Black holes in your Orioles memory

[Moose Milligan]

Honestly, the 2002-2003 teams. I can't remember squat.

[Spy Fox]

I learned on a broadcast recently that Casey Blake played for the Orioles briefly in 2001.

[Ohfan67]

Truth is, he saved 22 of 25, which is an excellent percentage, despite a terrible 5.01 ERA. Looking at his game logs, the 5.01 ERA is pretty misleading. He had a three game stretch in the beginning of August in which he allowed 10 earned runs in 2 IP, that swelled his ERA from 3.72 to 5.87. Then he only allowed 1 more run the remainder of the season. He blew 2 of his first 4 chances of the year, reeled off 12 saves in a row before blowing another one, and then finished the year with 8 saves without blowing any after July 13. However, he did blow a 4-run lead (technically not a blown save because it wasn't a save situation) on August 1 when he got tagged for 6 runs without recording an out. I'm glad I don't really remember that.

1995 was kind of a lost season, other than Cal breaking Lou Gehrig's record. The season started with the players on strike, and when the season began, the O's fell under .500 right away. They briefly got a game over .500 in late July, but fell back again and were never in the race. They finished 71-73 despite outscoring their opponents by 64 runs. It was a pretty decent team that had been over .500 from 1992 to 1994, and Phil Regan did a very poor job managing the team.

I do remember that he was pretty effective, but it was often ugly (at least that's my memory). He was such an odd closer because he was a soft tosser. I actually liked many of his comments to the media, but as a young testosterone-filled guy at the time (I was about 50% gonad in 1995) his lackadaisical attitude after a blown save freaked me out.

[Moose Milligan]

all stars before they came here, who ended their careers here (or pretty much ended them):

Valenzuela

Sid Fernandez

Dwight Evans

Rick Burleson

Joe Carter

Eric Davis

Doug Drabek

Pat Hentgen

Raffy (the second time)

Sammy Sosa

Ozzie Guillen

Tim Raines Sr

Chris Sabo (maybe he didn't end his career here, not sure)

Alan Wiggins

Fred Lynn

Lee Lacey

Bob Horner tried to come out of retirement one spring training with us but failed

Keith F---ing Moreland the worthless piece of ----

Jamie Quirk

Jaret Wright

Kris Benson

Rick Helling

Vladimir Guerrero

So who is next? Johnny Damon? David Ortiz?

Surprised you included Eric Davis here. While he did play here towards the end of his career, his 1998 campaign was spectacular. Too bad he could never stay healthy for his entire career, I have a feeling he'd have been rated up there with a pre-steroids Barry Bonds. He was awesome.

[maybenxtyr]

Pete Incaviglia, forgot all about him.

Ozzie Guillen, put together a fine .063 average. Forgot about him.

Pat Hentgen, Bobby Bonilla, and Gregg Zaun during his first tenure. Wow. I cheated and went back and looked at some of the old teams, and they had people in and out. I remember some of the younger guys that were going to be the next big thing, and never worked out.

I do remember him, but in his 1995 campaign Jamie Moyer was 35 already. Let's talk a flier for next year!

Also, as I was looking around, I noticed the Baltimore organization has a record of 4675-4492. So just off of the cuff I would say if they continue on and make a run at Pittsburgh for under .500 seasons, they could slip below in about 4 or 5 years. I guess in the long run it doesn't have alot of meaning, but all of the hard work by the great teams will be wiped out.

[Woody Held]

How about my namesake Woody Held:clap3:

[JTrea81]

No black holes in my memory. I remember them all since 1993 anyway.

Brett Barberie, Leo Gomez, Mark Eichhorn, Mike Oquist, Rick Krivda, Jack Voight, Sherman Obando, Scott Klingenbeck, Rocky Coppinger, Todd Frohwirth, Pat Rapp, Ricky Bones... The list of them goes on and on...

I remember them probably from having to put their names in over and over again in Hardball III and from Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball on SNES.

[TGO]

Truth is, he saved 22 of 25, which is an excellent percentage, despite a terrible 5.01 ERA. Looking at his game logs, the 5.01 ERA is pretty misleading. He had a three game stretch in the beginning of August in which he allowed 10 earned runs in 2 IP, that swelled his ERA from 3.72 to 5.87. Then he only allowed 1 more run the remainder of the season. He blew 2 of his first 4 chances of the year, reeled off 12 saves in a row before blowing another one, and then finished the year with 8 saves without blowing any after July 13. However, he did blow a 4-run lead (technically not a blown save because it wasn't a save situation) on August 1 when he got tagged for 6 runs without recording an out. I'm glad I don't really remember that.

1995 was kind of a lost season, other than Cal breaking Lou Gehrig's record. The season started with the players on strike, and when the season began, the O's fell under .500 right away. They briefly got a game over .500 in late July, but fell back again and were never in the race. They finished 71-73 despite outscoring their opponents by 64 runs. It was a pretty decent team that had been over .500 from 1992 to 1994, and Phil Regan did a very poor job managing the team.

Oates got a bum deal IMO. It looked like we were going to challenge for the wild card in 94 before the strike, and as you said, he had them over .500 for 3 seasons. I know we would gladly go back to that kind of team now. It was kind of the beginning of the Angelos era, actually. He sort of left things alone for a few years when he first bought the team. After Regan in 95 he let go of Hemond and brought in Gillick and Johnson and the rest is history.

[Moose Milligan]

No black holes in my memory. I remember them all since 1993 anyway.

Brett Barberie, Leo Gomez, Mark Eichhorn, Mike Oquist, Rick Krivda, Jack Voight, Sherman Obando, Scott Klingenbeck, Rocky Coppinger, Todd Frohwirth, Pat Rapp, Ricky Bones... The list of them goes on and on...

I remember them probably from having to put their names in over and over again in Hardball III and from Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball on SNES.

Eichhorn was lights out for one year.

[mweb]

Surprised you included Eric Davis here. While he did play here towards the end of his career, his 1998 campaign was spectacular. Too bad he could never stay healthy for his entire career, I have a feeling he'd have been rated up there with a pre-steroids Barry Bonds. He was awesome.

It is too bad he couldn't stay healthy, but I wouldn't go that far.

[Moose Milligan]

It is too bad he couldn't stay healthy, but I wouldn't go that far.

Bonds won his first MVP at age 25, his OPS was .970. Davis's age 25 season was .991. Davis walked less and struck out more, but I always thought if Davis stayed healthy he'd have stolen more bases and been a good comp.

[mweb]

Bonds won his first MVP at age 25, his OPS was .970. Davis's age 25 season was .991. Davis walked less and struck out more, but I always thought if Davis stayed healthy he'd have stolen more bases and been a good comp.

Bonds had an OPS+ of 170 his age 25 season compared to Davis' 155. After that Bonds had seasons of 170, 160, 205, 204, and 183 while Eric's numbers went down. Bonds was also a superior defender. Bonds was an all-time great before he became huge. Davis may have been able to put together a HOF career if he was healthy, but he wasn't in Bonds' class.

[mweb]

Regarding the thread topic, I didn't pay that much attention to the bad O's teams during the time after I moved to CA and before I joined this site. OH got me much more into the O's than I otherwise would have been. So the early 2000's teams would meet that criteria.

[slowbynot]

Jay Tibbs and his 5-0 start in 1989 then he got hurt and was never seen again...

[crawjo]

Some guy named Mike Young hit 28 homers for us in 1985. I barely remember him at all.