O Damn

Dave Paisley

Whatever Happened to the Baltimore Uh-Oh-rioles?

Much as my beloved Mariners are having a hard time reaching the .500 mark this season, there is one team that has been an even bigger disppointment this year. Perhaps not to the statistically inclined, that is, but certainly to the baseball establishment. How on earth do you have the heftiest payroll in all of MLB and still stink up the joint as badly as the Orioles have so far?

Since fattening up on the weak Tigers and Royals in the early going, and racing out to a 10-2 start, the Orioles have run off a nasty streak of 13-26, to fall into last place in the AL East with a record of 23-28.

What has gone wrong?

The first thing to note is that there is no one overriding factor. There are three main contributors. Strike one, they allowed the main nucleus of an old team stay together. Strike two, they acquired even more over-the-hill players to complement them. And finally, strikethree (tm), the only good players they had left have all been injured.

That's a pretty unappetizing mixture. Let's take a closer look at the Oriole pitching. Mussina is awesome, and should continue to be, once he finally heals. While his injury was freakish, we already have the annual Jimmy Key trip to the DL. Meanwhile, Scott Erickson has reverted back to his 5-year form so far this season. He's the only constant on the mound so far for the O's, so that at least counts for something.

Drabek looks like he's turning things around after getting shelled early in the year. With the other starters dropping like flies, he may turn out to be a decent investment.

Their bullpen has been horrendous, anchored by a perfectly predictable performance from Norm Charlton. We were getting the old "he's tipping his pitches" story in Seattle last year at this time, and it didn't help him then. He's bad. He's done. Get the fork. The rest of the pen seems to have learned from Charlton. Yuck.

Player	Salary ($M)	ERA	5-Yr ERA	97 ERA	Assessment
Mike Mussina	6.5	2.52	3.78	3.20	Good but injured
Jimmy Key	5.4	4.06	3.61	3.43	Good but injured
Scott Erickson	*3.6	4.71	4.78	3.69	Back to bad old form
Scott Kamieniecki	2.9	6.75	4.27	4.01	Injured
Arthur Rhodes	2.0	4.40	5.07	3.02	Back to bad old form
Doug Drabek	1.7	5.70	4.32	5.74	Getting better?
Armando Benitez	0.9	4.58	3.53	2.45	Way off
Terry Mathews	0.9	8.10	3.94	4.41	Way off
Alan Mills	0.8	5.30	4.40	4.89	Slightly worse
Jesse Orosco	0.8	5.53	3.37	2.32	Way off
Norm Charlton	0.7	6.75	4.51	7.27	Back to bad recent form
Sidney Ponson	0.2	6.39	-	-	Bad
Doug Johns	0.2	3.80	-	-	Lucky so far
Bobby Munoz	0.2	9.00	4.93	8.91	Back to bad recent form
Nerio Rodriguez	0.2	14.21	4.66	4.91	Too early to tell
Team	27.0	5.06			All bad or unlucky
* Signed new 5 year contract

And so to the Bird hitting. The starting lineup is relatively unchanged from last year, unfortunately for Oriole fans. The big off-season acquisition, Joe Carter, is doing exactly what everyone except Pat Gillick thought he'd do - decline even further. $3.1M for a part-time DH with his production is outrageous. Of course, his failure is masked by the even worse failure of the Ozzie Guillen experiment.

The outfield is down because of Brady Anderson's injury, but Jeffrey Hammonds and Eric Davis have proved to be bright spots. Surhoff is well within normal limits.

On the right side of the infield, Palmeiro is about normal, while Alomar is way off.

Over on the left side, we have a little role reversal. Ripken is really declining, so much so that a surge by Bordick means the O's have a harder hitting shortstop than third baseman, a situation that they were trying to avoid by moving Ripken to third in the first place. Time for a day off, Cal?

The catcher spot is woeful, with Hoiles and Webster virtually invisible offensively.

Player	Salary	OPS	5 Yr OPS	Assessment
Rafael Palmeiro	6.5	.883	.912	Doing OK, despite outcry
Roberto Alomar	6.3	.777	.877	Off year
Cal Ripken	6.3	.712	.769	Getting really bad
Brady Anderson	5.4	.640	.859	Injured, so we'll give him a break
Mike Bordick	3.6	.761	.638	Amazing performance
Chris Hoiles	3.6	.609	.862	Way off
Joe Carter	3.1	.694	.763	About as bad as I expected
Eric Davis	2.5	.938	.805	Wow
B.J. Surhoff	1.4	.772	.801	So-so
Jeffrey Hammonds	1.3	.809	.758	A bright spot
Harold Baines	1.2	.804	.885	Off a bit
Lenny Webster	0.7	.683	.693	Right where you'd expect
Jeff Reboulet	0.5	.539	.663	Injured
Ozzie Guillen*	0.5	.181	.633	What did you expect?
Team	42.9	.756	.790
*Released

So there we have it: The aging of last year's roster and the addition of overpaid, unproductive veterans is killing the offense, while the pitching staff has been unlucky, injured or infected with Charltonitis. Not a pretty picture, and not a situation that will be easy to recover from. The next couple of years could get brutal as the O's rebuild. The core they'll have to rebuild around will be awfully small.

Dave Paisley was going to chart Pete Incaviglia's career, but we got out the smelling salts and he'll be just fine. Suggest some bed rest at drdjp@strikethree.com.