What Should Cleveland Indians Expect From Baltimore Orioles?
Heading into the 2011 season, the Baltimore Orioles’ situation looked a lot like the Cleveland Indians’: a rebuilding team with loads of young, undeveloped talent waiting in the wings for the future but no real hope for contention this year.
Then, just as the Indians’ hot stretch to start the season gave Tribe fans hope, the Orioles caused a buzz around baseball after starting off 4-0. And, like Cleveland, Baltimore has since cooled off, though the O’s’ 6-5 record in the wake of last night’s loss to the New York Yankees is still good for second place in the AL East.
Tonight, the O’s pay a visit to Progressive Field for a three-game set as both teams try to keep their Cinderella stories alive for another few days. In preparation for the series, I talked to Stacey Long from Orioles blog CamdenChat.com about what to expect from Baltimore in this clash of the titans.
Thanks so much for taking the time, Stacey! You can see my answers to her questions click here.
WAHOO BLUES: Baltimore grabbed headlines the first week of the season with a 4-0 start. Was it just a small sample size or could this team surprise people?
STACEY LONG: If this team ends up contending no one will be more surprised than me. They have a lot of talent and potential but they can’t hang with the big boys of the American League East just yet. They’ll go as far as their pitching takes them, and given the young players in the rotation it could go either way.
Is a winning team out of the question? Absolutely not. This Orioles team is better than ones in recent years. Is a contending team out of the question? It’s very early, and I’d love to be wrong, but I say yes.
WB: The Orioles completely revamped their lineup this winter, adding Mark Reynolds, J.J. Hardy, Derrek Lee, and Vladimir Guerrero—moves befitting a contender, not a rebuilding team. What do you think of these moves? What do they say about the current state of the franchise?
SL: The Orioles needed to rebuild their infield and don’t have any players in the high levels of the minors that could fill the spots. Mark Reynolds’ contract will make him an Oriole for at least two seasons, maybe three. J.J. Hardy is only guaranteed to be here for one year, but he has the potential to be one of the better shortstops in the league and he’s only 28 (I’ve been advocating extending him). Both were good trades, especially given what they cost the Orioles (a total of four relievers, only one of whom has had any major league success), and both could help the Orioles in the future.
Derrek Lee is the definition of a stop-gap player. The Orioles don’t have anyone ready to take over at 1B in the minors and after the Garrett Atkins debacle last season they wanted to sign someone with some success. They probably overpaid him, but the potential for him to give a real boost to the offense and the thought of having superior defense at first base was enough for the Orioles to pull the trigger. Unfortunately they’ll just have to go out again next year and find another 1B.
The Vladimir Guerrero acquisition was hotly debated. Some people didn’t understand the point when the Orioles already have a good DH in Luke Scott, others said if you get the chance to sign a bat like his, you do it. The real loser in this story is Nolan Reimold, a left fielder who got sent to AAA thanks to the Vlad signing despite having loads of potential and a fantastic spring. I don’t really understand why they felt the need to sign Vlad (to energize the fan base, maybe) but now that he’s here I’m going to try to enjoy him.
WB: They’ve been good and they’re way too young to be called busts, but Matt Wieters and Brian Matusz haven’t lived up to their storied potentials so far. Do you have any doubts about them? Is this the year one or both of them break out?
SL: Woah woah woah. Let’s just stop right here. Who on earth told you that Brian Matusz isn’t living up to his potential? He’s been on the disabled list since the season started, which is certainly disappointing, but he hasn’t been a disappointment at all. Matusz was called up to the majors in August 2009 at the age of 22. He’d made nineteen career starts in the minors, all of them that year and none above AA. In eight starts in 2009 at the major league level he pitched to an OPS+ of 99. That’s just about league average, and only two of the teams he faced ended the season with losing records (one of which was the Cleveland Indians). He faced the Angels, the Tigers, the Yankees, the Rays, the Twins, and the Rangers and held his own.
In 2010, Matusz started off strong but hit a rough patch in the middle of the season that dragged down his overall numbers. Please remember that at this point he was a 23 year old pitching in the AL East, where every lineup is fearsome. He got his act together, however, and over his last sixteen starts (beginning with a fantastic start against the Red Sox on July 4th) he pitched to a 3.62 ERA, holding runners to a line of .225/.304/.359. He had a K/9 rate of over 8 and a K/BB of 2.28. The Orioles went 13-3 in those games.
Matt Wieters, on the other hand, has been a disappointment. He has built himself into one of the best defensive catchers in baseball and one upon which the young pitchers rely heavily, but his hitting just hasn’t come on the way people expected it would. I’m not prepared to call him the biggest bust in history the way Baseball Prospectus did, but it’s obvious that this season is very important in determining whether Wieters will be a great defensive catcher with an ok bat or if he’ll be the star we’ve all imagined. He did have a double, a home run, a walk, and threw out Brett Gardner trying to steal last night, so maybe this is the beginning of his turn around (that’s what I say to myself every time he has a good game).
WB: Who’s taking the mound for the the O’s this series, and what should we expect from them?
SL: On Friday, the Indians will have the pleasure of facing rookie Zach Britton. Originally slated to start the season in the minors for service-time considerations, he instead started the third game of the season when Brian Matusz was placed on the disabled list. Britton pitched 6 innings in Tampa Bay, allowing just one run on three hits. He struck out six. He followed that up with an even more impressive performance against the Rangers, throwing 7.2 shutout innings. Britton is a lefty who throws a sinking fastball in the low to mid-90s (but he can top 95 on occasion), resulting in a ton of ground balls (he induced thirteen last Saturday against just three fly balls). He’s been brilliant so far. He will of course have his troubles this season, but given the way he’s pitched so far they are hard to imagine.
Saturday you’ll see your old friend Jeremy Guthrie. You may have seen that Cliff Lee doesn’t understand why the Indians gave up on Guthrie. I don’t know either, but I’m sure glad they did. Guthrie has been the anchor of the Orioles’ rotation for years now and continues to be a solid pitcher. He pitched a fantastic game to start the season against the Rays, then had to go into the hospital with pneumonia. Despite feeling weak and easily short of breath, this past Sunday Guthrie pitched six gutsy innings in which he allowed just one run on a solo homer to Adrian Beltre. I expect more of the same from Guthrie this weekend, as even when he’s not on top of his game he almost always keeps his team in it.
Brad Bergesen will pitch the series finale on Sunday and he’s the weakest pitcher the Indians will see. Bergesen has made one start this season and it wasn’t pretty. He couldn’t get out of the fourth inning against the Tigers and although just two of his four runs were earned, he got knocked around good. He pitched two innings of perfect relief on Wednesday against the Yankees, though, so hopefully that’ll be the Bergesen that shows up on Sunday. Bergesen isn’t a high strike out guy so he relies heavily on his ability to induce ground balls. When he can’t keep the ball down, he gets in a lot of trouble. When he can, he can be very effective (for reference see his complete game two-hitter against the Indians last year). Bergesen is a very hard pitcher to predict, so this game will be a wild card.
WB: What are the keys to this series for Baltimore? What’s your prediction for how it will go?
SL: Britton and Guthrie need to keep on doing what they’ve done so far, and Bergesen need to keep the ball down in the zone so the Indians can’t tee off against him. The O’s lineup has had its troubles so far, so decent performances from Brian Roberts, Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, and Matt Wieters are certainly a big key to the success. They haven’t made too many glaring mental errors since Buck Showalter took over, but they ARE the Orioles after all, so I’d say another key is to continue to not be boneheads.
I’ll be disappointed if the Orioles don’t take at least two games in Cleveland. Even with the Indians’ hot start I think the Orioles are capable of outplaying them, although if this is the weekend that Shin-Soo Choo and Carlos Santana wake up and start playing the way they can, it could be a tough series.
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