The Path to Respectability: Baltimore Orioles

by Jason Wojciechowski

om nom nom nom nom
Photo by Paula McVann

I know I'm Dr. Negativo most of the time (I was born this way), but Bill's piece at Baseball Prospectus yesterday illustrating things that could go right for the Twins has inspired me. Over the next N days for some yet-to-be-determined N, I'm going to look at the worst team in each division and try to figure out how they might get to 88 wins. It's a modest goal for a good team, but these aren't good teams. It probably wouldn't even get AL East or AL West team into the playoffs, given the potential 95-100-win powerhouses at the tops of those divisions, but it would at least put the erstwhile bottom-feeder into the competition.

Where there is a clear worst team (like the Orioles in the AL East), I'll just go with them. Where there are multiple good choices, I won't choose: I'll do a post for each team. I will omit the Twins, though, because it's not like I have anything to say that Bill didn't already, and his piece is not behind the Prospectus pay-wall, so you can all read it even if you don't subscribe. (You should subscribe.)

Matt Wieters: Awesome Catcher

Guest Post By Albert Lang

(Bill note: Ah, the holidays. I'm sure you'll hear a lot more from the TPA staff between now and the end of the year, but for now, we've got a second consecutive guest post from Albert Lang, who you can typically find over at H2H Corner. Albert sent this to us a while ago, and the original title was "A Thanksgiving Miracle: Orioles fans have something to look forward to." That's probably more descriptive than my headline above, but it's not quite timely anymore.)

It’s been an incredibly tough season/off-season for Orioles fans. After the way the club finished 2010 and a pretty good 2010 offseason (sure they made their share of bad signings, but, this time, they were limited to one-year deals!), which saw them deal fringy relievers for solider major league players, Orioles fans could smile a little smile that the team was at least sort of going in the right direction.

On April 9, the Orioles were 6-2 and 5.5 games ahead of Boston and Tampa Bay. Of course, reality set in and the Orioles continued to completely and utterly fail to develop minor league talent at the major league level and finished 69-93, 28 games behind the Yankees. Then, the 2011 off-season came and GM candidate after candidate turned them down. Eventually, they hired Dan Duquette (who has been out of baseball almost as long as it has been since the Orioles finished above .500), and, sadly, it didn’t seem nearly as embarrassing as it could have been.

Of course, the one joy Orioles fans had throughout the season was the defense of Matt Wieters. It was beautiful to watch him play baseball well. Then, when the Fielding Bible and Gold Glove Awards recently came out, we had validation for our love of Wieters.