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

[ShaneDawg85]

You do, but the Orioles can be a .500+ team with the pitching they got in April and May instead of having to have the pitching they got in August and September.

We've already shown we have the pitching to have some success.

However, we haven't shown that we have the offense to back them up.

You really believe that we can be a .500 team hosting a pitching staff with a collective ERA of in the 4.62 to 4.70 range? Because that's what the Orioles got in April and May last season. It would likely take a top 5 offense, at the very least, to have a .500+ team with a staff like that playing in the division we do.

I don't disagree that we don't need the Orioles pitching like they did in August and September to be .500. But the April and May version isn't going to do it either.

[Moose Milligan]

So if the pitching was the thing that turned around after Buck showed up and the Orioles started winning...that'd lead one to believe that the Orioles started winning cause the pitching got better, now wouldn't it?

How'd I know this would be ignored?

[allstar1579]

How'd I know this would be ignored?

Because some people believe offense is the only important aspect of baseball.

[ShaneDawg85]

Lets look at 2004 as an example of pitching and offense, because I argue that this is the best collection of players we have since then:

2004: 78-84

RS: 842 (6)

ERA: 4.70 (7)

There were a couple of factors at play then that are no longer the case, specifically the Blue Jays and Rays were atrocious that season. Even if they take a step back with the loss of Crawford et al, I find it unlikely the Rays finish below .500, and the Blue Jays are a total wild card.

Even with an almost perfect balance in production on the offensive and pitching side, the Orioles still finished below .500, in a very down AL East. Now, I realize that they made great strides that season as well, but the results don't lie.

So explain to me how anything other than a top five, and more likely top three offense coupled with a 4.60-4.70 team ERA is going to get us to .500 plus in a the improved and meaner AL East.

[JTrea81]

You really believe that we can be a .500 team hosting a pitching staff with a collective ERA of in the 4.62 to 4.70 range? Because that's what the Orioles got in April and May last season. It would likely take a top 5 offense, at the very least, to have a .500+ team with a staff like that playing in the division we do.

I don't disagree that we don't need the Orioles pitching like they did in August and September to be .500. But the April and May version isn't going to do it either.

Look at the Pirates and Red Sox in April or the Rangers and White Sox in May.

Those teams had success without stellar pitching because their offenses showed up.

And then look at the Astros who when 8-14 and the Indians who went 9-13 in April despite having staff ERAs under 4.00.

Their offenses didn't show up despite the good pitching they got.

Pitching simply isn't as important as the offensive support the pitchers receive. Good to mediocre pitching with weak hitting will not win. Only if you have an excellent rotation will you still be able to win games with a poor offense, but with the youth and inexperience of the Orioles rotation, they are going to need the offense to come through this season to support them because they likely won't be excellent.

[glorydays]

How realistic though, is it that they keep up that pace, especially when they all go through their "dead arm" period sometime in May or June?

Trea's List of Excuses to Use:

* I want the O's to add Vlad. Vlad was bad last summer. It was the Texas HEAT!

* I want more offense. The pitching was the reason why we played so well at the end of last year. Hmm... the dreaded DEAD ARM period.

I've got one for you:

* The O's didn't hit well last April/May. It's cold in Baltimore during those months. I got it... THE BAT STINGS when you hit a ball when its cold out there. That's the reason why the team's O stunk last spring.

Counter that one, big boy!

[Sports Guy]

Look at the Pirates and Red Sox in April or the Rangers and White Sox in May.

Those teams had success without stellar pitching because their offenses showed up.

And then look at the Astros who when 8-14 and the Indians who went 9-13 in April despite having staff ERAs under 4.00.

Their offenses didn't show up despite the good pitching they got.

Pitching simply isn't as important as the offensive support the pitchers receive. Good to mediocre pitching with weak hitting will not win. Only if you have an excellent rotation will you still be able to win games with a poor offense, but with the youth and inexperience of the Orioles rotation, they are going to need the offense to come through this season to support them because they likely won't be excellent.

You can always find stuff like this in small sample sizes.

If the Orioles have a 20 game stretch where they score 6 runs a games but give up 7 runs a game, they will likely lose more than they will win...The offense showed up there but the pitching didn't.

No doubt the offense must improve...In fact, as I said, the offense needs a larger improvement than the pitching does for us to be a 500 team. But pitching/defense is still what matters the most, especially in the playoffs.

I do think people underestimate how good our offense needs to be though.

[ShaneDawg85]

Look at the Pirates and Red Sox in April or the Rangers and White Sox in May.

Those teams had success without stellar pitching because their offenses showed up.

And then look at the Astros who when 8-14 and the Indians who went 9-13 in April despite having staff ERAs under 4.00.

Their offenses didn't show up despite the good pitching they got.

Pitching simply isn't as important as the offensive support the pitchers receive. Good to mediocre pitching with weak hitting will not win. Only if you have an excellent rotation will you still be able to win games with a poor offense, but with the youth and inexperience of the Orioles rotation, they are going to need the offense to come through this season to support them because they likely won't be excellent.

The same Pirates that were three games under .500 in April, and won 57 games on the year?! The same Pirates that gave up 161 runs in April, which oh by the way was only 5 less than they ended up giving up in August, where they won all of 8 games. Hmm, maybe if they didn't give up so many runs they may have actually won more. Nah, couldn't be.

You sure love trying to make excuses for the Pirates. They just all end up being wrong.

[SilentJames]

Look at the Pirates and Red Sox in April or the Rangers and White Sox in May.

Those teams had success without stellar pitching because their offenses showed up.

And then look at the Astros who when 8-14 and the Indians who went 9-13 in April despite having staff ERAs under 4.00.

Their offenses didn't show up despite the good pitching they got.

Pitching simply isn't as important as the offensive support the pitchers receive. Good to mediocre pitching with weak hitting will not win. Only if you have an excellent rotation will you still be able to win games with a poor offense, but with the youth and inexperience of the Orioles rotation, they are going to need the offense to come through this season to support them because they likely won't be excellent.

You can do that for A MONTH yes, but in case you haven't noticed the MLB season is made up of many months.

Look at the Jays, nearly historic offense (as far as homers go) but had a league average pitching staff. And they made their pitching staff WORSE this offseason. What did their offense get them.

You will also notice something about all of those teams - none of them made the playoffs and had poor seasons for all intents and purposes.

[ShaneDawg85]

Look at the Pirates and Red Sox in April or the Rangers and White Sox in May.

Those teams had success without stellar pitching because their offenses showed up.

And then look at the Astros who when 8-14 and the Indians who went 9-13 in April despite having staff ERAs under 4.00.

Their offenses didn't show up despite the good pitching they got.

Pitching simply isn't as important as the offensive support the pitchers receive. Good to mediocre pitching with weak hitting will not win. Only if you have an excellent rotation will you still be able to win games with a poor offense, but with the youth and inexperience of the Orioles rotation, they are going to need the offense to come through this season to support them because they likely won't be excellent.

Oh by the way, the Pirates only scored 7 more runs than the Orioles did in the month of April, so that flimsy, illogical argument is bunk too.

[SilentJames]

You can always find stuff like this in small sample sizes.

If the Orioles have a 20 game stretch where they score 6 runs a games but give up 7 runs a game, they will likely lose more than they will win...The offense showed up there but the pitching didn't.

No doubt the offense must improve...In fact, as I said, the offense needs a larger improvement than the pitching does for us to be a 500 team. But pitching/defense is still what matters the most, especially in the playoffs.

I do think people underestimate how good our offense needs to be though.

If you took the offensive performances of the AL East teams last year, yes. But I would wager that the Yankees, Jays and Rays offenses fall back a bit this year (Boston should be a beast).

The Orioles NEED to improve, no doubt about it.

[Aglets]

Look at the Pirates and Red Sox in April or the Rangers and White Sox in May.

Those teams had success without stellar pitching because their offenses showed up.

And then look at the Astros who when 8-14 and the Indians who went 9-13 in April despite having staff ERAs under 4.00.

Their offenses didn't show up despite the good pitching they got.

Pitching simply isn't as important as the offensive support the pitchers receive. Good to mediocre pitching with weak hitting will not win. Only if you have an excellent rotation will you still be able to win games with a poor offense, but with the youth and inexperience of the Orioles rotation, they are going to need the offense to come through this season to support them because they likely won't be excellent.

So to sum up:

Trea starts thread. Trea loves big OFFENSE. He wants the orioles to have a top offense and to do basically whatever is necessary to get the big bats. He is so in love with the idea that he has convinced himself (note that he has not convinced anyone else) that it is the only way we can be a contender.

But he has a problem, the orioles started winning a ton more games in August and September with improved PITCHING, not offense. This would show most rational humans that the orioles improved pitching is, in fact, a big difference maker.

So what happens? Trea simply states that we can't rely on our pitching to continue to be at that level. Fine.

But now things get asinine. He expects us to believe that we should be preparing to compete with the 3rd worst ERA in the entire AL, and the worst in our division. And then, to find evidence to support this theory, he resorts to the time honored tradition of cherry picking.

He points out the Pirates in April, who went 10-13 with an ERA of 6.62 a FULL RUN worse than the 29th ranked ERA in mlb that month. And this is seriously the team were are supposed to imitate? For the record Boston also finished with a losing record that month. With mediocre pitching AND hitting.

For ONE thing, i don't really define a 10-13 record as 'success.' And I'm surprised JTrea does, apparently he is ok with another sub .500 season.

And for ANOTHER thing, this offense that 'carried' Pitt was ranked 26th in MLB that month in runs scored! Remember how abysmal the orioles were last April? The Pirates scored a whole SEVEN more runs than we did.

Simply unbelievable. That Pirates team went through a 7 game losing streak last April where they were outscored 72 to 12! They eeked out a couple of close games though so congrats to them for winning 10 games. They never won more than 12 games in a month and most months they won about 8. Why? Because they had a crappy offense and a crappy pitching staff.

So JTrea, are you saying that your measure of success is having the worst pitching staff in MLB and the 26th ranked offense?

You know people look these things up when you make these claims, and will always be there to be some kind of voice of reason.

[Ohfan67]

What an incredibly dumb debate...yet again. You win baseball games by scoring more runs than the other team. Period. It's incredibly obvious that the best teams do this by having the best pitching staff and the best offense. Good teams typically do this by being very good at one or the other or decent at both. Good teams also tend to vary in the balance throughout the season: they are often very good offensive teams for stretches, very good pitching teams for stretches, and if they get lucky they are both for stretches. Trying to find a pattern with a month or two of data from one team is asinine.

The best teams are defined by their ability to do both...they are good at both for long stretches. Come on Trea, this ain't rocket science.

The way to test Trea's hypothesis is to run a couple of multiple regressions with runs scored and runs given up as predictor variables, runs scored and ERA, OPS and ERA, etc. This would estimate the percentage of variation in games won explained by each variable. I don't have time to do this, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a study like this exists.

[Ohfan67]

double post

[DrungoHazewood]

I do agree with you that for us to be a 500ish team, we need more improvement from the offense than we do from pitching.

HOWEVER, to be a contender, the pitching has to improve as much, if not more, than the offense...of course, the defense also needs to vastly improve but that is tied into the pitching.

Luckily for us MacPhail added maybe 100 runs of offense in acquiring Lee, Hardy, and Reynolds, and the O's kept all of their young hitters who're likely to improve just through experience.

Conservatively I think you can project the 2011 O's to score 125 more runs than last year. It's possible they score 150 or 175 more.

Adding a guy like Vlad or Thome might add another 10, 15, 20 runs to that, while sacrificing defense, flexibility, and money. It's bizarre that anyone would think adding a net 10 run/1 win player is the difference between contention and bitter disappointment.