O’s-Pale Hose Open Thread
This can’t be right: the Orioles are 4-3-1 in their past eight series, with losses only to Boston, the Angels, and New York. Not only that, but the Orioles are three home wins and four road wins away from matching last year’s totals. Not bad.
Also of note: if you do a Google search for “white socks” (with the quotes) the first page returned is whitesox.com. They win at the internets.
It’s Brian Burres (who, weirdly, I’m actually very glad to see) vs. local hero Gavin Floyd tonight.
If you’re in the area, why not tune in to catch me on my weekly spot with the Fighting Ungers? 1570 AM on your reddio dial or go to wnst.net and click “listen live”.
Also, I have a new post coming either tonight or tomorrow over at Examiner.com.
I don’t think last season should be a barometer for Anything.
That said, it’s encouraging to be so close to those numbers with more than a month left.
It was a tough loss last night, but they didn’t get steamrolled, which I had feared after the nasty sweep. And they still squeaked out the suspended game.
Barring an epic collapse due to lack of effort, this season has been a Success and I’ll stand on DF’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.
One game at a time though. Enjoy the journey. Let’s see Burres finish the 6th inning. We don’t even have to be winning. If he goes six full and we are even striking distance at that point, I will be content.
WTB
I think the White Sox, like Neal, are glad to see Burres too.
Tonight’s a good night to bet the under. Floyd “coming home” with a good team. Burres – for one night anyway – willing to prove he’s a major league pitcher and not a AAA yo yo. Next time out, take the over. Tonight, I’d bet the under (10.0)
Definitely the “under” if the number’s 10. I think that represents Vegas adding a Burres Tax, but I have a feeling he’ll at least be competitive tonight.
That didn’t take long.
The O’s/White Sox total was 10.0 at 11am when I checked it.
It’s now 11.0 but it won’t move between now and face off.
A number moving one run (in either direction) in four hours or so means someone laid a chunk…in this case, on the over.
Now, they’re just dying for you to take the under.
Gotta love bookmakers.
They know the score before we do.
Thing about pitchers is you never know when they might shut a team down. Cabrera’s done it. Waters has done it. Olson and Liz have done it. Burres has done it a number of times, certainly more than Olson and Liz combined. He’s just got to have an “on” night or it’s a home run derby. Still, I’d rather see Burres, who for a time led the team in wins, than Liz or even Cabrera at this point.
Not a fan of him pitching after Waters, though.
Meanwhile on Roch’s blog, he’s got DT saying that the O’s won’t do a repeat of ’07 and sign guys like The Victors to prevent plugging in young guys. This is good news. If we’re going to get beat, let’s get beat evaluating our minor leaguers. We’ve already found out that Waters is at the very least “serviceable”. The way things are going with the pitching for this club, that’s a big plus for next year when we need a guy for a spot start or long relief.
If you weren’t forced to have both in the rotation like we are now, would you take Waters over Burres? I haven’t decided yet.
Actually yeah I’ll take Waters over Burres in the rotation only because Waters has shown he can throw more strikes and get more ground balls. Plus he seems to be a “gamer” and can field his position very well.
God this is just awful. Poor Brian Burres looks like he feels really bad about it, though.
Yep, I’m reduced to being happy that the guys still care.
Just put up a main page post with a link to my latest Examiner piece, for those who might be interested.
Well, the swoon has begun. Just play with some heart the rest of the year is all I ask. 4 out of 5 starters having no real future starting with the team (with the possible exception of Liz) is really just an untenable situation. No team could win with this rotation. It’s that simple.
The good new is the bullpen could actually be pretty decent next year. Ray comes back, Albers comes back. (Those two coming back is huge.) Sarfate is OK there I think, JJ as set up man, Flatbrim closing. Also, Baez comes back for what it’s worth. Burres as a long man works. Add another good arm and that’s a decent bullpen. Now what to do about the starters. Starters in 2010 are looking pretty damn good, but next year could still be rough. A ton of hope for the future of the pitching overall though, honestly.
I’ve been reluctant to acknowledge this as a swoon, but a 1-7 homestand might qualify.
Dead-on about the pitching. This is a rough transition but the arms on the way should set us up very nicely.
I personally think we need to sign at least one — maybe two — veterans to make sure that the next two years aren’t complete washes. A.J. Burnett would look good behind Guthrie…really good.
This is definitely a swoon – I’ll call it attrition catching up to us (along with a tough home schedule this week…not that that’s an excuse, really. We’ve played miserable baseball). But yes, we need someone to anchor this rotation in innings, if nothing else. Burnett seems like a good choice, but there’s plenty of veteran pitchers that could come to Baltimore and fit in well enough.
It ain’t getting any easier, either. We got Boston and Tampa next. There’s really no reason to think we would do better against them than NY and Chicago, so we could be looking at a huge losing streak if the offense doesn’t pick back up. Does it count as a swoon if you’re a last place team playing 4 teams in a row that are all competing for the playoffs?
Sorry to talk politics, but I’ll keep it relative – I promise.
This morning on Sportscenter there was an Obama fluff piece. He was answering easy questions from Stuart Scott in between clips of him playing one-on-one basketball with someone I didn’t recognize.
One question was in regards to Congress and the steroid investigation and how he would have handled it, to which he replied (paraphrased)
“We’ve got our plates full right now. I would hope the Commissioner can handle this one on his own”
Which is a similar sentiment to thousands of my posts in this venue.
My vote doesn’t hinge on a Candidate’s opinion about baseball, but the fact that he doesn’t want the Government involved in Baseball is reassuring.
***
Yes – this is a swoon. We need to snap out of it. We all agreed back in freakin’ March that the most important measuring stick of the 08 season is how they handle themselves Now. Thru 162.
I agree that Burnett would be the ideal FA pickup this offseason.
How many bullpens would be better than the O’s next year if Ray, Albers and Joan Baez come back resembling their former selves?
None.
Since we’re talking AJ, here are the dude’s numbers right now:
16-9, 4.58 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, 185 K’s, 73 BB’s, 178 IP.
Let’s compare to our two best starters:
Guts:
10-10, 3.28 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 117 K’s, 51 BB’s, 183 IP.
D-Cabs:
8-8, 5.24 ERA, 1.55 WHIP, 93 K’s, 79 BB’s, 171 IP.
AJ’s numbers are frighteningly similar to Cabrera’s except he actually strikes guys out. Only 6 less walks than D-Cab, though, and not a very good ERA. That being said, when there’s THAT much of a difference between your #1 (Guthrie) and your supposed #2 (D-Cab), then a guy like Burnett fits right in. If it turns out the D-Cab is injured, then we REALLY need to try and grab him.
Interesting that Burnett’s numbers aren’t that good when there’s consensus around the league that his stuff is excellent. I wonder how much of that is the 16 wins talking? You know that’s what his agent is going to be talking about in December. The walks scare me a lot.
Some other notable available WHIPs:
Garland is 1.46
Lowe is 1.21
Hendrickson is 1.48
Mussina is 1.21
Oliver Perez is 1.35
So we can certainly do worse than AJ, but depending on the years and the money (which will be large), I wonder if he’d be worthwhile compared to the other guys out there.
My God, though, if we had just one other pitcher…
August ’08: 10-14. I’d settle for 12-16, but wouldn’t be happy unless it was 13-15 or better. That ain’t gonna happen. Anything less than 12 wins is not good at all, and 10-18 is a disaster much like every other year ever.