The fastest Orioles teams to reach 30 games over .500

[Frobby]

13 minutes ago, now said:

I never heard of that movie until yesterday when I ran across it quite randomly and noticed the reference to the '69 WS. How weird that you would mention it here the very next day! (Thx, I won't bother to watch it now).

It’s not a bad movie except that the 1969 WS is an important backdrop to the movie.

[Sports Guy]

Part of me wishes I saw the 1969 and 1979 Os and just that era in general.

But then part of me is glad I didn’t experience that heart ache and experience the knowledge that the Os were the winningest org from 66-83 and choked too many times in the playoffs. This franchise should have a minimum of 2 more titles and probably more than that. (Closest true heartache for my generation was 1997 and I guess 2014 but 1997 was really tough to take)

[Frobby]

36 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Part of me wishes I saw the 1969 and 1979 Os and just that era in general.

But then part of me is glad I didn’t experience that heart ache and experience the knowledge that the Os were the winningest org from 66-83 and choked too many times in the playoffs. This franchise should have a minimum of 2 more titles and probably more than that. (Closest true heartache for my generation was 1997 and I guess 2014 but 1997 was really tough to take)

If they’d never won, it would be more disappointing.  Yes, I think they were better than all three teams that beat them in the WS.   Still, 3 WS titles, 6 pennants, 7 AL East titles, 17 winning seasons in an 18 year period from 1966 to 1983 is a lot more happiness than disappointment.  I was ages 9-26 in that period, and didn’t even understand what an impressive accomplishment that was.   I thought 20-game winners and Gold Glovers just grew on trees.  

[now]

50 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Part of me wishes I saw the 1969 and 1979 Os and just that era in general.

But then part of me is glad I didn’t experience that heart ache and experience the knowledge that the Os were the winningest org from 66-83 and choked too many times in the playoffs. This franchise should have a minimum of 2 more titles and probably more than that. (Closest true heartache for my generation was 1997 and I guess 2014 but 1997 was really tough to take)

Just as painful, for me, were the other near misses short of the playoffs, especially 1982 and 1989, but even 1981 (1 GB), 1980 (100 W), 1977 (97 W), 1964 (2 GB), and 1960 (first real shot).

I suffered through them all. It's a bittersweet history for sure, so much success and so many times falling short, that's it's hard to rank them in disappointment. But as Frobby notes, there were enough flags in that span to keep the faith.

[Jim'sKid26]

@DrungoHazewood by objective assessment (and with whatever sublime caveats you may choose to apply) was Brooks right? Was the 1969 Baltimore Orioles the greatest baseball team to reside in Baltimore?

[DrungoHazewood]

48 minutes ago, Jim'sKid26 said:

@DrungoHazewood by objective assessment (and with whatever sublime caveats you may choose to apply) was Brooks right? Was the 1969 Baltimore Orioles the greatest baseball team to reside in Baltimore?

I tend to think so, because they won 109 games. And their runs scored and allowed were typical of about a 109-win team. Nobody had a ridiculous out-of-character year. I think there's a good argument that this was a rare 100+ win team on true talent. And the fact they won 100 again the next two years kind of backs that up.

And while I could come up with some stuff about how the 1894 and 1896 Orioles had higher winning percentages and more HOFers, but honestly the 60s-70s dynasty would lap them if they played head-to-head.

[DrungoHazewood]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Part of me wishes I saw the 1969 and 1979 Os and just that era in general.

But then part of me is glad I didn’t experience that heart ache and experience the knowledge that the Os were the winningest org from 66-83 and choked too many times in the playoffs. This franchise should have a minimum of 2 more titles and probably more than that. (Closest true heartache for my generation was 1997 and I guess 2014 but 1997 was really tough to take)

There is no choke, only random chance. You could go too far with that, but in general. I mean, the '66 Orioles were objectively probably not as good as the Dodgers but I'm not giving back that trophy.

Edited August 25, 2023 by DrungoHazewood

[Just Regular]

Isn't it a sort of factoid that favorites in World Series involving the Orioles are 0-6?

Is the '66 team just plain worse than the 3-5 years later groups more or less the same as we figure today's group is just getting started?

Today is wonderful, but in four years instead of Adam Frazier we get to have age 23 Jackson Holliday, age 25 Coby Mayo, etc.

 

[Frobby]

23 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

Isn't it a sort of factoid that favorites in World Series involving the Orioles are 0-6?

Is the '66 team just plain worse than the 3-5 years later groups more or less the same as we figure today's group is just getting started?

Today is wonderful, but in four years instead of Adam Frazier we get to have age 23 Jackson Holliday, age 25 Coby Mayo, etc.

 

In theory, this team should not peak for another couple of years.  But baseball has a way of not conforming to expectations.   

[SteveA]

1 hour ago, Jim'sKid26 said:

@DrungoHazewood by objective assessment (and with whatever sublime caveats you may choose to apply) was Brooks right? Was the 1969 Baltimore Orioles the greatest baseball team to reside in Baltimore?

I will say one thing... I think the 1969-71 Orioles were the best defensive teams in the history of baseball.

[spiritof66]

19 hours ago, Frobby said:

Whatever you do, don’t ever watch the movie Frequency.  

Thanks for the tip. Haven't seen it and never will.

For many years, I was somewhat interested in time travel and related phenomena, probably beginning with The Twilight Zone, The Time Machine film with Road Taylor, and some DC Comics in which Superman/Supperboy traveled through time. I even went to a lecture by Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining why time travel is theoretically possible -- interesting, but way over my head. Now the subject bores me, and invariably looks to me like a stale, overworked plot device. It may be that the Back to the Future II was the breaking point.

[DrungoHazewood]

32 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I will say one thing... I think the 1969-71 Orioles were the best defensive teams in the history of baseball.

If you sort all-time teams by bb-ref's Rfield, the 100th place team of all time is at +66. There are 3390 team-seasons in the bb-ref database.

The Orioles of that era were:

1968: +77
1969: +114 (#2 all time)
1970: +59
1971: +54
1972: +78 (in a 154-game schedule to do a brief strike)
1973: +119 (#1 all time)

So while Rfield isn't 100% reliable, it's not OAA, but every team from 1968-1973 was in the top ~4% of all defensive teams, ever.

Also, the '75 Orioles were at +80, the 38th-best all time.  '74 was +44.

Side note: the 1895 NL Orioles were +88 in 132 games. Pro-rated to 162 they're +108, which would be 3rd-best of all time.

Edited August 25, 2023 by DrungoHazewood

[Frobby]

58 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

If you sort all-time teams by bb-ref's Rfield, the 100th place team of all time is at +66. There are 3390 team-seasons in the bb-ref database.

The Orioles of that era were:

1968: +77
1969: +114 (#2 all time)
1970: +59
1971: +54
1972: +78 (in a 154-game schedule to do a brief strike)
1973: +119 (#1 all time)

So while Rfield isn't 100% reliable, it's not OAA, but every team from 1968-1973 was in the top ~4% of all defensive teams, ever.

Also, the '75 Orioles were at +80, the 38th-best all time.  '74 was +44.

Side note: the 1895 NL Orioles were +88 in 132 games. Pro-rated to 162 they're +108, which would be 3rd-best of all time.

This is why the stats for Palmer, McNally, Cuellar etc. make them look a bit better than they were.  They had a historically great defense behind them.  Not to say that they weren’t excellent pitchers, but pitching for an average defensive team, their numbers wouldn’t have been quite as impressive.   That’s about 80-85 runs a year above average, in an era when the O’s were allowing an average of 520 runs per season. That suggests that the pitchers’ ERA’s were maybe 13% lower than they would have been with average defense.  

[Moose Milligan]

6 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Part of me wishes I saw the 1969 and 1979 Os and just that era in general.

But then part of me is glad I didn’t experience that heart ache and experience the knowledge that the Os were the winningest org from 66-83 and choked too many times in the playoffs. This franchise should have a minimum of 2 more titles and probably more than that. (Closest true heartache for my generation was 1997 and I guess 2014 but 1997 was really tough to take)

That, and you'd be really old by now.  

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

That, and you'd be really old by now.  

Ouch