O's Win Again

The umps tried to sabotage the evening by ejecting D-Cab during one of his very rare good outings. But the O's won anyway and will take the series with the Yanks.

I hope the Yanks fall a couple games short of the postseason. Baltimore could point back to these games with pride.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about...

*****

Bill Ordine continues to perpetuate the Mark Teixeira-may-come-to-Baltimore myth. Though he is hardly alone.

Let's set this straight. He's not coming and we don't want him! Not at $20mil per!

Tex doesn't want to come here. All that "Aw shucks, it's be great to play for the hometown team. Gawrsh, that'd be neat!" is just Tex being polite. Or being duplicitous. He says nice things about every team that shows the slightest interest.

An example from Buster Olney's ESPN blog:

"Inside the clubhouse, it was awkward. An hour before the game, with teammates in earshot, Teixeira gushed to reporters that the Angels were "the best team in baseball." While also being complimentary of his former teammates, it had a strange ring. Braves coaches recognized the situation and ushered Braves players into other areas of the clubhouse."

What a great guy. He'll say great things about whatever city he's asked about. Even at the expense of his current teammates.

More from Tex from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"I thought I'd be here the rest of my career," he said of Atlanta. "I really wanted to stay here, but business is business, and it's time for me to move on."

Teixeira said he had been "open" to hearing offers from the Braves all season, but got none. Wren said the Braves didn't believe they could re-sign him after making an "aggressive" offer during spring training and having it rejected.

The GM said the offer would have made Teixeira one of the game's highest paid players. He is making $12.5 million this season in his last year of arbitration.

Let's see. You thought you'd spend the rest of your career here but rejected an offer from the Braves that would have made you one of the game's highest paid players. You need a shovel handy when Tex talks to the press.

The guy seems to think he's a player who is the caliber of Albert Pujols or A-Rod. He's not.

*****

Bye Roch. We'll miss you.

More Cabrera

Daniel Cabrera's pitch location from last night:

Tons of fastballs and, for the most part, right around the plate. "Here it is. Can you hit it?" seems to be the prevailing philosophy.

The hits:

Nothing out of the ordinary here. The pitches were up a little but he lived there all night and they only manged one extra base hit. Nasty, nasty fastball.

The good Cabrera/bad Cabrera split is not as pronounced as it was last year. When he's off, he generally battles and give the team something to work with. He has only given up 6 runs or more 3 times and only three times has he failed to go at least 6 innings.

He's a league average innings eater. A decent third or fourth starter at this point. Unfortunately, he's our second best starter!

*****

Ramon Hernandez hit .273 in June and OPS'ed .796. He'll need to keep hitting like that (and more) to overcome that dreadful start but it's good to see some of those well-hit balls finding the holes now.

*****

More later...

The Continuing Transformation of Daniel Cabrera

Daniel Cabrera continues his remarkable season. Even if you don't find his results remarkable, it is certainly a remarkable season with respect to how he is reinventing himself. With the help of Fangraphs.com, I'm going to take a look what's different and where these changes will lead. The blue lines represent league averages, the green lines are Cabrera's performances.

First, his K/9 rate and his BB/9 rate:

The important thing you will notice on these graphs are the three year trends. Cabrera's K rate has dropped from more than 9 per 9 innings to just under 5 per 9 this year. For most pitchers this would be a really bad sign but Cabrera's notoriously high walk rate has also dropped precipitously from off-the-charts bad (literally) to right around league average. Ironically, his K/BB ratio is about the same as it ever was.


So Cabrera gave up some K's for improved control. And that has led to fewer men on base:




But fewer K's mean more balls in play. What's happening with all that extra contact? Well, some of that contact is putting balls over the fence:



This is what concerns me the most about the new Daniel Cabrera. He was always excellent at keeping the ball in the park but that home run rate has spiked. It's not as bad as I thought though. Even with the spike, he's right around league average and as long as that WHIP stays down, he should be OK.

But this is the graph that reflects the real value of the "new and improved" Daniel Cabrera:




Note the three-year rise in Ground Ball Percentage from Cabrera and the corresponding three year drop in Line Drive and Fly Ball Percentage. This is the most telling trend and will be the most valuable component to Cabrera's continued success.

Daniel Cabrera has:


1) Sacrificed strikeouts for better control of his pitches.
2) Pitched to contact more and challenged batters to put the ball in play.
3) Has transformed himself from a struggling strikeout king to a groundball inducing innings eater.


The projections for Cabrera once he finally "got it" always pointed towards a Randy Johnson-type development; power pitcher, lots of strikeouts, periods of sheer dominance of opposing hitters. But dramatically and unexpectedly, he has morphed into a pitcher whose projection looks a lot more like Andy Pettite; moderate strikeouts, lots of groundballs, keeping down the walks! Now how many people would have guessed you could have described Daniel Cabrera as a guy who could keep the walk rates low.

Does this mean Cabrera will become a righthanded version of Andy Pettite? No. The low strikeout rate and the homers given up will prevent him from being a star caliber pitcher. But when you see him in the rotation behind Jeremy Guthrie, Garrett Olson and Matt Albers/Radhames Liz over the next two years? A guy with legitimate number two starter talent in the 3rd or 4th spot in your rotation? That's very valuable.

And last season nobody thought that would be possible.

Stomping The Yankees

The top of the first last night was just about as close to baseball heaven as you can get.

7 runs against Mike Mussina to knock him from the game having retired only two batters. 3 RBI for The Truth. Derek Jeter commits an error. Jeter pouts. What a start!

But honestly, the whole game was like baseball heaven. 12-2. Beats 30-3 any day.

When is Derek Jeter going to man up and admit he can't play short anymore? It's getting embarrassing.

And I loved when Cabrera hit Jeter on the wrist and sent him to the lockers. Hit him right on his stupid little Michael Jordan wristband. Fantastic.

Luke Scott's bat put bad juju on the ball. It kept missing Yankee gloves. When he laid wood on the ball it could not be caught. Hits one to Jeter that he threw high. Hit one to Damon that fell from his glove. Hit one over the fence. They couldn't even throw at him properly.

By the way, retaliation is one thing but even the Yankee announcers thought it was bush league to throw at Scott's head. Especially Ken Singleton.

What slump? Ramon Hernandez is hitting above .300 for the last two weeks.

Round two is tonight. Enjoy watching the hottest team in baseball!

Sticking My Head In To Say Hi...

...since I haven't posted anything of substance in two and a half days. Been too busy trying to learn MySQL and some rudimentary Dutch (don't ask) to form much significant Orioles thought.

Until today.

Inspired by the O's mini-sweep of the Boston Red Sox, I had to pen an open letter to substitute Red Sox manager, Brad Mills.

Dear Brad,

Just a little note to thank you for giving us the opportunity to take these last two games from you. You don't know what wins like these mean to a struggling franchise like the the Baltimore Orioles and your generosity is greatly appreciated.

Really, beating Josh Beckett would have been enough for us. Victories over one of baseball's top pitchers just aren't expected and we were thankful enough to see the team catch him on one of the rare days when he was quite hittable.

But today was just too much. You shouldn't have! With the bases loaded, the Orioles were trailing 3-2 in the 7th with two outs. Jay Payton was at the plate and, well, let's just say that Birdland was less than optimistic that a guy hitting .220 would end up the hero.

But Brad, you had pity on us. You took out righty Craig Hansen and brought in lefty Hideki Okijima. At his advanced age, Jay Payton can only do two things; play a passable defensive leftfield and mash lefthanded pitchers. Here's the splits for Payton...as if you didn't know!

                 vs. RHP           vs. LHP
Payton 2008  .216/.259/.216    .250/.250/.542
 

Those aren't Ruthian numbers against lefties but at least it gave us a fighting chance. Dave Trembley couldn't have planned it better himself...even if he actually had bench players to use.

Again, thanks for handing over the sweep on a silver platter today. We know Terry Francona wouldn't have been nearly as generous.

Your Friends,

The Oriole Faithful

*****

Daniel Cabrera - mentally tough.

Baltimore Orioles: First Quarter Report

With an off day today, the Orioles have essentially wrapped up the first quarter of the season. So how are they doing?

First, let's discuss the record. The Orioles stand at 19-19. That's .500 at the quarter season mark for a team that was nearly universally thought to be well on their way to losing 100 games in 2008. Some thought it would be worse than the 1988 Orioles or at least in the ballpark. This team now has to go 43-81 the rest of the way to reach that goal. I just don't see it.

I thought this team would be slightly better than the 2007 version but figured they would struggle early and get better. They have been decent early with many indicators pointing to the team getting better still. Is a winning team a reasonable expectation? Maybe not. Flirting with .500 certainly is.

Pleasant Surprises

Brian Roberts remains with the team. He may not be here in August but I didn't expect him to see Mother's Day with the club.

Daniel Cabrera's performance.

George Sherrill. I liked the addition of Sherrill but had no idea he could be a closer or do it so well. Wayward O did though.

Brian Burres holding down a spot in the rotation and doing pretty well.

Jim Johnson, Randor Bierd, Dennis Sarfate and Matt Albers aiding the veterans to give Baltimore a credible bullpen.

Disappointments

The offense as a whole. I have detailed that they are hitting better than the numbers say but it is still pretty frustrating that these guys can't consistently get hits.

Adam Loewen on the DL. He'll be back but you have to wonder if he'll ever be healthy enough to learn how to pitch.

Steve Trachsel. Trax is a placeholder and that was the intent when he was brought in but he has done little to hold on to that spot in the rotation he has.

Shortstop. Turns out Luis Hernandez couldn't field either. He has looked good at second base though.

Luke Scott with only one homer. Leftfield in Camden Yards is cursed. It's the Curse of B.J. Surhoff. Ever since The Warehouse traded Surhoff to Atlanta at the 2000 deadline, nobody has given us consistent play in left. (OK, B.J. came back and did it for a couple of years but he was only a part-timer at that point.) Granted, Scott is still an upgrade from what the O's have trotted out the past few seasons but I expected the guy to slug at least .400.

In my pre-season look at the Orioles, i identified 5 reasons to be optimistic:

Improve Outfield Production

Although I am a bit disappointed with Scott's bat so far, he is OPSing .727 which is a big improvement from the .631 OPS Oriole leftfielders put up last year.

Adam Jones isn't there yet. He's OPSing .631 compared to .713 from Oriole centerfielders last year. But he'll get to at least that production by season's end.

Markakis has struggled a bit with his average but is still OPSing about what he did last season (.852 vs. 847).

Jay Payton? He's been bad overall (.655 OPS) but against lefties is OPSing .792. I really wish Dave Trembley would stop giving him ABs against righthanders.

The outfield isn't there yet but Adam Jones will improve.

The Bullpen Can't Be Any Worse? Right?

Correctamundo. Trembley has handled the pen better and managed to build a pretty effective relief corp.

Rebounds

Aubrey Huff has rebounded a bit. Still waiting for Ramon Hernandez.

A Better Bench

Kind of a moot point with the team carrying 13 pitchers until very recently but no it's not any better than last year. We shall see what Freddie Bynum and Alex Cintron can do.

A Decent Manager

Considering that very few things have been clicking at the same time this season, Trembley has done a pretty good job. He has the team at .500 (which is one game above their Pythagorean Record) while still getting the youngsters the majority of the playing time.

His recent decision to go with a four-man rotation (for the time being) shows he's willing to make unorthodox decisions to mask his team's weaknesses.

The Next Quarter?

They survived the road but now you have to survive the AL East. Over the next month there will be lots of games against the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays. No pushovers (save Washington) until the Pirates come to town a month from tomorrow. The good news is that outside of the Red Sox, all the teams in our division are pretty flawed right now.

It's a tough task but the next logical step for the Baby Birds to get this team back to respectability.

Base Hits: 5/9/2008

Sucker that I am, I am now solidly back on the Daniel Cabrera bandwagon. Complete game? Only one walk? Oh yeah, I'm on the D-Train.

As if to highlight his bad luck at the plate, Ramon Hernandez lined out hard his first two at bats and hit a grounder deep in the whole behind third where Tony Pena, Jr. made a great play that robbed him of a single. His only hit was a fluky broken bat single to center. I'm guessing he'll take them any way he can get them these days.

I'm starting the Church of Freddie:

Amazing what being a shortstop not named Hernandez or Fahey will get you in 2008. So happy to hear the Bynum is now the starting shortstop...

*****

I was watching the Royal feed of the game last night. The announcers said that Brian Roberts had won a Gold Glove which, of course, has never happened. How can you get something like that wrong?

Also, they talked to Royals pitcher Brian Bannister twice during the game. Bannister is going to make a great coach or GM when he's done playing. The guy has a lot of knowledge about the game and is able to communicate it wonderfully.

*****

OK, OK. I was wrong about John Maine. How was I supposed to know he would develop a strikeout pitch? Crap.

*****

The Oriole Trade Monitors are updated with the latest Win Share data from this season. The Bedard and Tejada trades were obviously made with an eye to the future but the Orioles are getting equal value for the present as well.

*****

Coming up next week, more analysis of the shocking turnaround of Daniel Cabrera, how Brian Burres continues to prove me wrong and more BHI stuff.

Song of the Week: Feeling rather political with the national elections gearing up. Here's James McMurtry, one hell of a songwriter. Have a great weekend!