ORIOLES: 2018 Could Be a Hard Season to Watch

A number of clues suggest the Baltimore Orioles owner may be pulling the plug on the current team, perhaps to rebuild completely in coming years. The team:

1. Only signed superstars Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop to one-year deals under threat of player arbitration.
2. Did not replace Buck Schowalter as manager, despite a spectacularly bad finish to the 2017 season.
3. Have not matched to slugger acquisitions by rival Yankees (Giancarlo Stanton) and Red Sox (J. D. Martinez).
4. Added middling to mediocre pitchers to the bullpen in the offseason.

Shifting Machado to short might be viewed as a way to enhance his value for ultimate sale. 

Keeping Schowalter, despite an end-of-season collapse that would have sacked the great Casey Stengel, is hard to justify for a team seriously intending to contend in 2018. Perhaps the current manager is seen by Angelos as the best steward for the great unraveling of the team he plans — allowing the biggest contracts to expire, hoping to start up again with high draft picks, low-cost newbies, and prospects from the famous Orioles "farm league".

We can't expect Angelos to show his hand on this. Witness what happened to Mark Cuban recently when he admitted his Dallas Mavericks were tanking intentionally.

This could be a very hard season to watch for those of us who suspect the owner's pulling the plug on the team — and for those who don't.

Manny Machado: "Make Us a Separator"

SOURCE: "Manny Machado's grand slam lifts Orioles to 6-2 win over Angels in first game of West Coast trip", The Baltimore Sun, 8.8.17.

Our Hero

Manny Machado

SEE: "Orioles hope return of Manny Machado's all-around game can put them squarely back into pennant race" in The Baltimore Sun.

Hero of the Day

Jonathan Schoop knocks in two runs against Dodgers in 14th inning

AL Wild Card Race

As of this morning, August 20, 2015 (for updates see FOX Sports or MLB.com:

• Los Angeles Angels: 63-57 .525

• Baltimore Orioles: 62-57 .521

• Texas Rangers: 61-58 .513

COMMENTARY: CSNChicago.com

"Dangerous One through Nine"

‘‘A team that swings the bat like that, they’re dangerous. They’re dangerous one through nine. That’s something I know going into the start. They need to have a good game plan against me and I need to have a good game plan against them.’’

Max Scherzer

Understanding the "The Curse of the Bambino"

"The Great Bambino"

To figure out "The Curse of the Bambino", consider the source. Babe "The Great Bambino" Ruth himself provides the key to understanding the collapse of Red Sox success after New York purchased his contract in 1920 — but not because of any mystical "curse". 

Ruth was both a great left-handed hitter and left-handed pitcher. Boston would never see these traits in one package, again, and would find it hard to attract either side of the equation to their team.

Great left-handed pitchers don't generally want to squander their careers at Fenway Park where home runs are so easy for right-handed hitters — whom they would inevitably be "platooned" to face — due to that "Green Monster" in left.

Left-handed hitters, meanwhile, are at a distinct disadvantage to their right-handed counterparts in Boston, as the distance to the fence in right field is considerably greater. To add to all this, Red Sox owners tended toward filling the hitting line-up with righties to maximize crowd enjoyment (and get bums in the seats).

That's great for the home field, but what about when the team goes on the road? Without a good mix of both righties and lefties on the mound and at the plate the team can't do the proper "platooning"* to compete well in away games. 

What happened when the Red Sox convinced a sufficient number of pitching aces and great left-handed hitters to join the team?** 

They won the World Series. 

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*any baseball team has a mix of right- and left- hitters and hurlers. This is partly natural and partly strategic: hitters often have better luck against opposite-handed pitchers — for a number of reasons — and certain defensive positions favor one wing or the other.
**being relatively small, and located downtown, the limited number of seats in Fenway Park has historically restricted ticket sale revenues needed to attract the sort of talent the Red Sox need to compete at home and on the road. As ticket prices soared across baseball, leading to the creative addition of seats, and new sources of revenue arose — cable, internet-driven, merchandising — Boston was better able to convince such talent to sign.

Telling Stories in a Baseball Poem

The home run Kirk Gibson hit to win the first game of the 1988 World Series was the most spectacular athletic achievement I'd ever experienced — even if I was home watching it on television.

Hurt in the locker room, legs in ice, he wasn't even in the line-up. When he improbably swaggered out, he couldn't take a practice swing without hurting. He was barely able to run to first base on a foul ball.

How could this man possibly save the day?

To find out you have to hear me read my narrative poem "The Man Who Gave All the Dreamers in Baseball Land Bigger Dreams to Dream", which I modeled on Ernest Thayer's classic "Casey at the Bat". Writing parodies of his most-popular poem has become almost a side industry.*

The idea for it came from an article in USA Today chronicling the greatest home runs of all time. Third on the list was Gibson's. Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia was quoted as saying:

". . it was like 'Casey at Bat,' but this time 'Casey' hit it out."

That's what gave me the idea. Those who watched that remarkable event on TV always tell me how much they appreciate my poem.**

My thanks — and apologies — go out to Ernest Thayer.

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*my rather poor attempt at one has been published with others in Baseball Almanac.
**which sticks faithfully to what actually happened.