It's amazing how frequently this organization does things that make one think it is behind the times when it comes to understanding baseball.

Exhibit A: Melvin Mora continually batting 5th.  Dave Trembley's rationale: "He's always been a second-half hitter.  He's always been a guy who's hit very well with guys on base...I'm not considering [moving him] now."

Sorry to let the facts get in the way of a good story, Dave, but Mora's career first half OPS: .812; career second half OPS: .769.  It doesn't matter that Melvin hit well last year in the second half - overall in his career, he hasnt done so, and he's just awful right now (slugging percentage last 28 days: .299).  Can Dave or anyone who works for him look at a stat sheet?   

Regarding the rest of Dave's statement...his career OPS with RISP is .769; with anyone on base, it's .816.  Hardly anything here to justify leaving Melvin where he is.  And yet Dave isn't even considering the move. 

Exhibit B: The treatment of Luke Scott.  Ever since he got here, we've had this idea that he can't hit lefties well and should sit against a lot of them (for the likes of Jay Payton much of the time).  Luke's career OPS vs lefites: .841; career OPS vs righties: .875.  Huge difference, huh?  In 2007, Luke's last year before coming here, there was a .006 difference in his OPS vs lefties and righties.  And yet we give Jay freakin' Payton tons of PT against lefties because Luke can't hit them.  Can no one in the organization go to baseball-reference.com?

Obviously there's no Payton this year, but these problems certainly go beyond this year.  Furthermore, sitting Luke against Bedard last week, when he was in the middle of a ridiculous hot streak, was absurd.

Exhibit C: Our attitude towards baserunning.  From Tom Trebelhorn to Juan Samuel to Dave Trembley, we just love to give outs away on the bases.  We don't seem to realize that such "aggression" costs more runs than it produces.  We don't seem to care that we're last in the league in baserunning efficiency this year (as another poster here noted) - nope, whenever something boneheaded like hit-and-runs with Aubrey Huff and Mora don't work, Dave just basically says, "Welp, we tried, didn't work, that's the breaks," showing that he has no clue that his approach is wrong and that it will continue.  

The fact that we can be worst in the league at CS at only 10th in SB would be comical if it wasn't so sad.  And that doesn't even address all the other outs we've given up through "aggressive" baserunning.  Maybe one day we'll have a manager--and a team-wide philosophy--that understands the value of your 27 outs at bat.

There are other things, both small (Dave occasionally batting Cesar Izturis and his sub-300 OBP 2nd), and large (our overall aversion to talking a walk, the first month of this year excepted) that further indicate that this organization is living in the past generation, that we can't look at a stat sheet, that we don't seem to grasp any of the revolutions in baseball analysis that have happened over the past 10-20 years.

The O's may have more concrete problems to solve right now, but these problems, I think, will continue to hurt us, perhaps even more so when the club is contending.