Earlier in the season Stacey had a little parley with Lewie Pollis, who writes for the Cleveland Indians-centric blog Wahoo Blues, in advance of the big Indians-Orioles showdown in mid-April. We thought that was all pretty swell, so here we are to do it again, as the Orioles try to turn over a new leaf in the second half of the season.

The Indians are actually a pretty interesting team. In some ways they are the yang to the Orioles' ying. Neither team was supposed to really be in the thick of it in 2011, but both got off to pretty hot starts led by surprisingly good starting pitching. But where the Orioles have slipped to the bottom of baseball, the Indians have (so far) prevailed. Today they sit just half a game behind the Tigers for first place in the AL Central. This is, however, despite a 10-17 June which sounds pretty similar to the struggles we've watched here in Baltimore.

When the Orioles were in Cleveland in April, they were reeling a little bit, slipping back to just a game over .500 after the first of a series of sweeps at the hands of the Yankees. Cleveland then swept the Birds in convincing fashion, outscoring Baltimore 20-7 over three games. The Orioles have not since seen the world above .500. But, as I'm sure a dozen dime-store baseball writers have said, one of the great things about baseball is that it is a continuous opportunity for cold-blooded revenge against the Cleveland Indians.

After the jump, see what Lewie Pollis thinks about the state of the Indians and our long series with them this weekend. Big thanks to Lewie for giving us some of his time, and you can see my cohort-in-arms, Eat More Esskay, give some of his own answers to Wahoo Blues over there.

Continue reading this post »

On paper, this weekend's series between the Rays and Orioles skews heavily in the Rays favor. Neither team can hit, but the Rays' pitching so thoroughly blows the O's out of the water that it could be an ugly weekend in Charm City.

The O's OBP currently sits at an ugly .297 for the season. That's bad enough for 28th in the majors, but luckily for them the Rays aren't too far ahead of them at .303 (25th). The Orioles and Rays sit at 21st and 20th, respectively in slugging percentage; the Rays' .384 tops the O's by a whopping .008. The Orioles are dead last in doubles (37) while the Rays are in middle of the pack with 55 (13th). But the O's make up for it with 32 home runs (8th) to the Rays' 26 (15th). So when it comes to hitting, it's really a wash. Unfortunately for the Orioles the same can't be said for the pitching.

The Rays are near the top of the majors in nearly every standard pitching statistic, while the Orioles are floundering at the bottom of the list. The Rays' starting pitching has put up an ERA of 3.56, good for 7th in the majors. To compound that, their starters have pitched 202 total innings, fourth most in the majors. The O's rotation is sporting a 4.25 ERA, 21st in the majors. And they are 29th in the MLB for innings pitched by a starter with just 169.1.

Continue reading this post »

The Orioles take their act on the road for four games against the Chicago White Sox and three against the Kansas City Royals. The SBNation blog for the White Sox is South Side Sox, and in my opinion it's one of the better communities of the bunch. Or maybe I'm just charitable because when the Orioles and White Sox face off they always make a lot of Wire references.

The White Sox are having a rough go of things to start the season, having lost twelve of their last fifteen games. In that span their pitching has been pretty suspect outside of John Danks and Gavin Floyd. Also in their rotation is Philip Humber, who has had his troubles but just pitched seven shutout innings against the Yankees, Mark Beuhrle, who is off to a slow start, and Edwin Jackson, who just isn't a good pitcher.

The real problem for the the White Sox is their underachieving offense. Adam Dunn missed time with an appendicitis and hasn't really gotten going yet. Alex Rios, who looked to have revived his career in Chicago last season, has been terrible this year. Pretty much only Paul Konerko and Carlos Quentin have been pulling their weight. They've still scored more runs than the Orioles, though.

Continue reading this post »

Minnesota Twins (5-10) @ Baltimore Orioles (6-8)

Make that back-to-back-to-back series losses for the Baltimore Orioles. The team that was once 6-1 and at the top of the AL East now finds themselves mired in an early season slump and down to third in the standings. A combination of poor pitching and non-existent offense has the Orioles locked in a 7-game losing streak, but they’ll get a chance to redeem themselves with four games against a Twins team facing many of the same problems.

First off, the offense needs a huge boost. Just two guys in the lineup (with at least 20 ABs) sport a batting average of over .250 or an OPS greater than .700. That hurts. Bad. The poor offense has produced just three and half runs per game (51 total) which must get turned around in order for this team to win games (haven’t we said this for pretty much every series already?). Derrek Lee and Vladimir Guerrero both maintain an OPS below .600 and Adam Jones floats along with a .216 OBP (1 BB and 12 K). The good news is that Brian Roberts leads the team in hits which brings back memories of when B-Rob was a DOUBLES MACHINE. Second, the pitching could also use some help. Jeremy Guthrie and Zach Britton both regressed a bit after burning through two starts each. Chris Tillman was shellacked in the Bronx this past week and must show that he’s got something that can produce outs. Mike Gonzalez and Kevin Gregg made us all wonder what we did in our past lives to deserve this.

Quick! Ten points if you can name the only team in the MLB that has produced fewer runs than the Orioles. If you guess the Minnesota Twins, congratulations, you’ve earned ten points (the points don’t mean anything). Like the Orioles, they have just a couple of guys above a .700 OPS. The likes of Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer (the 8^th round pick in one of the CC fantasy leagues for….someone) are off to exceptionally slow starts, OPSing .552 and .508 respectively. The pitching hasn’t been awful, but it is pretty difficult to win games when you are only putting up 3 or so runs per game (hey…that sounds an awful lot like the Orioles….). Top names like Francisco Liriano and Joe Nathan have yet to show up so far.  In other news for the struggling Twins, Joe Mauer has been placed on the DL with weak legs. Can the Orioles use this series as a leg to stand on or will they continue to sink toward the depths of the AL East?

Continue reading this post »

Baltimore Orioles (6-5) @ Cleveland Indians (8-4)

Okay...so that series in New York didn’t turn out as planned. First game was rained out. Second game involved Chris Tillman’s straight as an arrow fastball being launched all over Yankee Stadium. Third game included great baserunning, solid managerial decisions, and even better pitching from the bullpen.  Wait...scratch that last sentence.  If you weren’t watching, well...that was lucky. Even after taking a 5-0 lead off of Phil Hughes (thanks in part to Nick Markakis), the Orioles still ended up losing 6-5. On the plus side, Kevin Gregg really stuck through that 9th inning and kept the O’s close, didn’t he? I’m going to break my rule of not bad-mouthing anybody in these series previews (and my other rule of not using first person) to say that I really don’t care if Kevin Gregg ever pitches again. In fact, I hope he’s DFA’d as soon as possible. I might lose my mind if his next Orioles appearance occurs in the 9^th inning of a one run game. But…now back to regularly scheduled programming…

Your Baltimore Orioles get their first shot at redemption tonight as they kick off a three-game set with the AL Central Division leading Cleveland Indians. Cleveland has been solid so far this season and it is going to take a much better effort than the O’s mustered over the past two days to beat them. The Indians are coming off of a series loss themselves so both teams could use a few wins to hold the standings. We’ll get to see the better part of our rotation (so far, anyways) in Zach Britton and Jeremy Guthrie. Brad Bergesen will also make a start after his most recent was washed out. Nice to see the likes of Nick Markakis and Matt Wieters hit home runs, but more of that stuff is necessary. What isn’t necessary you ask? Want a list? Kevin Gregg isn’t necessary. Mike Gonzalez isn’t necessary.  Derrek Lee’s ridiculously weak efforts at the plate aren’t necessary. That list goes on. As O’sFan21 has noted, the Orioles roster contains more guys with a sub-.600 OPS than it does .800+.  Yuck.

Justin Masterson will start Game 1 of the series for Cleveland.  He appears to be emerging as a real starter this year after going back and forth from the bullpen to the rotation.  Also off to a good start are Travis Hafner and Asdrubal Cabrera.  Cabrera has racked up 14 hits (4 for home runs) and a .946 OPS.  Hafner is sporting a .285 BA and is OPSing near .800.  Mitch Talbot and Josh Tomlin will also pitch for Cleveland.

Continue reading this post »

I know we're all still smarting over last night's loss, but the beautiful and sometimes tough thing about baseball is that it doesn't give you a break. So tonight we're right back in action as the Orioles start a three game set with the Indians, their only trip to Cleveland this season. In the last five years of play the Orioles have a 16-18 record against the Indians, and the teams split last year's series 3-3.

Baseball Prospectus forecast the Indians to go 74-88 and finish the season in fourth place in the AL Central. That hasn't been the case so far, as they lost the first two games of the season, then went on an eight-game win streak (including the sweep of the Red Sox that we all watched delightedly). They've lost their last two but still sit in first place in the AL Central with a shiny 8-4 record. 

Lewie Pollis writes about the Indians at Wahoo Blues and he was kind enough to answer a few questions for us regarding the team the Orioles will face beginning tonight. I answered questions for him as well, so check it out. 

Click through the jump to see what Lewie has to say about his surprising Cleveland Indians. And thanks again to Lewie for taking the time. 

Continue reading this post »

Since I talk about my Yankee fan BFF all the time I figured we could use her insight (if you want to call it that). You may remember Julia from when I did a chat with her last season, along with her brother Anthony.

1. Does it make you feel sad that your team is looking up in the standings at the mighty Baltimore Orioles?

This does not make me sad.  It makes me happy for my best friend and for Buck Showalter, who I like very much.  I can be happy for myself in October.

P.S. Does it make you sad that the last time the Orioles had a winning season, your boyfriend was half as old as he is now?

Yes that makes me sad! I don't know why Julia would say that when she knows that I'm capable of dishing it out but not capable of taking it.

2. What do you think when you hear the names:

• A.J. Burnett: Cautious optimism
• Phil Hughes: Mouth Breather
  
• Ivan Nova: Now "Champagne Supernova" is stuck in my head.
  
• Freddy Garcia:  I literally have no thoughts.  Thinking about him makes me think of the White Sox in the World Series.  When was that?  2005?  6? (That was 2005, I loved that. Remember when Ozzie kissed all the players on the mouth?)
  
• Bartolo Colon: Have you seen that cartoon of him on the internet dressed up as the hamburglar?  That's what I think of.

3. Speaking of Bartolo Colon, is he just the ugliest dude you've ever seen or what?

NO. Kevin Youkilis is.

This is obviously Julia's anti-Red Sox bias. Kevin Youkilis is one ugly dude but he doesn't compare to Colon.

4. Derek Jeter: slumpy or washed up?

BFWDB (courtesy of my dad)

Julia's dad, also a Yankees fan, hates Derek Jeter. BFWDB stands for Big Flapping Wet Douche Bag, which is how he refers to the Cap'n.

5. Jorge Posada - same question.

You leave Jorge alone!  Hip hip!

Booooooooooooo

6. Now that Andy Pettitte is retired and announcers can't use that witty rhyming phrase "core four," what will everyone call Jeter, Posada, and Mariano Rivera if the Yankees get to the playoffs? How about the "Marquee Three?"

I have nothing interesting to say to that.  Andy Pettitte retiring DOES make me sad.  How about "Three Oldguysketeers?"

I mostly want to remind Julia that Andy Pettitte is retired because it's fantastic.

7. Do any of the Yankees seem like any fun this year? Or all they all big dull duds?

I think I would enjoy a game of flip cup with Nick Swisher.