One more piece of the puzzle heading into tonight’s (meaningless) final preseason game in St. Louis. From there it’s on to Week One and the march to…well, to where?

I think it’s safe to say most fans will answer “the Super Bowl,” and with good reason. This year’s Ravens appear a sure bet for the playoffs with enough talent to make a legitimate run. I don’t have any cold water to throw on that because I basically agree, but I do have a few items for consideration:

1. Joe Flacco The kid has looked great so far, no doubt about it. Any young quarterback who can win on the road in the playoffs has done something special. So don’t misunderstand me here: Flacco’s legit.

What I wonder, though, is how he’s going to respond to what I assume will be a heavier workload. He stands atop the best Ravens offense since the days of Michael “Thriller” Jackson and he’s probably going to have to win some games with his arm. “No problem,” you say? Probably not, but until he steps up to that level we don’t really know for sure.

2. The Defensive Secondary Things look a lot better with Wilson in the fold but this unit is still a weakness. There’s no telling what they’ll get out of Webb or Ed Reed this year and I’ve personally never been much of a Landry fan. Teams are going to score through the air unless the front seven can generate significant pressure.

3. Come To Think Of It, the Whole Defense Odd as it feels, the Ravens are no longer “defense first.” At least I don’t think so. Much remains to be seen but it wouldn’t surprise me if they fell from their usual perch in the top five to somewhere closer to 10-12. Plenty good enough to get the job done but strangely un-Ravenlike.

None of these are huge problems that can’t be overcome. They might not even be problems at all. But I think if issues do arise, there’s a good chance they arise in one of those three areas.

Thoughts on the upcoming season and your guesses for where the Ravens might have a weak spot?

Win or lose tonight, consider this: we’re about to experience meaningful September baseball for the first time in years.

Not the kind of “meaningful” we’d like, of course. No playoffs in sight. But the team is playing for next year in a way we haven’t seen before. In past Lost and/or losing seasons “next year” was always a mystery. When MacPhail hired Showalter at the beginning of August he essentially started 2011 two months early. 2010 ended with the Juan Samuel era and these games represent a head start on what we hope will be next year’s progress.

They’re not playing out the string because they ran out of string when Buck arrived. There’s no “we’ll get ‘em next year” because this is next year.

Kind of a strange circumstance but I have to say: I dig it.

26 games isn’t a large sample size by any means but it isn’t a small one, either. It’s roughly 15% of the season and that’s enough to notice. I could be wrong but I don’t believe (going off of memory) that they’ve had another 26-game stretch this year where they played six games above .500. These are good times, well-earned.

I’d love to think that they could keep up the pace but they probably won’t. Beating up on the Angels is only just what it is. Not the same as running through the AL East. The September schedule is fairly terrifying.

Still, good things have happened to make for a 16-10 run. Stepped-up starting pitching. Improved hustle all around. Many of the same guys who failed earlier are succeeding now. Josh Bell appears to have settled in, and Brian Matusz looks good. Jeremy Guthrie looks like he could next year be the guy we thought Kevin Millwood would be this year. Brian Roberts appears to be strong. Brad Bergesen seems solid. Etc.

I wonder what Buck and Andy see in all of it. The month just passed and the month to come are all about evaluation and figuring out which current players deserve a spot next year. How much weight do they — and we — give this run vs. the rest of the season, and how much weight do we give the final month in light of it all?

Things might be a lot easier if they’d just continued to lose in spite of Buck. That they’ve stepped up a bit speaks to the notion that they underachieved for 2/3 of the season. Which counts more?

Or, to put it another way, who are these guys?

(photo via)

Jim Johnson returns from the DL in place of Armando Gabino, who barely registered. Here’s hoping JJ rediscovers his form and cements himself as a building block for 2011.

Bergesen, Millwood, and Guthrie to carry us through the weekend. Here’s to some good baseball, some good times, and some (relatively) chilly nights.

I think all of us knew this was a possibility, back in a dark corner of our baseball-loving minds, the moment Strasburg grimaced in pain last Saturday in Philly. Sure, it could have been a strain. Sure, he might just need rest. But really…we kind of knew. Suspected at the least.

Nationals fan or not, this is a loss for baseball. It’s also, in the words of Joe Posnanski, “all too familiar.”. History is littered with pitchers who couldn’t manage to keep their health in check (Posnanski’s piece does an outstanding job telling the story). Our bodies aren’t made to do what these guys do.

A fact which highlights just how difficult the road ahead is for our beloved black & orange. The hard truth of baseball is that pitching prospects rarely turn out. A lot of them never do anything, many of them do less than expected. A small handful meet or exceed expectations. Injury is one of the big reasons but another is that playing baseball at the big league level is very hard. It takes a fairly special guy to do it at all, an exceptional guy to do it well.

We’ve got guys who, in theory, have what it takes. They’re at various stages of proving themselves and the results are, so far, mixed. I’d love to believe that, two years down the road, Bergesen, Matusz, Tillman, Arrieta, and Britton are all established major league starters. While we’re at it, David Hernandez is a dominant reliever.

But that’s not going to happen.

Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s not going to pan out. We’ll be lucky if one guy emerges as a true #1, happy if we get a solid bunch of 2s and 3s out of the deal.

Tempering expectations isn’t fun. I hate the idea that one of these kids will probably end up a total bust. But we have to keep such things in mind as fans. Just as we have to keep in mind that Andy MacPhail‘s deep focus on acquiring organizational pitching depth is now, always, and forever the right strategy.