Would the Baltimore Orioles spend some money on a so-so pitcher like Edwin Jackson?! Reports are coming out that 3 teams are in the bidding offering a 3 year deal Mr. Ken R is reporting on Foxsports. I would love the Orioles bring more pitching. But I'm not sold on this guy. He was terrible in the Playoffs and wasn't ace material this past season. I personally would like the Orioles to trade for A.J. for cash in exchange pay some of his salary and see what happens? A.J. would bring a lot more fire to the team and more leadership what do you guys think?

2011 was yet another disappointing year for the Baltimore Orioles. There were some bright spots: Matt Wieters continued to improve both behind and alongside the plate, J.J. Hardy turned in a performance better than anyone had predicted, and Zach Britton had a solid rookie year despite being a groundball pitcher without a good defensive third baseman. But the struggles of Brian Matusz took Birdland by surprise, as by the end of the 2010 season, most fans thought he was almost certain to be the best pitcher on the staff in 2011.

Of course, that was before he got injured in Spring Training, and never resembled his 2010 self for the rest of the year. Upon first coming off of the disabled list, Matusz showed an average fastball about 3 mph slower than the 2010 version. Fans and analysts point to the decreased velocity as the main reason for Matusz's record-setting struggles in 2011. Is that really the case, however, or were there other problems that simply weren't as obvious?

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Do you need an off-season baseball fix? I have a recommendation.

I have to admit that I didn't stay awake for the end of Game 6 in last year's World Series. There was a lot of talk afterward about what an awesome game it was, because of the multiple comebacks and exciting moments, and how close the Rangers came to winning their first World Series, only to ultimately fail.

All of this reminded me of the best game I ever saw, in 1986. No, it wasn't Game 6 of the World Series. It was Game 5 of the ALCS between the California Angels and the Boston Red Sox. The night before, in Game 4, a 24-year-old Roger Clemens, on his way to his first Cy Young award and the MVP, would take a 3-0 lead into the 9th inning, before handing the ball to closer Calvin Schiraldi. Schiraldi promptly blew the save and the Angels won on an 11th inning base hit by former Oriole Bobby Grich, to take a 3-1 series lead. Luckily for Boston, in 1985 the ALCS had gone from best-of-5 to best-of-7.

I really didn't know who I was rooting for when Game 5 began. On the one hand, the Angels had ex-Orioles Grich and Doug DeCinces in the starting lineup. Grich had announced that this was his last season. Boston also had an ex-Oriole, Don Baylor, along with one of my favorite players, Dwight Evans. I know he wasn't an Oriole, but I always thought he should have been. I didn't hate the Red Sox. I'd been to a few games at Fenway Park, and had some good times there. Besides, they were rivals of the Yankees, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Right?

The announcing team featured another Oriole connection with Jim Palmer as the color man along with Al Michaels. When they showed Willie Stargell in the crowd, Michaels tried to tease Palmer by saying that he must remember Stargell from the '79 World Series. Palmer's response was "Well, I had good luck against him, but I remember that home run he hit off Scotty McGregor in Game 7". Some things never change.

For some reason, even though I watched the game live, I also taped it. I still have the tape today, with the box score taped to the outside of the box. Unfortunately, the tape is a BetaMax.

I watched the game last night, by buying a subscription to mlb.tv's "Baseball's Best". Even though it locked up a half-dozen times, and inexplicably jumped from the top of the 11th to the bottom of the 11th without showing the winning run scoring, it was still worth watching. Don't just look for the highlights, watch the whole game. I'm sure there are other ways to view or download it, but I can't tell you what they are. I don't recommend the BetaMax approach, however.

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4x4 , OBP,SLG,HR,R- ERA,HR/9,WHIP keeper league. Tons of fun

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Ater the news of the New Zealander's signing I went to look for news of our Brazilian signing in December. The only word at that time was that we signed someone, without details.

Found something. His name's Rafael Moreno, an under-20 pitcher who won an award at a Pan-American youth tournament in November.

This site has a photo and a brief mention.

It also has a link to a Brazilian baseball site in Portuguese, where the info came from. There are supposed to be videos at the Brazilian site, but I couldn't find any.

Let's face it. Next year, you would rather that Kevin Gregg will never be given the chance to close a single game for the Orioles. In fact, you could even be like me, in that you hope he starts pitching for another team. Maybe even someone else in the AL East, so we can pummel his crappy fastball or simply let him walk us like everybody else. Last year, he posted a 6.03 BB/9, almost twice the league average of 3.11. His only decent pitch was a slider and even then his k/9 of 7.99 (barely average) and seven blown saves point in one direction: the exit.

Some say that with the recent acquisitions that add up to fierce (in the Tyra Bank's sense) competition for rotation spots, Jim Johnson will stay in the bullpen, despite the late-last-season speculation of a new starting gig. While I confess that I was looking forward to seeing Jimmy getting the chance to put some real innings in, I'm not sure that I like the idea of messing with one of the few bright spots that the Orioles have left.

But is Jim Johnson going to be our closer? At the end of the 2011 season, it sure looked that way. Buck Showalter had finally grown tired of Gregg's failures and thus Johnson got the last handful of chances that the Orioles had to close out a game. There weren't many, but it was still a nice glimpse at what could be. Johnson ended last season a 2.67 ERA, which was nice, even if his FIP was more like 3.22 and he did manage to blow five saves.

It seems however, that Dan Duquette doesn't fully trust Johnson to handle the highly regarded (and subsequently overrated) closing duties for the Orioles. We've had extremely poor luck with signing closers, and yet it looks like we might make another stab at a mediocre and somewhat expensive finisher. Today, MLB Trade Rumors reported that the Orioles have talked to the Reds about Francisco Cordero. Cordero has closed tons of games, the most of any active player besides Mariano Rivera, but you have to wonder how many he will be able to save in the coming season. After all, he turns 37 and Fan Graphs just put up a great article on exactly why any team (and thus the O's) should be concerned about signing Cordero. For one, his k/9 has dropped steadily for the last four seasons, from 12 in 2007, to just 5 in 2011. He has started throwing a lousy slider and is relying heavily on a change up which doesn't seem to be fooling anyone. Sure, he still posted a nice ERA of 2.45 but that was in Cincinatti. Not the AL East. Plus, his BABIP was only .215, compared with the league .298 and his FIP was actually 4.02. If his strikeout rate continues to drop, this makes him even less valuable than Kevin Gregg. Well, almost.

There was talk with Seattle during the winter meetings about Brandon League, but those went nowhere. Too bad, because I like League's velocity and potential almost as I much as I love his hair. All this said, I don't want the Orioles to hire anyone under the agreement that they will be the closer.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm rereading Moneyball right now but Billy Beane's theories surrounding the creation of value in making any decent reliever into a closer seem like they're worth considering right now. Especially after McPhail made the wonderful choice of signing Kevin Gregg to replace good ol' Michael Gonzalez. Clearly, spending more money is not the best answer. So why not take a page from moneyball? Why not create a trade chip? This team needs to worry about getting the lead more than keeping the lead at this point and wouldn't it be nice to mold some of our short term answers into long term solutions? I think that is exactly what Duquette has been trying to do and we know from experience how overrated closers can be. Someone in Camden Chat brought up the very realistic and rather unexciting idea of giving Alfredo Simon a shot at closing duties. Again. Get it? A shot? Well, the idea is better than the joke. But it happened before (I mean Simon closing) and it wouldn't be such a bad idea to try it again. He wasn't incredible before, but his save rate back in 2010 was still slightly better than Gregg's was (81% to 76%) last year, and I truly believe that Alfredo has matured since then. His WHIP, k/9, BB/9, and HR/9 have all improved over the last three years and I see no reason why the big guy can't take another step forward this season. Especially for whatever we end up paying him.

Regardless of who Buck chooses to save games (and let's hope that there are opportunities to be had) I wonder if Duquette will choose to start from within. Another reliever might be nice, but we don't need another Kevin Gregg. Hell, I'm actually tickled with the rumor that we might eat some of his contract just to get rid of him. I encourage the Orioles front office, who I know read my blog religiously and with great interest, to save the money and not hire another washed up closer that can't finish. If it's not going to be great, can we just skip the annoyance of having to shell out more dough just to have our hearts broken yet again? Let our next closer be someone that we already have.

Birds O' Pray

Hi! I have nothing to do for the entire month of February, and I need some reading suggestions. I thought CC could exchange some good books. Say a little about each book, maybe a one sentence plot summary, and your opinion. The books don't have to be baseball related, but if they are, great! I'll start off.

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OK, this is the week – and today’s the day, matter of fact, with 6 games on, 5 of ‘em really good, and 2 likely making up two-thirds of this year’s Best Bowl Games triple. After a 7-2 Week 2, the Titov Express is ready to ‘cap this sucker bigtime – you can almost HEAR the confidence in those dice a-rollin’ and those darts a-thwonkin’, cancha?

Bets are straight-up except for the two PAC 12 games, where the spread rules. Get ‘em.

-->Jan. 2:

Houston (12-1) [-7] v. Penn St. (9-3). The only thing that could change this is a kind of Sympathy for Joe Pa vibe, but I think everybody's beyond that now. COUGS.

Ohio St. (6-6) v. Florida (6-6) [-2]. The day’s only clunker. Too bad one of these teams has to win, since neither oughta be here. GATORS.

Nebraska (9-3) v. South Carolina (10-2)[-2.5]. The Cornholers didn’t have that much fun in the Big Dim and the Gamecranks didn’t realize their SEC ambitions either. Grr! COCKS.

Michigan St. (10-3) v. Georgia (10-3) [-3]. The 300 are crappy at bowls and GA, after a 10-straight run, needs to show its conf-champ game drubbing was undeserved. DOGS.

Wisconsin (11-2) v. Oregon (11-2) [-6]. The Wisc OL averages 323 lbs. So what? So the Big Dim loses again, that’s what, as Thomas and James go nuts. ORYGUN wins/beats

Stanford (11-1) v. Oklahoma St. (11-1) [-4]. A real O/U game, as Taylor runs and Luck – with all 3 TEs finally back – goes crazy. But STA is middling-to-weak at CB; Blackmon will kill ‘em. This will likely go 52-49 or sth, SNODFART w/ the beat.

-->Jan. 3

Michigan (10-2) [-3] v. Virginia Tech (11-2). If Tech hadn’t played Clempson, they’d-a had a perfect season. I coulda bought IBM at 15, too. But the Wolferines are, yep, another too-big Big Dim team. TECH.

--> Jan. 4

West Virginia (9-3) v. Clemson (10-3) [-3]. Big East? Nah. But then Clempson kinda slowed down there at the end. This 3 sounds abt right, I think. Anyway, TIGES.

-->Jan. 6

Kansas St. (10-2) v. Arkansas (10-2) [7.5]. This is prolly the OTHER really good bowl game, and a potential orgy for O/U sluts. Oh, and it’s my Big Bowl flyer: K-STATE.

-->Jan. 7

SMU (7-5) v. Pittsburgh (6-6) [-3]. Another R.U. Kidding Me-morial Bowl, about which no one cares a warm turd. Pitt defines BE mediocrity, but SM somehow beat TCU. Okay, SMU.

-->Jan. 8

Arkansas St. (10-2) v. Northern Illinois (10-3). The Sun Belt is pretty Sansabelt in OOC games but the Mid-A has done some bowlin’ this yr. DOGS over Wolfs.

-->Jan. 9

Alabama (11-1) [-1] v. LSU (13-0). Somehow the Déjà Vu All Over Again Bowl counts for the nat’l champeenship this yr – no WONDER they call that title “mythical.” You’ve already seen this Game of the Century (that’s the century that ran 1958-1959 or so: “great defense” by undersized players and an OFF limited to FGs), and this Xerox will prolly be a little dimmer. But hey, what if somebody scores a “touchdown”?!? Okay, BAMA.

Welp, our Week 1 was a weak one, all right, with a measly 3-4 record to show for all the intense analysis and late-into-the-night strategizing – OK, the intense elbow bending and deep-into-the-stein chugging that well-lubricated dart throwers everywhere view as the trademarks of their craft. Or something.

The rest of Dec. features a string of Also-Ran Bowls pitting teams which occasionally soared to the heights of Sort of OK-ness this year before ultimately crapping out, to the disappointment of a select audience of alumni and team members’ families – who now get to observe them one last time, largely undisturbed by the general public, in meaningless TV events. Which are sometimes fun/revealing/instructive/like that.

OK, same deal as before: All bets are straight-up except for PAC 12 games, where the spread rules (and sanity often gets to take a breather). Get ‘em.

--> Dec. 26

UNC v. Missouri: Mizzou

--> Dec. 27

Purdue v. W. Michigan: Broilermakers

NC State v. Louisville: Wolfs

--> Dec. 28

Toledo v. Air Force: TOL

Cal v. TX [-3]: Cal beats

--> Dec. 29

FLA St. v. Notre Dim: Noles

U Dub v. Baylor [-9 ½ ]: Dawgs beat

--> Dec. 30

BYU v. Tulsa: Mormons

Iowa St. v. Rutgers: Cyclamates

Miss. St. v. Wake: Dawgs

Iowa v. Okla.: Okies

--> Dec. 31

TX A&M v. N’Western: Ags

GA Tech [-2 ½] v. Utah: Utes beat

UCLA v. Illinois [-3]: Bruins beat

Cincy v. Vandy: Cats

VA v. Aub: Tiges

I should preface my trades with some jibber jaber but I hate that stuff. The main pieces are in bold. I'm not sure about the tertiary pieces. I wanted to play with them more (especially with trying to get Guzman to the Marlins), but I got tired. So hopefully this post represents a good first stab. Let's get ready to rumble!

Baltimore Orioles Receive: Yonder Alonso and Reymond Fuentes from the San Diego Padres

Baltimore Orioles Trade: Adam Jones (SON!) to the Miami Marlins, Jason Berken to the San Diego Padres

Why This Works for the Orioles: The Orioles receive a major league ready 1B and plug in Endy Chavez as the regular CF with Fuentes waiting in the wings. For the second prospect, I was looking for a weak bat, strong glove CF who was near major league ready (sort of a Peter Bourjos lite). I've been quietly hoping Duquette would address the O's crappy defense this offseason in a creative way. But I'm an O's fan so I live my life in quiet desperation. Fuentes seemed like the closest thing to a weak bat, strong glove OF, although he isn't major league ready. Sickels rated him as a C+ prospect with the following description, "Excellent athleticism, speed, defense, but lack of pop could prevent him from becoming a regular." He has some upside left so he probably has a bit more value than a typical C+ prospect especially to the Padres with Petco Park. Lastly, I'm not sure if I prefer Rizzo or Alonso. I went with Alonso since he did pretty well in a small number of big league ABs this year.

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