If the orioles this year dont deserve an F in pitching, then what team ever will? Guthrie is the only reliable pitcher, and what happens if he goes down?

How many teams have just 1 player who’s a lock for the rotation?

but i think we are more of a D -

The commentary of the paper clearly shows they have no idea what they are talking about.

The bullpen is almost as thin as the rotation. Sherrill is solid, but setup man Chris Ray is coming off Tommy John Surgery. Behind him are struggling veterans like Jamie Walker and raw fireballers like Dennis Sarfate.

That’s just criminal. So to rip apart our pitching, they start with the bullpen, which isn’t actually bad. Then they make no mention of Jimmy Johnson, despite the fact that he was our best reliever last year. Also, Sarfate was fine when he was a reliever, he just sucked as a starter. Sherrill, Johnson, Ray, Sarfate is a perfectly decent top four relievers. It’s not elite, but whatever.

what were we when we still had Daniel Cabrera?

Seriously, I can’t disagree, and you can’t deny that our pitching staff is a giant question mark. Things could work out and we could climb to having an average staff, but that’s about the best you can expect at this point.

I wish I could find the link on Baseball Prospectus with the RS/RA predictions for 2009. We were going to be at the top of the division in RS and the worst in MLB for RA, something like 825/925.

I don’t think DD deserves a ‘D’ at all.

i’d say F is about right. You shouldn’t be given any thing above that if you can’t win. This is a professional team being paid to win and please the fans and represent Charm City. If you can’t give the fans what they want then you’ve failed. We’re moving in the right direction but the birds are so rich in pitching history that the last 11 years should be considered a horrific failure. Until we see W’s we should all be angry as shit that we’ve signed donkeys like omar dahl, russ ortiz, bruce chen, mike dejean, yada yada yada, on and on. Looking at this winters moves hopefully we’ll be moving up the grading school sooner than later.

To me, F is a failing grade. I’ve got no problem giving last year’s staff an F, but with so many guys being an unknown at this point I’d say they’re an Incomplete. If you must grade them, slap a D on it.

I’m not outraged or anything, but it does seem a bit much.

Our pitching may not be record setting bad, but it should be pretty awful. I do hope that the team commits to giving guys like Penn, Hill and Liz a chance to see what they can do (I define chance as at least 100 innings). Fortunately, as an organization, starting pitching is a strength, or at least it will be soon enough. In just two years, a possible scenario:

Guthrie – Guts remains strong, and hopefully firing Boras means he’ll extend with the club

2 of Matusz, Tillman and Arrieta duplicate the Rays success of Garza, Kazmir, Price, Shields to be good front/middle starters

2 of Hill, Penn, Patton, Albers, Hernandez, Liz, etc pan out to be good back end starters

But in 09, I think Pie would get more use out of his glove if he sat in the bleachers.

The Hardball Times has us giving up BY FAR the most runs in baseball. The pitching is atrocious.

The Orioles had the second-worst pitching in the American League. They had one decent starter and two decent relievers. Other than that they were terrible. George Sherril is a cruddy player who had the worst season of his career last year. Maybe some of the young guys will get better, but until that happens their pitching is justifiably described as shitty.

Dave Trembley is a lousy manager who uses a lot of out-producing strategies. The manager can only do so much damage, so maybe they can overcome it, but he’s not going to help anything when he’s giving up outs in a division that has the teams that were first, third, and fourth in on-base percentage last year.

Roberts and Markakis both are pretty good and Wieters looks like he’ll be pretty good as well, but they don’t have that big catalyst hitter in the middle of the lineup that all the other AL East teams have.

The Orioles are a lousy team who might improve in a few areas next year, but still need a lot of help.

I’d say is an average closer. Here are the numbers as to why:

IN SAVE SITUATIONS:

37 games, 35.2 IP, 1-2 w/ 31 saves, 3.03 ERA, 32 K’s, 16 BB

Those numbers are good for a closer who is not a dominant strike-out power pitcher.

IN NON-SAVE SITUATIONS:

20 games, 17.2 IP, 2-3, 8.15 ERA, 26K’s, 17 BB’s

The point? Don’t use him any other time.

In 18 games from July 1st on, he was scored upon in 6 appearances.
1st time) JJ had blown the lead and Sherrill was brought in to keep it close. He gave up 3 runs.
2nd time) Sherrill blows 1 run lead and the game
3rd time) Gave up 3 runs to Yankees in bottom of 9th while we had a 4 run lead.
4th time) Blows tie game in bottom of 9th to take the loss.
5th time) Gave up 3 run HR in a meaningless game when O’s were down by 6
6th time) First day back from injury, he gives up 3 runs while the O’s were up by 7

I will not deny that he was worn down; I am not making that argument. What I am saying is people keep talking about his awful second half ERA but fail to mention how he was hurt for a month during that span and how most of the runs were scored when it didn’t decide the game. He got a loss from a tie game and a blown save, so 2 out of 6 decided the game. One could argue that him giving up runs after Johnson on July 6th also helped decided that game given the Orioles coming back in the 8th. Even with that, he screwed up 3 games. During that same span, he had 5 saves and a win. Unfortunately, there were not many opportunities to close games at the end of last season.

Ultimately, I hope to see Chris Ray back at the helm closing for the Orioles, but Sherrill did good last year as the closer, and his second half has been skewered and exaggerated. Sherill will do fine this year.