Offense, not pitching is going to be the key to 2011

[DrungoHazewood]

It's much easier to turn our team into the reverse IMO. We don't have the horses to field a juggernaut pitching staff.

So what you're saying is "You have to have a juggernaut offense and average pitching to win, except when you can get a juggernaut pitching staff and an average offense. Or maybe a juggernaut defense with good offense and pitching. Or maybe just pretty good offense/defense/pitching. Or maybe great offense, a excellent and well-leveraged pen, a good starting staff, and ok defense. Or maybe just one guy with a 0.45 ERA in 500 innings, and decent everything else. In other words, there's a million ways to build a winning team, but I only like one of them, and therefore will disavow all knowledge of the others."

[DrungoHazewood]

You must hate the Rays, huh.

They refuse to obey the laws of closed windows.

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

[ledzepp8]

The O's may be 8th in the AL runs scored, but they are 5th in runs scored in their own division.

To win in the AL East you need both a juggernaut offense and a solid pitching staff.

What difference does this possibly make? Who cares if the rest of the East scores more than the Orioles (overall), if the Oriole's pitching is giving up less runs?

[glorydays]

The pitching went south, no doubt about that.

But the Orioles lack of offensive depth still hurt them. Roberts missed the season, Lee was injured and ineffective until right before the deadline, Scott got hurt and Markakis struggled for the year as did Wieters before July. Hardy also missed a month as expected. So the concerns were valid. Now Vlad didn't help matters as much as I and others hoped, as the lack of offensive depth in the system was exposed having to rely on the likes of Josh Bell, Brandon Snyder and Blake Davis.

The Orioles biggest problem was a lack of OBP and speed this year however, not HR power and Roberts missing was a huge part of that, but the regression of Markakis was huge in that regard as well.

And the Orioles are still last in runs scored in the division which can't happen with a staff like they had.

Obviously nobody expected this rotation to fall apart, and it's pretty hard to overcome a 6-7 run deficit, but when you aren't scoring runs on top of that, it gives you the season we have now.

Injuries did absoultely kill this team this year as Roberts, Lee and Hardy all missed time which hurt the offense greatly and Lee was a detriment offensively for most of the year because of his injuries. Lee killed a ton of rallies by himself.

So while pitching was important, it wasn't more important than the lack of quality offensive depth this season IMO. I'd rank them just about equal.

Of the two issues, the pitching will also be the cheapest to fix.

Hmm... The offensive players were hurt or didn't play up to their expectation and the pitching fell apart... This sounds like a pretty good excuse that AM should use when he goes to meet at the Law Offices of Angelos and Showalter next month.

And I remember a certain poster who told us that signing Vlad would take care of all of our depth problems. Remember, he even said that Vlad would help with an injured prone Roberts? Ha!

I'm guessing that Fielder will provide enough depth for when Hardy goes down for some time next year - as expected. Fielder at short and Reynolds at 3rd... what a sight!

[Hank Scorpio]

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

[Frobby]

So what you're saying is "You have to have a juggernaut offense and average pitching to win, except when you can get a juggernaut pitching staff and an average offense. Or maybe a juggernaut defense with good offense and pitching. Or maybe just pretty good offense/defense/pitching. Or maybe great offense, a excellent and well-leveraged pen, a good starting staff, and ok defense. Or maybe just one guy with a 0.45 ERA in 500 innings, and decent everything else. In other words, there's a million ways to build a winning team, but I only like one of them, and therefore will disavow all knowledge of the others."

I don't think you are being fair to Trea here. He is referring to what he thinks is the best path considering what the team has on hand. He's saying we could build a juggernaut offense with the base we have more easily than we could build a juggernaut pitching staff.

[Hank Scorpio]

I don't think you are being fair to Trea here. He is referring to what he thinks is the best path considering what the team has on hand. He's saying we could build a juggernaut offense with the base we have more easily than we could build a juggernaut pitching staff.

In this case, that's what he's saying.

But come on.... that's not REALLY what he's saying. It's extraordinarily well documented that his belief is that it's the ONLY WAY to compete in the AL East, which is extremely naive & wrong.

[Pedro Cerrano]

If we could just find a freaking first-baseman all this nonsense would end.

I truly believe that. Every man crush (Tex, AGon, Fielder) has been a 1B.

[BRobinsonfan]

I don't think you are being fair to Trea here. He is referring to what he thinks is the best path considering what the team has on hand. He's saying we could build a juggernaut offense with the base we have more easily than we could build a juggernaut pitching staff.

Horse hockey. Trea began the thread, as he frequently does, by setting up a straw man argument with a quote from AM. To wit:

"So far, so good," president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail said of the organization's position-player upgrades. "But the most important factor is going to be the continued health and maturation of our young arms."

"That last phrase, seems to be key, as MacPhail of course seems to think pitching is the most important facet of the game."

IMO it's simply a continuation of his AM obsession.

[LookinUp]

For context: Team, Runs Per Game, wins relative to the O's.

Tampa Bay, 4.3007 RPG, +21 wins

Toronto, 4.682 RPG, + 14 wins

Baltimore, 4.312 RPB.

So, Baltimore outscores Tampa by a miniscule amount but somehow has 21 wins less. Toronto outscores Baltimore by .37 runs per game, and has 14 more wins.

Ironically, Toronto has given up 87 less runs than the O's and Tampa has given up 141 runs less than the O's. I see no correlation there at all.

[JTrea81]

If we could just find a freaking first-baseman all this nonsense would end.

I truly believe that. Every man crush (Tex, AGon, Fielder) has been a 1B.

As likely would the losing. There's a reason I harp on 1B so much and that's because it's a seemingly easy position to fill with countless opportunities to do so and one thing that has been constant about the whole stretch of the 14 years of losing has been the poor value from 1B. Not one single position has had as much non-production from it as 1B has.

[Pedro Cerrano]

As likely would the losing. There's a reason I harp on 1B so much and that's because it's a seemingly easy position to fill with countless opportunities to do so and one thing that has been constant about the whole stretch of the 14 years of losing has been the poor value from 1B. Not one single position has had as much non-production from it as 1B has.

No, the losing would continue if all we did was find a good 1B.

Trea, there have been a ton of constants over these 14 years. The one that is the most glaring and obvious to most of us is the terrible starting pitching.

Over the last 14 years, what year have we had the lowest team ERA (probably 1998 or 2005 if I had to guess)?

[Moose Milligan]

I fail to see how we'd have a significantly better record right now with a slugging first baseman. We'd be a 70 win team at best.

[Austin]

As likely would the losing.

Why do you think that? You really think first base is the only meaningful hole we have? In 2008 we had a first baseman who hit .304 with a .912 OPS and 32 homers. Where did we end up that season?

[JTrea81]

Why do you think that? You really think first base is the only meaningful hole we have? In 2008 we had a first baseman with a .912 OPS and 32 homers. Where did we end up that season?

Look again, Huff was a DH. Millar was our 1B man.