This past weekend, lost in the excitement of October baseball, the Baltimore Orioles announced that their GM, Andy MacPhail, has “elected” not to return for 2012. It is unclear if he is done with baseball for good, or if he is just taking a break from the game.
From Dirk Hayhurst’s Twitter:
“You know what would be really cool…”
~Baseball Gods, right before THIS all happened.
They’re calling it “Wild Wednesday,” and it was, but it was also Wild Twenty-Aught-Eleven. The Tampa Bay Rays closed the books on their 2011 campaign with one of the craziest nights in baseball history and one of the most absurd paths to the postseason ever.
At 12:03 a.m. ET this morning, Robert Andino hit a sinking line drive to left field off Jonathon Papelbon. Carl Crawford charged the ball, but it popped off his glove and Nolan Reimold dove onto home plate, giving the Orioles a 4-3 win. The first Orioles player to reach Andino chest-bumped him to the ground — maybe knocking the wind out of him — as the cameras watched the Baltimore bench fall onto his seemingly-frightened and breathless face.
At 12:05 a.m., Evan Longoria reached out — almost into the other batter’s box — to foul off a slider from New York Yankees pitcher Scott Proctor, holding the count at two balls, two strikes. Longoria exhaled deeply, puffing his cheeks like a trombone player, as Scott Proctor wound for the next pitch. It was a fastball away that got lost and asked Longo for directions.
“Two-two and line SHOT! DOWN THE LEFT FIELD LIIIIINE! THAT BALL IS GONE!!!” Rays television announcer Dewayne Staats called, presumably leaning out of the booth to watch as Longoria’s 31st homer ricocheted around behind the Crawford Cutout — a low wall added so then-Ray Carl Crawford could rob a few extra home runs.
Last night’s (and this morning’s) Rays game was beyond spectacular (for non-Red Sox fans, that is; my condolences to the northeast). It was parts Spring Training game (with the parade of Yankees pitchers), parts Little League World Series (with the Rays using nearly the entirety of their bench in key roles), and all parts unbelievable.
The 2011 Rays season has shown that though baseball is about probabilities, it is probabilities with replacement — truly any event can occur with the very next pitch, even if it happened just a few innings ago — or if it has never happened before.
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It’s been a pretty solid week for Adam Loewen. First, the newly-converted outfielder gets called up to the majors for the first time since 2008, back when he was pitching for the Baltimore Orioles. Then, on September 7th, he gets his first start in center field and picks up his first major league hit and run to boot. This Sunday, Loewen picked up his first home run and his first two-hit game, and then yesterday he went and robbed a home run from Carl Crawford at Fenway Park. Not bad for anybody, really. Even better for a guy with Loewen’s story.
“You never know where help will come from — until you look for it.”
— Tobias Funkë, Arrested Development
News broke last night that Florida police arrested Manny Ramirez on battery charges concerning his wife. Just a few months ago, Ramirez was preparing for another MLB season and had a gold-plated opportunity for redemption.
Since then, though, the former Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox slugger has journeyed down a divergent path from his most recent team, the Tampa Bay Rays.
Rewind to the beginning of the season: The Rays management willingly admits 2011 would be a “reloading” year — which is to say the team anticipated a good, but not good-enough performance.
Sure, they had the pitching — what with David Price, James Shields and three young and above-average starters in Jeremy Hellickson, Wade Davis and Jeff Niemann — and they had the defenders — again boasting some of the league’s most valuable fielders in Evan Longoria, Ben Zobrist, and B.J. Upton — but they also had holes aplenty.
For one, the Rays lacked a legitimate DH and a proven first baseman. In hopes of putting power in the DH spot and getting the team a few lucky bounces away from the playoffs, they signed Manny Ramirez to a $2M, 1-year contract — deemed by many as a triumph of Friedmanonics — and Johnny Damon to a $7M $5.25M (excluding incentives), 1-year deal. But even with these additions, the Rays had little chance to out-talent the Red Sox and Yankees in 2011.
The story, as any good story goes, proved quite unpredictable.
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Every year, there’s at least one player that has an absolute fail-tacular year in the field. Jermaine Dye in 2009 (-22 UZR). Ken Griffey Jr. in 2007 (-29 UZR). Brad Hawpe in 2008 (-36 UZR). These players all had good years at the plate, but their defense was so excessively poor that they ended up negating a large portion of the value they provided to their team.
This year’s candidate to join this illustrious group? Mark Reynolds. After spending most of the season at third base or first base, Reynolds currently has the worst UZR score in the majors: 22 runs below average. And not only that, but Reynolds also has the lowest Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) rating of the year (-32 runs), he’s tied for the most amount of errors in the majors (26), and his Fielding Percentage is by far the worst in the majors (.897). I don’t like using Fielding Percentage as an evaluative tool, but when the next worst person is a full 50 points better than you, your glove is pretty darn bad.
When looking at these numbers, two questions pop into my head. How often is it that DRS and UZR both agree like this? And should the Orioles put Reynolds at DH once Guerrero is gone?
Every season some players have a power breakout (Granderson) or meltdown (Dunn). I decided to look at the players with the highest and lowest ISO increases this season and the reasons behind the changes for a few of the players.
The Texas Rangers just can’t stop making trades. After acquiring Mike Adams and Koji Uehera (yes, another Oriole) at the trade deadline, the Rangers went out yesterday and traded for pitcher Mike Gonzalez from the Orioles for a PTBNL.
On the surface, this is a relatively minor move. Ooo, the Rangers add another veteran arm to help them shore up their bullpen down the stretch — not such a big deal, right? For some reason, though, this move has sparked off about 10 different simultaneous thoughts in my head. So if you’re looking for gratuitous, over-the-top coverage of relatively small baseball moves, you’ve come to the right spot today.
I’ll run through this team by team, to help keep my thoughts from becoming too chaotic. First the Rangers, then the Orioles, and then…the Angels?
Back on July 30, the New York Yankees shelled Baltimore Orioles’ rookie Zach Britton. The 23-year-old lefty struck out Derek Jeter to lead off the bottom of the first, but then gave up seven hits, a walk and nine runs — six of which were earned. Forty-three pitches later, Britton was done — and the Jeter K was his lone out.
Fast forward to Sunday, when Britton was going against nearly the same lineup — plus a healthy Alex Rodriguez — and tossed seven shutout innings en route to his eighth victory of the season. After such an abysmal outing last month, he allowed just four hits and a walk, while striking out five. None of Britton’s five Yankee baserunners reached second base. In fact, even after his exit, the Yankees failed to move a runner in to scoring position as Jim Johnson and Kevin Gregg worked the final two innings to preserve the combined shutout.
Just hours after acquiring their potential first baseman of the future (Chris Davis), the Baltimore Orioles shipped off their first baseman of the present – Derrek Lee – to the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for yet another young first baseman in Aaron Baker. Selected in the 11th round of the 2009 draft, Baker has produced above-average offensive marks since turning pro. Meanwhile, his age (23) and his level (A+) probably give him an advantage. Although Baker may never turn in to anything more than an organizational soldier, his power potential is worth taking a shot on; especially since the 35-year-old Lee is not in Baltimore’s post-2011 plans.
Today, the Rangers traded Chris Davis and Tommy Hunter to the Orioles for setup man Koji Uehara. Some might balk at the asking price, but it’s become obvious that neither Hunter nor Davis were going to figure in to the Rangers’ future plans. And Uehara might end up at the cheapest way for the Rangers to upgrade their late-inning relief.
It’s true that there are a lot of years of control left on the young players that the Orioles acquired. Both can be free agents in 2016 at the earliest. But it’s also true that both players had muted upside.