply.

According to this Scientific American article, PRP Therapy has been in use since the mid-90s to promote healing of bone tissue following spinal surgery, as well as soft tissue recovery after plastic surgery, and has recently become a trend for sports-related injuries. Toronto-based Dr. Anthony Galea was one of the PRP frontiersmen, treating high-profile cases including Tiger Woods. You might remember Dr. Galea, as he was arrested in 2009 and investigated by the FBI for potentially supplying athletes with illegal performance enhancing drugs (notable Yankee Alex Rodriguez was connected to that case, as Galea treated A-Rod when he was recovering from hip surgery in 2009). He eventually pleaded guilty to bringing mislabeled drugs into the United States.

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When I look at the serious rotation candidates in camp this Spring, I see a lot of possibilities. I mean that literally, as I can see basically each and every one of the nine pitchers crashing and burning at some point in 2012 and I can also picture each of them having a solid little run of success, through good fortune or actual development. The closest the Orioles have to a certain thing is Jason Hammel, the greybeard of the staff, who I have projected for around a mediocre 4.50 ERA.

This is why there won't be a concluding piece to my "Projecting the Orioles" series this spring. When I look at the run prevention unit of the Orioles, my reaction is to throw my hands up and say "Who knows!". The fielding of the Orioles is easy to project: it was well below average last year, and the roster is largely the same, so look for it to be well below average again this year. The pitching, not so much. There's just too much variance with the Asian and young pitchers.

Which is good to admit, honestly. Better to admit ignorance than make an ignorant mistake.

However, at the heavy risk of having the fickleness of Spring Training screw with me, Brian Matusz is doing a lot to force optimism unto Birdland. I have no idea what his stats are so far in the Grapefruit League, nor do I care, but his stuff is getting rave reports with improved velocity and command. Is a good Spring Training reason enough to bring Matusz north for Opening Day?

If I have my reports right, the (non-Matusz) leaders for Opening Day rotation seem to be, in no order: Jake Arrieta, Zach Britton, Wei-Yin Chen, Jason Hammel, and Tommy Hunter. Hunter and Britton have been dealing with injuries early on, so it is possible that either of them could open the season on the disabled list, with Tsuyoshi Wada replacing them. The other candidates, Chris Tillman and Dana Eveland, both seem like much longer shots. Brian Matusz would be replacing Hunter, Britton, or Wada.

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There aren't a lot of things I really remember about former catcher Javy Lopez's time with the Orioles. I was excited when he signed. It was a part of an offseason spending spree that promised my then-18 year old self that "things were finally going to be different". He seemed to come to the Orioles with promise and then become weary and disappointing and then left quietly, traded for outfielder-nobody-ever-heard-of Adam Stern. A couple years ago, Nestor Aparicio told me about Lopez showing up at the dilapidated spring training complex in Fort Lauderdale and being stunned at the state of the Orioles. I guess I can buy that story.

Lopez has a memoir out now: Behind the Plate (written with Gary Caruso). What I'm struggling with is identifying exactly who this book was intended for. Lopez is not a writer; the book reads like an extended interview done by a former pro athlete whose first language was not English. That's charming in its lack of pretentiousness, but frustrating on many other levels. The words come off stilted and devoid of the tension that natural storytellers easily imbue into their work. From the chapter "Transition", about his experience with free agency:

Age is what killed me. [The Padres] could have had me. I was going to be 33 years old. [Ramon Hernandez] was only 27. He got two years for $7 million. That was why. He was there for two years, and then he went to Baltimore, where I was.

I hoped I'd get a call from the Dodgers. They were so focused on getting Vladimir Guerrero, who was a free agent. Ivan Rodriguez was a free agent too. Benji Molina was a free agent. And me. Nice year to be a free agent! I wound up getting three year for $22.5 million from Baltimore, and I really appreciate the confidence they showed in me.

Each chapter deals with an interesting topic in and of itself. Topics are brought up that I'm either terribly interested in learning more about, like the way the Puerto Rico baseball culture changed when it was added to the Rule IV draft, or topics I've already taken in information on but crave more of, like the added pressure of being a Latin American player in the minor leagues. That topic was covered wonderfully by the movie Sugar (go watch that now. I'll wait.) and even featured a common scene as in Behind the Plate, as a Latin player embarrassingly struggles ordering breakfast in a diner in East Nowhere, USA.

But none of Lopez's personal musings on these topics really dig satisfyingly deep. He brushes up against the way the Sam Perlozzo/Mike Flanagan Orioles were run, and paints them as either inept, malicious towards their players, or both, but that's basically the whole of his comment. The book reads like a single interview done in preparation for a series of other really good, in-depth books.

So who is Behind the Plate for? It's telling that the co-author, Gary Caruso, is described as a "sports journalist, Braves historian, and author of The Braves Encyclopedia". This is a book for Braves fans eager to forget the bleak ending of last season and remember the glory days of Maddux, Smoltz, 1995, and Javy Lopez. There's no shame in that, and Javy comes off as personable a baseball hero as a Braves fan could want. But that's no selling point for us Orioles fans.

On Thursday, I got into a twitter conversation with a few guys, @DempseysArmy, @BmoreSportsLife, and @luke_jackson10, about how much better the Orioles will be offensively this year. We ended up talking about lineup optimization and specifically Vladimir Guerrero. Luke then prompted me to write in to one of my favorite baseball podcasts, Up and In: the Baseball Prospectus Podcast (which I can't recommend enough), and try and get a comment from Kevin Goldstein and Jason Parks. I did, and they answered the e-mail on air. How cool!

My e-mail:

I'm a relative rookie at amateur baseball analysis, though I'd like to think I'm getting smarter every day. I absorb as much as I can about whatever sides of the games I can get my hands on, and so I've read a lot about lineup optimization, including the caveat that the difference between a "perfect lineup" and a "perfectly horrible lineup" is not nearly as big a deal as I want it to be as a frustrated fan.

Still, last August when the Baltimore Orioles were grinding away with one of their worst hitters, Vladimir Guerrero, entrenched as the clean-up hitter I began to get angry with manager Buck Showalter who, in the heat of the season, seemed to me to be either not paying attention to Vlad's underwhelming performance or otherwise unwilling to shuffle him around. The fact that the actual production of the team would not be significantly helped seemed less important to me than at least giving a sign that a sub .700 OPS was unacceptable.

As I said, I can admit that I generally don't know what I'm talking about and as time goes by I'm starting to think I was wrong to criticism Showalter or the Orioles because his job is literally managing personalities, and as I see it today, when faced with the option of potentially making the work environment uncomfortable by slighting a Hall of Famer versus picking up the 0.03 runs per game or whatever that would be gained in a hopeless season by optimizing the lineup, I would personally certainly almost always take the former option.

So my question is this: Is this close to the general thought process of big league managers? Is it different for AAA managers (or at the lower levels where development trumps winning even more)? Is the culture of the game one that demands some degree of deference to big-named veterans, and should it be more or less than it currently is?

Thanks guys. I'm not even close to a long-time listener but I have very quickly become a big fan of the podcast and BP at large.

-Andrew

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Apropos of nothing, a quick rumination on the differences in run scoring environments around professional baseball:

It is taken for granted that pitchers don't especially want to be in the AL East. The list of failures in this division is much longer than the list of successes. The offenses of all five teams have been usually a cause for consternation among the professional ball-throwers. And of course we should not forget the cozy dimensions of Yankee Stadium and Camden Yards as well as the imposing batter-friendly features of Fenway Park and the artificial turfs of the Rogers Centre and Tropicana Field.

It is no surprise to learn that the average runs scored of the non-Oriole AL East teams at home or in Camden Yards in 2011 was 5.09 per game, 0.63 runs higher than the average American League team. The run scoring environment in this division is not to be underestimated. That's why we will often discount pitchers' chances when moving into the division, as you and I no doubt are doing with, say, new Orioles Dana Eveland and Jason Hammel.

Consider though, that among the explicitly stated reasons for the Oriole brass to acquire these two pitchers were their success in other high run scoring environments. Eveland spent most of 2011 in Pitching Hell - that is, Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the average runs per game was 7.35. Hammel spent 2011 in the major league's closest approximation of Albuquerque: Coors Field, where 5.35 runs per game were scored.

What's interesting is that both Coors Field and Albuquerque were stronger run scoring environments relative to their leagues than the AL East. was. The AL East teams (at home or in Baltimore) averaged 0.63 more than all context-neutral AL teams, but in Albuquerque the average is 1.79 runs per game higher than the Pacific Coast League average, and in Colorado it is 1.22 runs higher than the NL average.

Additionally, both Eveland (5.40 ERA in Albuquerque) and Hammel (5.20 ERA in Colorado) pitched better than average in those terrible pitching environments. None of this means quality seasons or success against New York and Boston are coming for them in Baltimore. There are many differences in the kind of pitcher that succeeds for the Albuquerque Isotopes compared to the kind of pitcher with the same relative success pitching for the Baltimore Orioles. This is simply food for thought for when we automatically assume that all pitching numbers must get worst simply for coming to the big, bad AL East.

In his final game of 2011, Brian Matusz entered the fifth inning sweating but somehow holding on. It was 3-3 in Detroit and Matusz had thrown 63 pitches. He must have known that his season-long struggle was nearing an end, and a part of me thinks that surely must have come as a relief. Matusz would later call 2011 the toughest year of his life, the first time he really struggled and couldn't bounce back. Knowing the end was coming must have eased the burden a little bit. Knowing he had a chance to keep his team in the game - the O's had just tied it up in the top of the inning - must've helped, too.

The top of the Tigers lineup waited for him. Five batters later Victor Martinez blasted a hanging breaking ball into the stands. 6-3 Detroit. Then Alex Avila stepped into the box. Avila quickly fell behind before waving helplessly at a two-strike curveball to end the inning. Matusz ran off the field, his season having finished in an altogether typical fashion: he put the game out of reach for the O's (who would lose 10-6) but literally finished on an up note, if you care to play the extreme optimist.

I don't know if this post is going to exactly raise the curtain on Matusz's struggles in 2011. It is, however, obvious to me that the context with which we will experience his Spring Training and early 2012 is severely lacking and I mean to partially rectify that. In search of a more detailed examination on the erstwhile ace-in-training, I have turned to the MLBAM and Sportsvision Pitch F/X library. The pitch classifications we are about to parse through are my own, though I did lean on the new Player Cards at Brooks Baseball for guidance.

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Last year, I said that it would be fair to expect the Oriole offense to be significantly better than they were in 2010, by something like 100 runs or so. And that basically happened, as the '11 Orioles scored 95 runs more than their previous iteration. In fact, no other team in the sport improved their offense as much as the Orioles from 2010 to 2011. So much for all of the frustration caused by soul-killing strikeouts and Vladimir Guerrero's poor cleanup hitting, huh?

I've already taken a look at the 2012 bench and made an estimation of it collectively scoring 80 to 100 runs, for a relatively large improvement over the poor bench performance in 2011. Today our focus moves to the starting lineup. This is the performance breakdown of last year's starters:

*As I normally do, I refer to weighted on base average (wOBA), the all-encompassing offensive statistic of choice. Runs Created is derived from it and plate appearances. All data can be found on fangraphs.com.

While Reynolds actually spent time at first and Davis at third, but from an offensive point of view, their position is meaningless. Davis replaced Lee in the lineup. All other players, besides pitchers (who, led by Zach Britton, created 5 runs of their own), figured into the bench part of this project. As a group, the starters totaled 657 runs in 5385 plate appearances.

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My immediate reaction when I heard about the Jeremy Guthrie trade yesterday was a blend of shock, anger, and confusion. The deal deprived the Orioles of one of my favorites and the return left me wanting in a bad way. But it is important to let these things percolate and look at them with a more rational mind, and I found that as the shock wore off, I had less and less to complain about with the trade.

Yes, Jason Hammel is not as good a pitcher as Jeremy Guthrie and Matt Lindstrom's walk rates have been known to have a certain Kevin Gregg-ness to them. But Guthrie is 33 years old with a 4.19 career ERA and is a free agent after this season. I can easily believe the reports out of the front office that this winter the demand just wasn't there. Roy Oswalt is still out of work, and it took a longer time than expected for Edwin Jackson to settle for just one year. The pitching market isn't tremendous, and in that light this trade seems relatively fair.

So what's missing from this package that would have made it more palatable?

The answer is youth. This trade doesn't make the O's significantly better in 2012 and does nothing for them long-term. I can hammer on this point for weeks: the Orioles won 69 games in 2011 and they need to be thinking long-term. But, then, it appears to be the case that nobody wanted to give up youth for Guthrie. Yesterday de facto General Manager Dan Duquette explicitly said "We didn't have any offers of young prospects." Teams are valuing their young talent higher than ever before. That's unfortunate, but it is what it is. You have to hope now that Hammel or Lindstrom have big years and build up enough trade value to get the needed young talent into the Oriole organization.

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I'll be the first to admit, this isn't an exact science. Projecting a baseball team's expected performance over 162 games requires making accurate assumptions about a dozen or more different contributing factors per player, not to mention taking into account how the competition has changed. There are a lot of balls in the air, and if you drop one it can throw the entire calculation off wildly. Last year, I spent a ton of time projecting the Orioles to win about 81 games. They did not even come remotely close.

But I do still think projecting the Orioles is an important game to play. Firstly it puts some critical thinking towards how the team is built. I made several mistakes last year, clearly, and now it is challenge for me to get smarter about it and try and view the team more accurately. Secondly, even when I am wrong about a projected win total - even wildly wrong - when you compare what I thought would happen with what actually did happen, you can learn things. For example, I wasn't alone when I talked about the young pitchers building off their strong run in late 2010, but now I've learned the hard lesson about how September stats and young pitchers have a tendency to break your heart. Or at least, I think I've learned that lesson.

My thesis remains the same this year as it was last year: if we project improvement in terms of runs scored and runs allowed relative to 2011's levels, we should have as strong a picture of what to expect as is possible. Today in Part One, we're talking about the runs scored half of that equation, and specifically we're focusing on the bench.

Our baseline: the 2011 Orioles scored 708 runs.

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Dan Duquette's tenure in Baltimore hasn't been especially awe-inspiring so far. You can expect the 2012 Orioles to look a lot like the 2011 Orioles, but with more pitching and bench depth. The one eye-catching difference on the roster is the two new starting pitchers from Nippon Professional Baseball. The NPB usually requires players making the jump to the big leagues to do it through the complicated posting system (made famous by Daisuke Matsuzaka, and this winter by Yu Darvish), but the O's picked up lefties Tsuyoshi Wada and Wei-Yin Chen through simple free agency.

Wada and Chen were two of the best pitchers in Japan. They both started game one of the championship Nippon Series, Wada for the Softbank Hawks and Chen for the Chunichi Dragons. To us though they are just names. Enigmas even. I don't think I could even name all of the NPB teams (I get tripped up on the Buffaloes and BayStars). Patrick Newman, though, is exactly the man to ask about the new faces on the Orioles. He already knew about Wada and Chen long before the first rumor linking them to Baltimore, because he runs NPB Tracker, the website for baseball news from Japan. You can also find him on the twitter at @npbtracker.

After the jump comes my interview with him. After that, do what I do and go spend your browsing time on his website. There's a tremendous amount of information to be gleaned from it. You can even search just for Chen info or just for Wada info.

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Last night, MLB.com's Britt Ghiroli passed along a few words from Buck Showalter:

You are going to see Mark start out at third base in the spring. That's where we would like for him to play. We think Mark is a lot better than he's shown statistically. I think he's going to come in [to camp] lighter and little more nimble.

[snip]

We know Chris can play a plus first base and we think Mark is a lot better than he showed last year. There are still some things we are looking at [this offseason], but right now, I think that's the plan.

Right, so, my immediate reaction on reading this was to literally yell out loud in my office at work. Which is admittedly not very mature of me, but, gosh, do we all remember Mark Reynolds 2011? Defensive statistics are a difficult thing to really grasp, but Reynolds as a third baseman registered the fourth worst season by Defensive Runs Saved (the Baseball Info Solutions' advanced defensive metric) in fangraphs' entire database at -29. In English: Mark Reynolds cost the Orioles 29 runs compared to an average defensive third baseman. The last third baseman to showcase himself that poorly was Ryan Braun in 2007 (-32 in comparable innings). Ryan Braun is now a mediocre left fielder.

I watched him all summer, and those numbers seem pretty dead on to me. Awful. Just awful.

That was the gist of what flashed through my brain when I heard that it was the Orioles' big plan to just send Reynolds right back out for 2012. Well, that and some sarcastic ideas about the efforts the O's have undergone to improve their rotation while basically completing ignoring their league-worst defense.

But then I actually spent more than half a second thinking about it.

Okay, so the first we have to do here is banish all variations on the phrase "His bat plays at the position". That phrase is highly relevant when talking about total value of a player and it is particularly relevant when talking about free agency. It is irrelevant for this problem, because the O's already have their principle players. They simply need to find the optimal configuration for them.

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Bottom of the second, one out, no score.

Adam Jones digs into the box, spits, twirls his bat into his set stance. All the while he looks out at the mound, preparing himself. He lays off the first pitch high and away, not even close. It is the last day of another forgettably terrible season, and I can't help but wonder how motivated he could possibly be in this at-bat. But he looks as locked in as he always does. The second pitch he rips down the line, foul. The third is a breaking ball, the classic down-and-away changeup that has always and will always fool him. The pitcher is lefty Jon Lester; Jones stepped into the box in trouble. Now he has two strikes and he's really in trouble. With two strikes he's just a .180 hitter.

Lester threads another changeup down and away, but Jones adjusts. He lunges, cutting his swing down, and puts wood on ball. The ball squibs out towards secondbase. The Boston shortstop, Marco Scutaro, fields it nimbly and throws to first, but far too late. Adam Jones has an infield single. The crowd claps but does not appreciate the moment for what it is. It will be the last time he stands on first base as a Baltimore Oriole.

Or at least I believe so. While the actual moves made by the Orioles this winter could at best be characterized as tepid roster tweaks, there have been a good number of interesting rumors surrounding the team. At the center of good ones sits Adam Jones. Which makes a ton of sense. Jones is one of the team's best players, but is in his arbitration years, is only two seasons away from free agency, and appears in many ways to have plateaued developmentally. His value to a bad team like the Orioles before he reaches free agency is significantly lower than his value to a competitive team in need of a good center fielder.

When it became clear towards the end of the season that the Orioles would have a new de facto General Manager for this offseason, I asked myself what I wanted to see from him or her. The answer I ended with was that I wanted to see a clear strong direction, either legitimately building or legitimately rebuilding. And, really, what I want is rebuilding. I have made the case more than a few times that the Orioles right now are not built primed to jump into competitive baseball.

There just isn't enough upside on the roster, and Adam Jones is a big part of that. He's a good player who I like, and I think he's got plenty of trade value, but the way the development of his production has stopped has me believing he isn't going to get much better. If the Orioles are going to take a huge step forward soon, "much better" is exactly what Jones (among others) needs to be. As evidence, I submit to you his career .319 on-base percentage, and his 2011 on-base percentage that matched it.

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A lazy observation: Pittsburgh and Baltimore are pretty similar in a lot of ways. They have two of the premiere NFL franchises going right now. They both have treated me to some really good food. I will say that the best dinner I ever had was in either Philadelphia (tapas) or Baltimore (crabhouse), and the best breakfast I ever had was in Pittsburgh (pancakes). They have two of the consensus best baseball parks in the world. They both also apparently only have enough karma to cover the areas of food, football, and stadia because both of their baseball teams stink.

The Pirates and the Orioles don't make very good trade partners. Neither team is past the turning point of the rebuilding cycle, so proposing a star-for-top-youngsters trade doesn't work. While the specific needs of each team seem to match up (the Orioles need run prevention, the Pirates need run scoring), the players available on either side don't solicit much enthusiasm for a deal.

So: The Orioles trade OF Nolan Reimold to Pittsburgh for LHP Jeff Locke

Nolan Reimold has had an unsteady career, but he does own a 108 OPS+ in the AL East despite the Orioles apparent public face to limit his playing time. Pirates outfielders (including the great Andrew McCutchen) totalled just a .326 wOBA in 2011, while Reimold clocked in at .341. He is pre-arbitration and should be in the prime of his playing days at age 28.

Jeff Locke is a left-handed starting pitcher who's next year in the major leagues will be his rookie season. He was ranked 8th among Pirates prospects before the 2011 season by Baseball-America, with the note that he could be the best player the Pirates received in the Nate McClouth trade. For what it's worth, he has a career minor league 3.85 ERA and 3.42 K/BB ratio. He'd almost certainly slide right into the starting rotation in Baltimore.

Is this a realistic trade proposal? I really have no idea. I'm scared of over-valuing Reimold and undervaluing Locke, and of failing to accurately suppose the mindset of the Pirates's front office. Are the Pirates really in a situation where they would be willing to surrender a quality pitching prospect for an improvement to their offense? Well...you tell me.

Within the scope of the failings of the 2011 season, where should we put the Orioles' loyalty to Vladimir Guerrero? I really do not want to keep harping on the guy, who I do have a large amount of respect for, and who wasn't especially high up on the list of issues for the team (he did not play any defense, and defense was The Problem). And yet, oh so much digital ink was spilled complaining about the signing of Guerrero, the cost of Guerrero, the lineup spot of Guerrero, and so on.

By August, I was writing things like "Vlad is making me doubt my life as an Orioles fan" and that the way the O's were using Vlad showed that maybe they are "not caring enough [about winning and losing] to pretend to show me that they're paying attention to the non-performance" of Guerrero. Today, with the benefit of not being invested on a daily basis, or perhaps the benefit of not having the Orioles to watch play baseball on a daily basis, I can see that that was all silly. The problem was not the production (as poor as it was), but rather the symbolic issue of the Orioles pandering to veterans, no matter their actual worth. Watching Guerrero stick around in the cleanup role was frustrating.

This wasn't limited to just one player or just one year. We were quixotically told throughout the rebuilding/youth movement that veteran leadership was a priority. The young players needed mentors, the young pitchers needed a batted-proven ace, the young hitters needed a proven cleanup hitter, and the bullpen needed a Proven Closer. So it was that the Orioles trotted out the Vlads, Atkins, Tejadas, Greggs, Millwoods, Gonzalezes, and Eatons of the world. And, to be fair, that wasn't always a bad thing; Gregg Zaun was a pretty good player in his second tour with the birds, for example. And, as I've never been in a professional clubhouse, I don't know how important a veteran presence can be for a group of precocious young ballplayers.

But what I can say for certain is that I don't want roster decisions to be made with "pandering to a veteran" as a priority, not even a low priority. I can see "pandering to a really good player", although I'd call it something like "complimenting, building around, and generally maximizing our use of a star player". But how many years a guy has been in the league and how well-known he is are not things that should matter at all in roster construction or strategy implementations.

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The other day I was out at lunch with some of my friends in the office, and in between jabs at our various rooting interests someone brought up the idea that maybe the Orioles aren't as screwed as everyone thinks. I have to admit that struck a chord for me, if only because of the sudden juxtaposition of last year's gleeful anticipation with today's gloomy disposition. The Orioles have lost only one arguably key player in Luke Scott while jettisoning a lot of dead roster weight. Yet, I don't see anyone - and certainly not myself - thinking about how better days are up ahead.

It is, of course, all about the pitching. The 2010 Orioles gave up the fifth most runs in baseball, but had enough youth and promise that many were predicting a big step forward in 2011. Instead, the team gave up about 90 runs more last season, finishing dead last in all of baseball in every single run prevention category. Had the '11 Oriole offense not improved as substantially as they did over the 2010 model, they may very well have lost nearly 110 games.

Our collective pessimism is well earned indeed.

However, what is slowly coming into focus about the current offseason in Baltimore is that the central plan is to live or die with that same core group of pitchers. Over and over I have heard sound bites from Buck Showalter discussing a three year timeframe for evaluating young pitching. And look at the pitching moves being made: Tsuyoshi Wada, Dana Eveland, and Darren O'Day are little more than tweaks and insurance policies to avoid throwing sub-replacement level players into the fire. Unless the next month changes the conversation in a big way, 2012 is going to have a very similar theme to 2011: It's time for the young pitchers to sink or swim. And this time, there's no more mulligans.

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It's a little loony, but I love the Baseball Winter Meetings. The entertainment value of the event has definitely skyrocketed in the twitter age, as my feed is now a cornucopia of rumors, negations of rumors, negations of negations of rumors, signings, buzz, and analysis. Unfortunately, the meetings are ending today and we are thrust back out into the plodding and uneven pizzicato of the offseason. In fact, traditionally the last day of the meetings is comprised of the Rule 5 draft and then a rush for the doors.

That has not exactly proven to be the case this year, with the Angels making big splashes this morning and the Orioles in the midst of trade talks.

As of this writing, the Orioles have done exactly zero major things this offseason. With apologies to the Darren O'Days, Dana Evelands, and Demarlo Hales of the world, it is safe to say that the Orioles have not yet meaningfully upgraded their talent pool in the long or the short term. Which is okay! The offseason still has a solid 70 days left in it, and if there is one trait that we all share as Oriole fans, I'll put money down on it being patience. Apocalyptic patience even.

While the O's have yet to make any moves, there has still been a duststorm of rumors surrounding Dan Duquette's team in Dallas. Most of these rumors will end up confined to the dustbins of history with no basis in reality. And there will be many other conversations and maybe-deals that don't get consummated or reported on. That threat of having one foot on creaky ground and one foot submerged in complete darkness, all caused by seriously having no idea what the truth of the matter is, is what I love about the Winter Meetings. They're nuts, and they offer just enough for you to gnaw on and complain about.

And so I present to you, after the jump a recap of the past few days and the various rumors of things that did or did not almost or possibly never happened to the Baltimore Orioles. Big thanks to MLBTradeRumors, by the way, for helping me keep the days relatively straight in my brain.

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Yesterday the MLBPA, with union head Michael Weiner, and the MLB owners, headed by commissioner Bud Selig, announced a new five year collective bargaining agreement, or CBA. This agreement is, on the most basic level, a deal that sets the rules for the sport and guarantees no strikes or lock-outs through the 2016 season. That guarantees at least 21 consecutive years of labor peace, which stands in a wonderful and sharp contrast to basketball, hockey, and even football which went through a contentious offseason that jeopardized games being played. You cannot understate how great it is to have a sport where there is no drama about work stoppages.

If you go to practically any baseball website today, you can find a summary of the details of the new CBA, along with some commentary on those changes. I'll even happily link you: Baseball America's Jim Callis, ESPN's Keith Law, fangraphs's Dave Cameron, and Baseball Nation's coverage are all good places to start. The general gist of the reactions from the pundits and, reportedly, from the front offices around the game is that these changes are bad for the long-term health of the sport. Specifically, the changes to the way amateur players are acquired in the draft and through international free agency, will force an unnecessary limiting of the talent pool feeding the major leagues, resulting in a weaker product down the road.

The rule in question is a cap (technically a soft one, but with penalties severe enough to make it ostensibly a hard cap) of allowed spending in the draft and international free agency, with an international draft looming. A lot of ink has been spilled over the implications of talent development in international markets which would fall under a draft system (as opposed to the free agency that is in place right now). Specifically, Puerto Rico has apparently seen its exporting talent dwindle significantly since becoming a part of the draft. Watching foreign markets for baseball dry up is one of, if not the, last things baseball needs. Quite the opposite, in fact; baseball needs to be ever-expanding.

But what's interesting to me is why impose limits on amateur spending at all? The players might see it as putting more available money towards signing them instead of the amateurs, and the owners almost certainly see it as saving millions of dollars, but amateur spending is a drop in the bucket. It's an oft-heard refrain on CamdenChat, but why are teams scared of putting $20 million into acquiring 30+ potential prospects, but are all too happy to throw $5 million straight down a flushing toilet by signing players like Garret Atkins?

At any rate, I'd would caution against making bold predictions on the long-term ramifications of this CBA. It looks like it could easily be bad for the sport, but any scientist can tell you that theory and reality are often at conflicting purposes. And the beauty of it is that in five years, if it is obvious that these new policies are harming baseball, they can be thrown away again.

Now, to butcher Arlo Guthrie, I didn't come here today to talk about the draft, I came to talk about the Orioles.

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