Soccer Dad

The Good, The Bad and the Orioles

Who would have expected it? After 28 games the Orioles are 16 - 12 and have outscored their opponents 166 - 145. (IOW, their W-L record matches their Pythagorean expectation.) I didn't expect this. Nor do I expect them to win 92 games this year.
Still it's been a very pleasant surprise so far this year. A cursory glance at the various team stats has me concerned because the O's have an awful K/BB ration and, in fact, have issued, by far, the most walks of any pitching staff in the AL. The O's also have allowed one of the highest OBA's against them. Still they're ranked second in OPS allowed behind Boston and comfortable ahead of NY.
The O's currently are #1 in SLG allowed with a slight edge over Boston (.360 vs. .363) Pretty incredible. But what's going on here?
The O's have a pretty decent strikeout rate, so I guess that's how they're preventing some runners. But the team doesn't have a lot of putouts compared to other teams; nor do they seem to have a lot of double plays. My best guess is that the pitchers are keeping the ball down. I wonder if when the O's pitchers miss, they're mostly missing low?
Thomas Boswell credits the Orioles' success to an unusual strategy:

The "Moneyball" crowd in Oakland, Toronto and Boston isn't the only group that has novel ideas about how baseball should be played. This season, the Orioles have introduced a radical new idea about how to construct a bullpen. So far, it has saved a season that otherwise could have been ruined by the failures of an inexperienced and, so far, inept young rotation.
Instead of worshipping the supposed "percentages" and going by "the book," always seeking to match left-handed relievers against left-handed hitters and right-handers against right-handers, the Orioles are simply waving in "the next best pitcher." Then, instead of using several relievers in one inning, the Orioles are leaving their best available man on the mound for one to three innings, rather than one to three batters.

The knock on the statistical analysis is unfair. And Boswell should know better. After all he invented total average, which is a simple yet elegant measure of offense.
Still his point is well taken. It's nice to see the Orioles thinking "outside the box" after so many years of simply "going by the book" and falling further into irrelevance.
Still the bullpen seems to be a strength this year. (Well maybe not the whole bullpen, but certainly Rodrigo Lopez and BJ Ryan are. Jorge Julio is also doing nicely.) And though Lopez doesn't like it

But for the ninth time, Mazzilli turned a game over to Lopez, and he delivered again.

"I still have my hopes of coming back [into the rotation]," Lopez said. "I know it could be right now or later in the season. Right now, I just need to try to get people out."

I'm impressed that the O's have stuck with him in a role that he is excelling in instead of moving him back into the rotation.
Once upon a time the O's were (delusionally, it turns out) going to return to excellence on the arms of starting pitchers John Habyan, Eric Bell and Jeff Ballard. Habyan, though, for some reason seemed to do great when he relieved but struggled when he started. In the end he made a nice career for himself as a long guy. True, relievers don't get paid as much as starters, but whose to say that if Habyan had insisted on starting that he would have lasted a decade? Maybe Lopez is like Habyan and the role he is most likely to succeed or excel in is that of a reliever.
Finally lets get back to Boswell's snarky comments about "Moneyball." When the book was exerpted in the NY Times magazine, what impressed me most was that Billy Beane had a list of every (?) player in baseball and how much each was worth to him. What's important is not what statistics you use, but having a consistent and objective manner for evaluating talent. Looking for qualities that are undervalued by others is an important element of this. (David Pinto linked to an article how the Orioles feel they have isolated a psychological elements that foretell the success of a pitcher. Thus far the O's pitching this year doesn't seem to bear out this hypothesis.)
I do think that the Orioles' pitching will betray them this year. Things look good so far, but unless the starters begin throwing more innings, the bullpen will get overworked and too tired early. I am thankful though that things are fun again, even if only for a month or two.
(My sons, alas, inherited a Yankee fan gene, apparently part of their X chromosomes. But my 10 year old actually is showing an interest in the O's this year. Will wonders never cease!)

Posted by SoccerDad at May 11, 2004 12:45 AM