New Faces, New Places

Lots going on in Birdland over the last 24 hours. First and foremost, is the hiring of new manager Buck Showalter. Showalter was probably choice 1a for me; I liked Eric Wedge a lot but evidently Andy MacPhail and I were the only ones. Reportedly, Peter Angelos liked Showalter a lot and the lengthy negotiation with him was in part to define Buck's role and how he would work with MacPhail.

It's probably a good thing for Showalter to take over before the end of this miserable season. Showalter and his staffs have a pretty good track record of talent evaluation and development and the more time Buck has to evaluate the big league roster and the September call-ups, the better.

Shortly after the Showalter announcement, the Orioles traded 3B Miguel Tejada to the Padres for a pitching prospect. Tejada was considered (correctly) expendable with Josh Bell sitting in Norfolk and garnered the team a fair, but not great, pitching prospect in Wynn Pelzer. Pelzer projects as a reliever but that's decent value for old man Tejada.

By the way, can the current regime come to an end soon enough? From the Baltimore Sun, Brian Matusz talks about the quick hook he received in Thursday's game:

"I was little bit shocked because it was so soon, and my first few innings I was so effective,” Matusz said. “Things were going so well. I still felt pretty good at that point. I was a little upset. Obviously nobody likes coming out of the game, especially when you have good stuff and that’s how I felt. Juan obviously felt that it was a game that we had, we had the lead at the time, and I wasn’t capable of finishing the job, so that was the move he decided to make and obviously I wanted to stay in there and keep going. But if I don’t like it I need to stop walking guys and pitch better.”


Hi there. Out of character for me but I'm about to curse...

Matusz is being just about as diplomatic as he can here but he's absolutely correct. Sure, if he didn't walk those guys, this problem takes care of itself. But Samuel (and Showalter) need to leave these kids in the game for experience, struggles be damned. Wins and losses mean fuck all for 2010. Samuel is managing for a win over the Royals at the expense of valuable innings for a potential future ace? What a cock. I have no doubt that this has at least a little to do with the Showalter announcement and the fact that Samuel is out for himself for these last four games.

From Samuel:

Samuel said after the game that Matusz has become a “major concern,” though he still expects the lefty to make his next start.



“My mindset with these guys is I just didn’t want to put them in position where they could lose the ball game and you end up overexposing these guys,” Samuel said. “We’ve seen it so many times where some young guys come up and they can’t find the plate. Like I said, if I can remove these guys earlier than late, I’m going to do it just so I can protect them. He was throwing the ball so good. We just think he lost focus there for one minute and we didn’t want to leave him out there any longer.”

Major concern? Douchebag, you are not going to be the manager by the time Matusz starts again. It's no longer your concern at all.

And then you show your ignorance by worrying about Matusz "losing" the game. You are managing the worst team in baseball. Matusz is smart enough to realize that even moral victories count at this point. He didn't want to come out. He didn't care if he "lost". He wanted to battle through it. That kid is ten times smarter than you and your slavish reliance on meaningless stats like pitcher "wins" and "losses". Especially on a team that is 30+ games out of first! You prick. You were protecting no one.

Tuesday can't come soon enough...