The Games They’ll Play In the Next Winning Season
Yeah? Maybe.
The Orioles have announced their schedule for 2009, and you can get the details from the Sun.
Not much to make of it, really, but I have a couple of first impressions:
– I love that we open at home against the Yankees. The fact that they have to delay the opening of their new digs and spend some time here first is a small, good thing.
Also, it’ll be very interesting to see what that game looks like in terms of attendance.
– The NL East is tough, so interleague play might trip us up again.
Let’s use this as an Open Thread for tonight’s Blue Jays game, shall we? It’s Brian Bass (why not?) against David Purcey.
Ken Davidoff of Newsweek:
“Yankees senior vice president Gene Michael and director of professional scouting Billy Eppler watched Yu Darvish start for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters this past week. Darvish, only 22, is not expected to be posted this offseason, although a posting could come as soon as after the 2009 season.
The Giants, Orioles and Diamondbacks have all been heavily scouting Japan this year, as teams try to figure out which players’ skills can translate over and which players’ can’t. The Yankees, with a success in Hideki Matsui, a failure in Hideki Irabu and a profound failure in Kei Igawa on their resume, are still trying to master this art.”
Another nice thing to hear. Our international scouting department’s massive failures over the past years have almost definitely put us behind the 8 ball as much as anything else in a lot of different ways.
It’s hard to stomach blowing a 6-0 lead. When we ask for “competitive” baseball, I’m pretty sure that’s not what we have in mind.
Great news, though (@AiR), about the Orioles being in the hunt re: Japanese scouting. I completely agree with you that failures in that area have been crippling, and it’s great to see that times might be changing.
I find it hilarious that the “fat pussy toad” Irabu is simply labelled a failure, and Igawa a “profound failure”. But considering that I watched him pitch last month in SCRANTON, I’d have to agree with that sentiment.
Saying Igawa was a profound failure is really underselling it. The Yankees wanted Dice-K, and when they didn’t get him, they went with the knee-jerk reaction of, “Oh yeah? We’ll get our own Japanese pitching star!” and offered waay too much cash for a guy who doesn’t translate to the bigs based on stuff, and besides doesn’t like being in America. You can bet Epstein et al still feel good about the Dice-K signing just because it made the Yankees look stupid like 6 times over.
Erik Bedard has a torn labrum. Seriously, we have literally paid back everything for Glenn Davis and then some. Nobody would even trade George Sherrill for Bedard straight up anymore. Talk about perfect timing. The baseball gods finally decided it was time to stop pissing on the Orioles. What’d we do to deserve such good karma? Brilliant! Of course, you have to feel bad for a guy with a torn labrum (I feel bad for Guthrie, Albers, Patton, Johnson, Jaret Wright, and Kris Benson, God rest their souls)…but it was time for us to not only win one, but to absolutely demolish one.
Per Rotoworld, just to drive it home some more:
Erik Bedard revealed Wednesday that an MRI exam earlier this season showed that he has “a tear in the labrum and a cyst” in his injured left shoulder.
“We tried rehab and it got better, but it never got good,” Bedard said. “The pain was less at times, but I always felt it.” Surgery to repair a torn labrum would knock Bedard out for at least half of next season and put his future in question, as the injury typically has a lower success rate for comebacks than Tommy John surgery. With one season of arbitration left before free agency, it’s possible that the Mariners could non-tender Bedard during the offseason, in which case they’ll have parted with Adam Jones, George Sherrill and three prospects for 81 innings of a 3.67 ERA.
AooR, I’m not sure I group Guthrie in with those other torn labrum guys. He seems to only have a minor problem or impingement, although apparently most pitchers have some degree of torn labrum.
I was merely going for shoulder injuries in general. They seem to be the touch of death to pitchers. But I agree, Guthrie’s injury seems less severe than everyone else’s. Johnson’s, too, if we’ve heard the truth about that one. Thank God.
even though i’m eh about baseball i read tonight that the orioles might be the first team in history to have three players with 50 doubles. doubles were always one of my favorite weird stats (next to triples of course).
i’ve always appreciated baseball for the numbers aspect – so that’s pretty cool.
it also reminded me of one of the sickest un-talked about years of all time – albert belle in 1995 – the height of my baseball fanitude.
no matter how much we all hate that guy:
.317 batting avg
126 rbi
121 runs scored
50 home runs
52 doubles!
sick.