MATUSZ at AAA-Norfolk

[LookitsPuck]

Not really....It could be a mechanics issue.

Also could be a rehab issue. This is a guy who hasn't had any kind of consistent playing time. Intercostal strain, line driven off of him, wart issues. I think his mechanics are out of whack and his conditioning is shot to hell at this point.

[Sports Guy]

Not with this franchise, although I'd love to be wrong.

What do you mean not with this franchise? They are terrible at teaching mechanics too.

[GoldGlove21]

Is he still hurt? I'm beginning to think this guy is going to be a bust.

In my eyes "polished" means that a guy has control of at least two plus pitches and one league average pitch. Matusz never did throw really hard, but he is another guy when his command is off. His velocity is down and his command isn't good. We have talked about conditioning before, this guy was lights out for half a season and during his time in the minors. He may have lost confidence, but he isn't a bust IMO. I think this guy is hurt and that the Orioles should shut him down and give him the time he needs to get stuff straightened out.

I think he will be fine, but he just doesn't have the look of a TOR starter IMO. His stuff is good when he is on, but I watch other young guys pitch and see "ace" right away. Even when Matusz is spot on I do not see it. I think he is a #3 down the line and if I can get a solid #3 starter with a top-10 pick I probably make the same selection the next time around.

[Sports Guy]

Also could be a rehab issue. This is a guy who hasn't had any kind of consistent playing time. Intercostal strain, line driven off of him, wart issues. I think his mechanics are out of whack and his conditioning is shot to hell at this point.

Yea, I am sure the conditioning is terrible too.

BMat needs to decide if he wants to be a top ML starter or not.

[GoldGlove21]

Keith Law brought it up, but the Orioles really need Andy MacPhail to talk to some people and provide some insight into what we are doing wrong with all these high upside young starters.

[SilentJames]

What do you mean not with this franchise? They are terrible at teaching mechanics too.

I think he means that everything seems to go wrong.

Its hard to disagree with him.

Matusz had the wart, got hit on the arm, then the back and didn't he and Tillman (or was it Bergy and Tillman?) get like their last three starts in ST rained out?

Aside from the rain, Matusz has had a ton of things happen to him to throw his conditioning and mechanics off. His previous two starts give me enough hope that Griffin can get him straightened out.

[SilentJames]

Keith Law brought it up, but the Orioles really need Andy MacPhail to talk to some people and provide some insight into what we are doing wrong with all these high upside young starters.

Unfortunately outside of Tillman it has been largely an injury issue.

Arrieta has been fine - though even he has a bone spur

Britton got hit a bit, but that isn't uncommon for someone his age

Matusz pulls a back muscle

Bergy gets hit in the leg, then hurts his shoulder, then get hits in the arm again

Erbe went down with a shoulder tear

Berken got hurt, but seems to have bounced back well

Now, the question is this: Are all these injuries a direct result of SOMETHING going wrong in the Orioles training and development system? Or, even Law was open to this, are the Orioles simply the unluckiest organization in history?

You can not operate under the assumption of bad luck but you would think that if the Orioles were doing something insanely different that it would have caught the attention of the larger baseball press by now.

[Singleton]

Unfortunately outside of Tillman it has been largely an injury issue.

Arrieta has been fine - though even he has a bone spur

Britton got hit a bit, but that isn't uncommon for someone his age

Matusz pulls a back muscle

Bergy gets hit in the leg, then hurts his shoulder, then get hits in the arm again

Erbe went down with a shoulder tear

Berken got hurt, but seems to have bounced back well

Now, the question is this: Are all these injuries a direct result of SOMETHING going wrong in the Orioles training and development system? Or, even Law was open to this, are the Orioles simply the unluckiest organization in history?

You can not operate under the assumption of bad luck but you would think that if the Orioles were doing something insanely different that it would have caught the attention of the larger baseball press by now.

Are we really unlucky? Do we really have more injuries than other teams?

This information doesn't tell me much. It has to be put in context to what happens with other teams. Right now, the Red Sox are missing 60% of their starting rotation due to injury and the other 40% has missed time due to injury or illness. Do they have a problem?

The Yankees have lost Hughes, Joba, and Soriano for considerable time due to injury. Nova just went down at AAA. Colon missed time (yes he's old and out of shape). How about them?

The A's lost all-everything Brett Anderson for the year. Josh Outman missed a year. Rich Harden could never stay healthy. Mark Mulder always broke down.

Pitchers get hurt all the time. I'm not defending the Orioles here. We may have a problem but lets do some good analytical work before we pop off and point fingers.

[PapaRick]

Unfortunately outside of Tillman it has been largely an injury issue.

Arrieta has been fine - though even he has a bone spur

Britton got hit a bit, but that isn't uncommon for someone his age

Matusz pulls a back muscle

Bergy gets hit in the leg, then hurts his shoulder, then get hits in the arm again

Erbe went down with a shoulder tear

Berken got hurt, but seems to have bounced back well

Now, the question is this: Are all these injuries a direct result of SOMETHING going wrong in the Orioles training and development system? Or, even Law was open to this, are the Orioles simply the unluckiest organization in history?

You can not operate under the assumption of bad luck but you would think that if the Orioles were doing something insanely different that it would have caught the attention of the larger baseball press by now.

Yes, we need to teach better methods of avoiding line drives. :laughlol:

[Crazysilver03]

Question? If he down in the minors for certain amount of time (fill in the blank) does it help with service years status like it will with Britton this year? I am looking for any silver lining this year. You have to believe he puts it all together eventually and if we then control him for extra time, even better. I am hoping for a Halliday type of recovery; one can dream.

Matusz would have to spend pretty much the rest of the season in the minors to gain an extra service year. If he spends the rest of the year in the minors, something went drastically wrong.

[Sports Guy]

Unfortunately outside of Tillman it has been largely an injury issue.

Arrieta has been fine - though even he has a bone spur

Britton got hit a bit, but that isn't uncommon for someone his age

Matusz pulls a back muscle

Bergy gets hit in the leg, then hurts his shoulder, then get hits in the arm again

Erbe went down with a shoulder tear

Berken got hurt, but seems to have bounced back well

Now, the question is this: Are all these injuries a direct result of SOMETHING going wrong in the Orioles training and development system? Or, even Law was open to this, are the Orioles simply the unluckiest organization in history?

You can not operate under the assumption of bad luck but you would think that if the Orioles were doing something insanely different that it would have caught the attention of the larger baseball press by now.

Probably...We have new pitching coaches every year..ie they change the pitchers mechanics.

They don't condition them well either.

They don't do anything well...Nothing they do is positive so yes, I think it is fairly logical to hypothesize that the injuries fall on their shoulders...Obviously not all of them but when there is a consistent pattern, it has to be more than bad luck.

We also have a scouting director who likes to draft guys who have injury histories.

[osfan83]

Are we really unlucky? Do we really have more injuries than other teams?

This information doesn't tell me much. It has to be put in context to what happens with other teams. Right now, the Red Sox are missing 60% of their starting rotation due to injury and the other 40% has missed time due to injury or illness. Do they have a problem?

The Yankees have lost Hughes, Joba, and Soriano for considerable time due to injury. Nova just went down at AAA. Colon missed time (yes he's old and out of shape). How about them?

The A's lost all-everything Brett Anderson for the year. Josh Outman missed a year. Rich Harden could never stay healthy. Mark Mulder always broke down.

Pitchers get hurt all the time. I'm not defending the Orioles here. We may have a problem but lets do some good analytical work before we pop off and point fingers.

Our problem is not bad luck or injury...our problem is not having enough talent behind our starters. In this day and age, you really need to PLAN on using 8 or 9 starters during the course of a season. Stop talking about just who is your #1 or your #5, we need to ask in March who is our #7 and who is our #9, because we know our #9 might get 4 starts and our #7 might get 15 starts.

[NewMarketSean]

What we need to start doing is planning for 75% or whatever the number is of our young pitchers to break down or never amount to anything. So if we have to fill 5 spots in a rotation, we're going to need to develop 20 decent pitchers to get it done.

I don't know if any organization can do something like that. But history has proven that the Orioles will need that many good pitching prospects to assemble a homegrown rotation.

That's where we're at.

[SilentJames]

Are we really unlucky? Do we really have more injuries than other teams?

This information doesn't tell me much. It has to be put in context to what happens with other teams. Right now, the Red Sox are missing 60% of their starting rotation due to injury and the other 40% has missed time due to injury or illness. Do they have a problem?

The Yankees have lost Hughes, Joba, and Soriano for considerable time due to injury. Nova just went down at AAA. Colon missed time (yes he's old and out of shape). How about them?

The A's lost all-everything Brett Anderson for the year. Josh Outman missed a year. Rich Harden could never stay healthy. Mark Mulder always broke down.

Pitchers get hurt all the time. I'm not defending the Orioles here. We may have a problem but lets do some good analytical work before we pop off and point fingers.

This is very true for both those teams, but they also have payrolls in the neighborhood of 200 million dollars each and don't have to play themselves 18 times a year.

Yes the A's have lost a lot of pitchers too - they are 12 games under 500 in a weaker division.

I'm not pointing fingers I am saying the truth - virtually every pitcher that has been in our starting rotation over the last two years has gone down with a fairly serious injury.

Bad luck? or systemic problems in the development system?

It is not all one or the other, to claim either is ignorant. But there simply has to be something wrong. SG hit on it. This "cavalry" has had three different pitching coaches all with different philosophies. Buck changed the pitching coach, thats on him. He needs to fix it and fix it fast. Call up Griffin and install him and keep him there. But the constant fluctuations in the coaching pool at the high minors and major league level has simply had to have had an effect on the young arms.

[blid]

Through 2 innings Matusz has thrown 51 pitches. he has given up 4 runs (3 earned)on 4 hits and 2 walks. Not a good follow up to the stellar start he had last time. Looks like we wont be seeing him back in Baltimore for a while. I was really hoping he would string some nice outings together down in Norfolk.

It's too hot for Matusz, he's probably sweating through his cap and wiping the sweat off his brow 15 times between every pitch.