Tom Verducci: How the Orioles Became the Most Unlikely Playoff Contender in MLB History

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

How the Orioles Became the Most Unlikely Playoff Contender in MLB History

No team has ever had a turnaround quite like Baltimore this season. What’s the secret? Hint: It’s much more than just “Oriole Magic.”

Good article by Tom Verducci in the current Sports Illustrated on the Orioles unlikely playoff contender team and how they got here. One interesting tidbit on the '6'5" & 190 lbs' Felix Bautista and his real weight today since his bio hasn't been updated. 

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Félix Bautista is one of the biggest stories of the season. Signed by the Marlins in 2012 when he was 17 and 6’5” and 180 pounds, Bautista was released after throwing just 38 ⅔ pro innings. Well, he did have some control issues: more walks and hit batters (42) than innings.

Nobody wanted him. At age 20, he was out of baseball for 20 months, thinking about independent ball or Japan, when the Orioles signed him in August 2016. Meanwhile, he grew. I mean, he grew. Now 6'8" and 280 pounds, which earned him “The Mountain” moniker, Bautista throws 100 mph with a nasty splitter and punches out 12 per nine innings.

Edited August 30, 2022 by OsFanSinceThe80s

[PHRESH]

"To find the last team to post a winning record the year after losing 110 games you must go all the way back to the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos." 

Incredible. What a season it's been. What a team. I hope they can find a way to reach the paloffs. Even if they don't, you have to tip your cap. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

3 minutes ago, PHRESH said:

"To find the last team to post a winning record the year after losing 110 games you must go all the way back to the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos." 

Incredible. What a season it's been. What a team. I hope they can find a way to reach the paloffs. Even if they don't, you have to tip your cap. 

And barring a complete collapse the last month of the season how can Brandon Hyde not be AL Manager of the Year?

Edited August 30, 2022 by OsFanSinceThe80s

[Gurgi]

This really puts into frame what an amazing run this has been.  We are greater than the sum of our island of misfit toys would make you believe.

[Moose Milligan]

4 hours ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

And barring a complete collapse the last month of the season how can Brandon Hyde not be AL Manager of the Year?

Because he sits Adley on Sundays and puts Bryan Baker in high leverage situations!!!!!!

[DrungoHazewood]

7 hours ago, PHRESH said:

"To find the last team to post a winning record the year after losing 110 games you must go all the way back to the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos." 

Incredible. What a season it's been. What a team. I hope they can find a way to reach the paloffs. Even if they don't, you have to tip your cap. 

In some of my earlier research into great leaps forward I omitted the '99 St. Louis team.  That was an oversight.

But... they have a massive syndicate baseball asterisk. The Perfectos were the other side of the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders coin. The Spiders and Perfectos were owned by the same people, the Robison brothers. The '98 Spiders were a very good team, over .500.  They collapsed to 29-134 because the Robisons decided St. Louis was a better market and they could make more money with a good team there and transferred almost all of their good players, giving Cleveland table scraps.

In 1899 St. Louis added Patsy Tebeau (minor star and major agitator and ruffian in 19th century baseball), Cupid Childs (near HOF level 2B), Bobby Wallace (HOF SS), Jesse Burkett (HOF OF), Cy Young (Cy Young), Jack Powell (a good starter), and a few others.  In return they sent Cleveland a gift certificate for a free beer at the Robison Bros. saloon.

I've mentioned that the 1889-90 Louisville team improved by 60 wins or something because of the chaos of the 1890 Players' League, so their improvement wasn't real in a modern sense.  Neither is the Perfectos, who essentially stole three Hall of Famers and a number of other minor stars from Cleveland, helping to precipitate the demise of the Louisville, Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington NL teams the next offseason.  After those four teams were contracted the league banned anyone from holding an ownership stake in more than one team, which is still the rule today.

Edited August 30, 2022 by DrungoHazewood

[DrungoHazewood]

7 hours ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

And barring a complete collapse the last month of the season how can Brandon Hyde not be AL Manager of the Year?

For the same "reason" Bob Melvin won it over Buck in 2012? Spite and petty vengeance.

And I don't want to hear any nonsense about how the A's lept forward and Melvin was awesome and all. The Orioles were dead and buried and a laughingstock for years and got to the playoffs.  Buck should have won that award.

[Moose Milligan]

Baseball only starts after 1910.

[DrungoHazewood]

7 hours ago, PHRESH said:

"To find the last team to post a winning record the year after losing 110 games you must go all the way back to the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos." 

Incredible. What a season it's been. What a team. I hope they can find a way to reach the paloffs. Even if they don't, you have to tip your cap. 

Not that the Orioles aren't worthy of praise, they certainly are.  But this statement was framed in a way to make them seem a little more unique than might be true.  From the late 1890s through about 1960 teams usually played 154 games.  To lose 110 out of 154 was quite an achievement, the equivalent of 116 losses out of 162.  Even the 2018 Orioles didn't quite get there.

Also, tanking wasn't a thing until the last decade or so.  The teams that lost 110 games prior to that were either expansion teams like the Mets or really down-and-out resource-starved teams like the old Phillies and A's.

Out of the 2500 or so team-seasons since 154 games became more-or-less the standard only 24 have managed to lose 110 or more games.  Of those 24, four were expansion teams soon after coming into the league, four were 19th century teams in unusual circumstances, five were recent teams tanking, and about five were those pre-WWII sad sack franchises (Red Sox, A's., Phillies, Browns) who simply didn't have resources to compete at the major league level. So only a handful were just teams having really bad years.

[LA2]

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Sprinkles make a boring ice cream cone fun. Gimmicks do the same for a baseball team over the grind of a season. The Orioles lead the league in gimmicks: the home run swag chain, the goggles sign whenever a player gets a hit (a nod to their love of Call of Duty), the player of the game championship belt presented after each win, the “Robbie’s Playlist” T-shirts listing Chirinos’s 12 favorite sayings (No. 7: “Feeling Sexy Today”) and the Omar Little whistle from The Wire as an über-cool entrance song for Bautista.

Didn't know about the championship belt after wins and the T-shirt with Chirinos's fav sayings!

[csgordos]

50 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

In some of my earlier research into great leaps forward I omitted the '99 St. Louis team.  That was an oversight.

But... they have a massive syndicate baseball asterisk. The Perfectos were the other side of the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders coin. The Spiders and Perfectos were owned by the same people, the Robison brothers. The '98 Spiders were a very good team, over .500.  They collapsed to 29-134 because the Robisons decided St. Louis was a better market and they could make more money with a good team there and transferred almost all of their good players, giving Cleveland table scraps.

In 1899 St. Louis added Patsy Tebeau (minor star and major agitator and ruffian in 19th century baseball), Cupid Childs (near HOF level 2B), Bobby Wallace (HOF SS), Jesse Burkett (HOF OF), Cy Young (Cy Young), Jack Powell (a good starter), and a few others.  In return they sent Cleveland a gift certificate for a free beer at the Robison Bros. saloon.

I've mentioned that the 1889-90 Louisville team improved by 60 wins or something because of the chaos of the 1890 Players' League, so their improvement wasn't real in a modern sense.  Neither is the Perfectos, who essentially stole three Hall of Famers and a number of other minor stars from Cleveland, helping to precipitate the demise of the Louisville, Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington NL teams the next offseason.  After those four teams were contracted the league banned anyone from holding an ownership stake in more than one team, which is still the rule today.

Thank you for the AWESOME history lesson.   I never knew anything about this whole post.  Baseball has such an amazing history.  

[Mooreisbetter27]

Just now, LA2 said:

Didn't know about the championship belt after wins and the T-shirt with Chirinos's fav sayings!

I heard them mention the T-shirt thing a few times but haven't seen it.  I had no idea about the championship belt.  

[DrungoHazewood]

12 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Baseball only starts after 1750.

That's more accurate. I'm currently reading Thomas Gilbert's How Baseball Happened, which focuses on the evolution and development of the modern form of baseball mostly in and around New York from roughly 1830-1870.  The first organized convention of established teams playing the New York Game, which we now call baseball, happened in 1858.

Yes, I know you were kidding and mocking.  And I'm responding with nerdy and technical reasons why you're wrong on a mostly subjective matter. 

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

 

Yes, I know you were kidding and mocking.  

As long as you’re aware.

[vab]

The '89 Orioles would have made the playoffs if they had the current divisional and playoff configuration back then after a, what, 107 loss season (with the famous 0-21 start) in '88 so this is not even the biggest turnaround in Orioles history yet.