The pitching has been better than expected, or at least better than I expected. That’s good to see. The bats are horrible and the talk about playing solid fundamental baseball seems to have been mostly that – talk.

This is year eleven of the futility. There has finally been an acknowledgment of the fact that this franchise has been horrible. Let’s hope it continues. The big deals have been made. There are no more Bedards to sell. It’s a multi-year struggle from here on out to find and groom some decent players in the field before the O’s wind up on the positive side of .500 ball. They are improving, but they’ll still wind up at the bottom of the division and with a high draft pick. They’ll be in that position because of the talent they field.

Now I want bad beer.

All this “aggressive running” BS is costing us outs and maybe a win here or there. Diamond Dave needs to f’ing cool it. If your name isn’t Roberts, stay the f on base…and maybe even B-Rob needs fewer greenlights.

Nicely phrased. Newsflash for Bud: the whole league is crap.

And I wish Dave would fine a few people for baserunning indifference.

The Orioles are not. The Orioles have light hitting, fast guys. They should have the speed to pull off the small ball, even if they do fuck it up on a regular basis. I don’t mind seeing Adam Jones take a lot of risks on the base paths this year, because I assume that he’ll get better at it, and that, at some point, he’ll be stealing at the level of a Nick Markakis, if not a Brian Roberts.

But its not like they really have the option of standing on the basis and waiting for someone to drive them in. Nobody drives shit on this team. They are making the best of what they have. Which, regrettably, isn’t much.

I can’t believe there wasn’t ONE, NOT ONE, subcommittee reference in last night’s thread. I’m very disappointed in you guys.

Also,

If you look at the lineups, you’ll notice Emil Brown, case in point that runs batted in mean F-all.

,
SC, I hold you personally responsible for last night’s debacle. Do I sound like I care if you weren’t the one who didn’t cover first base quickly enough late in the game, or that you weren’t the one who couldn’t get a single run in with runners on 2nd and 3rd with one out, or that you weren’t one of the ones who was PO, CS, or some other form of boneheaded out producing? I don’t think so… this is mos’def’ YOUR fault.

into a giant bloodsucking leech that consumes all of the life of this ballclub… but I’m still positive, I promise.

I expect years before the team is competent. The O’s will need to deal some young arms to fill the infield. Maybe a Roberts trade will bring one decent player. I expect they’ll pick some college players in the draft. It will take several years for this to come together. Maybe 2011 or 2012? The O’s might be on the fringes of historical ineptitude, assuming the Pirates don’t blow past the 16 year mark.

I think most of us here (I don’t mean to speak for anyone else) think the Orioles are finally, after many years, pursuing the correct strategy of rebuilding through younger players.

I support this, and I want to be patient in hopes that they can get it right and this team can content again (I certainly don’t expect it this year), but it’s not going to be very fun to watch for a couple years. (Not like the last 10 have been a blast)

you might as well take Kickass off that list, I suspect he’ll get tired of playing in shit.

Provided he starts hitting again, that is.

The sad thing is that he’s a free agent in 3 years. Unless the O’s sign him to an extension this offseason, he might be around when our young pitchers start to become really good (if ever). I still say trade Cabs if he keeps up his good performance. The O’s can always resign when he’s a free agent. And we desparately need position players.

I think has 3 years after this one before free agency - if MacPhail’s rebuilding program is going anywhere, hopefully we’ll have a team worth staying on by then. But, yeah, hard to imagine any of the other position players being around - for one thing they pretty much all need to be replaced before there’s a good team anyway, and most of them are pretty long in the tooth.