Why Not?

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

[Going Underground]

Baseball a little upside down right now.The Mariners are 7-1 and the Orioles are 4÷1.Two teams rebuilding.Red Sox are 1-5.Long season ,but I thought the Orioles could be 10 to 15 games better then last year.That was an historically bad season.One of the worst ever.Also Bryce Harper is a really good player, for those who said he is not close  to a player  as Machado. 

[sportsfan8703]

We’ll see what the piggyback of Karns/Yac does today. Both can just go out there and air it out for 3 IP. Get a lead. Make it a quick day game. Sneak outta town with a sweep. 

[Eddie_Murray33]

Relative to the doom, and utter embarrassment expected for the ‘19 Birds- something like 65-97 would be a heck of an effort IMHO...

On another note- I was 13 at the time, and ‘89 was about as fun a season I’ve had as a fan (any sport) in my whole life. The tough part was ‘90, and ‘91 when I kept waiting for it to happen again. Lol.

[Jagwar]

On 4/1/2019 at 2:25 PM, Enjoy Terror said:

I love the Orioles, but this is a bad team. I was barely alive for the 89 Orioles, but the 19 Orioles are 90% players that would otherwise be on someone's AAA team. "Why Not?" is nice, but I think this time that question has a pretty long list of answers.

I just hope that there's enough "want to" and enough Moneyball tactics that went into the design of this squad that they over-perform their expectations a bit. Sometimes I think that if there's enough inexperience things "done the old way" somehow no longer get done the old way because there's not enough old guys around to enforce it. 

I guess I was kind of disappointed hearing Hyde speak about "saving" a guy for the ninth inning in one of the post-game pressers; I was hoping he'd be a little bit more out of the box with his approach given the low-stakes right now.

I'm not suggesting this team will have anywhere close to the same season. But I don't think its too much of a stretch to say that on April 3 1989, a good number of these guys would "otherwise be on someone's AAA team" based on their body of work before the Why Not season began. 

Milacki, Ballard, Finley, Devereaux, Milligan, B Ripken, Worthington, Anderson, Traber, Gonzalez, Harnisch, Bautista

 

[Moose Milligan]

This has been a really pleasant start so far, but they need to keep it going for another month and a half before I'd start making "Why Not?" claims.

 

[Frobby]

We started 2017 at 22-10.    And 4-1.

[Bubble Buddy]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

We started 2017 at 22-10.    And 4-1.

I remember a couple of times in the mid 2000's when we started 6-1, 11-7, etc. It's trained me to enjoy the good starts but not expect them to mean anything. But hey, it's been fun thus far. 

[mdbdotcom]

What if our pitching is considerably better than expected? I won't get carried away by success against the Blue Jays, but it does seem that some pitchers have made strides thanks to working with the slo-mo cameras in ST and the impact of Doug Brocail.

Is Hess for real? Will Bundy improve? Can Cashner be an adequate starter? Can Karns be extended? Is Means the next Jamie Moyer? Can Cobb pitch an entire season the way he did in the second half of last year?

These are tantalizing questions that will all be answered over the next few months. If we actually have a pretty good pitching staff, it will provide plenty of opportunities for us to discuss what to do about it.

[Bubble Buddy]

1 hour ago, mdbdotcom said:

What if our pitching is considerably better than expected? I won't get carried away by success against the Blue Jays, but it does seem that some pitchers have made strides thanks to working with the slo-mo cameras in ST and the impact of Doug Brocail.

Is Hess for real? Will Bundy improve? Can Cashner be an adequate starter? Can Karns be extended? Is Means the next Jamie Moyer? Can Cobb pitch an entire season the way he did in the second half of last year?

These are tantalizing questions that will all be answered over the next few months. If we actually have a pretty good pitching staff, it will provide plenty of opportunities for us to discuss what to do about it.

If all this clicked, it would be virtually the opposite of what happened last year. But hey, we'll see. 

[TheOtherRipken]

On 3/31/2019 at 8:54 PM, BohKnowsBmore said:

I don't think that team necessarily lacked heart.

I think they were just snake-bitten.  It seemed that early on they missed every possible break (countless at-em' balls, lucky grounders sneaking through, etc.).

Maybe early on, but they for sure lacked heart after that. 

[Pheasants]

One of the guys on Inside Pitch this morning said today would be the only time this year the Orioles would be on the up-side of 3 up, 3 down.  He is still picking us for worse than last year.

[OFFNY]

o

 

The Orioles are a game over .500 in the standings, and are still a game ahead of the Yankees in the standings ........ and for that, I am very grateful.

But as Moose Milligan pointed out earlier in this thread, it's going to take a good month and-a-half before I even think of seriously letting any visions of grandeur go through my mind about the 2019 Orioles shocking the world (like the 1989 team did.)

 

Regardless of the outcome of our next 2 games with the Yankees, I'm not going to kill that dream/fantasy any time soon ........ but I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that it's a realistic hope either, until the Orioles are AT LEAST treading water a good 50 games into the season.

 

o

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

Why not......DFA Chris Davis and Mike Wright. 

[Uli2001]

Well, why not requires smart managing. And why not requires your players to overachieve not underachieve. So as long as underachievers are kept around there cannot be any why not...