Lack of talent showing....

[MP]

Still a lot of fans out here watching baseball games through their NFL eyes. Haven't changed gears yet!

Like each loss or unproductive AB needs to be analyzed and explained... c'mon this is baseball. The greatest players look bad a lot, the best teams lose 60 games a year. Some of you need to change gears into baseball mode, the long summer marathon where things even out over time.

And this is coming from someone who has no faith in this team whatsoever.

[AgentOrange]

Still a lot of fans out here watching baseball games through their NFL eyes. Haven't changed gears yet!

Like each loss or unproductive AB needs to be analyzed and explained... c'mon this is baseball. The greatest players look bad a lot, the best teams lose 60 games a year. Some of you need to change gears into baseball mode, the long summer marathon where things even out over time.

And this is coming from someone who has no faith in this team whatsoever.

Exactly. It would be different if we said something about the Ravens not being as good as the Bengals and then we finally played them and lost. It could be easy to say that we are not as good as them.

But we played one game (out of 19) against the BJs that we played in Skydome... That loss tells us nothing.

It will also tell us nothing when we win 2 of 3 from them after the series is over.

[MP]

It will also tell us nothing when we win 2 of 3 from them after the series is over.

There we go! You get knocked down, you get right back up.

We've won 11 games, we've lost 10. It's a fine start for this team. However, we did wake up in 4th place today. It was like slipping on an old shoe...

[osfan83]

You are taking a small sample size and using it to back your feelings, which I would understand.

It is way to early to say anything like that though. If we beat the BJs last night, would that have given you enough information to think that the O's could be better than the Jays this year? No.

So really you can't take the first loss of the season to the Jays and think that is because we are a class below them...

I thought we would finish behind them BEFORE the season started. Yes 1 game doesn't mean much. All I'm saying is that our performance up to this point has been pretty much on par with what I expected.

[MP]

The scary part for me is the depth. This team is so laughingly shallow.

If we lose Roberts, Mora or Tejada for any length of time, the team's done. All the Conine's and Matos' of the world can't pick up that slack.

[bgfield]

The scary part for me is the depth. This team is so laughingly shallow.

If we lose Roberts, Mora or Tejada for any length of time, the team's done. All the Conine's and Matos' of the world can't pick up that slack.

Funny, when the season started the whole lineup was dangerous.

Really, I think we were just beaten by the pitching yetserday. Or the teams confidence was shot. I can't honestly say what caused us to hit the way we did, but we have two, maybe three holes in our lineup. Millar is cold right now, but the good news is most of his outs are long fly ball outs. Aside from the fact that that means he's seeing the ball well and swinging the bat well, those are productive outs. Conine is slumping big time, and Markakis is struggling against ML pitching. I highly doubt Conine will bat below .200 the entire year, and Markakis will either heat up or be sent back down once Matos comes back from the DL (who will likely be a hole himself, but not as large of a hole).

Aside from Roberts, Mora (who's slumping), and Tejada, we also have Gibbons, Hernandez, and Lopez. These are all good hitters, all of them capable of hitting 20 homers or more this season. We have good hitters. I think the problem is the same problem we had last year. Our offense all seems to be tied together. It seems we rarely have games where one guy struggles and the next guy picks him up. It's more often like, one guy struggles, and so do the next two or three batters behind him.

[Sports Guy]

I thought we would finish behind them BEFORE the season started. Yes 1 game doesn't mean much. All I'm saying is that our performance up to this point has been pretty much on par with what I expected.

Really? We are on an 85 win pace...You have said 76 wins all along.

Seems to me we are playing beyond your expectations.

[Sports Guy]

Funny, when the season started the whole lineup was dangerous.

Really, I think we were just beaten by the pitching yetserday. Or the teams confidence was shot. I can't honestly say what caused us to hit the way we did, but we have two, maybe three holes in our lineup. Millar is cold right now, but the good news is most of his outs are long fly ball outs. Aside from the fact that that means he's seeing the ball well and swinging the bat well, those are productive outs. Conine is slumping big time, and Markakis is struggling against ML pitching. I highly doubt Conine will bat below .200 the entire year, and Markakis will either heat up or be sent back down once Matos comes back from the DL (who will likely be a hole himself, but not as large of a hole).

Aside from Roberts, Mora (who's slumping), and Tejada, we also have Gibbons, Hernandez, and Lopez. These are all good hitters, all of them capable of hitting 20 homers or more this season. We have good hitters. I think the problem is the same problem we had last year. Our offense all seems to be tied together. It seems we rarely have games where one guy struggles and the next guy picks him up. It's more often like, one guy struggles, and so do the next two or three batters behind him.

By who?????

[bgfield]

By who?????

I'm basing that on our initial performances. Nobody considered our lineup to be that good all year long, but for the first couple of weeks we'd have days where everybody hit. We were batting around more often than this team is used to, scoring 6 and 7 runs an inning. I'm not saying we should expect that to continue, I just thought it was kinda funny.

[NewMarketSean]

I agree that things are starting to get scary. This team has looked horrible against the top three teams in the AL EAST so far -- and that was the big thing I was looking for this season -- improved play against them. If that tells us anything, it's that we can expect another 4th place finish this season.

[osfan83]

Really? We are on an 85 win pace...You have said 76 wins all along.

Seems to me we are playing beyond your expectations.

Your 85 win pace would be correct if we could get 40 of our wins against TB.

[Sports Guy]

Your 85 win pace would be correct if we could get 40 of our wins against TB.

Or Cleveland or Anaheim, correct? I mean, obviously that is how you are judging this, right?

[Sports Guy]

The bottom line about this team is it is a team that can win 70 or win 90.

For it to win 70, everything has to go wrong, including injuries, Tejada being dealt(and whining before that to hurt the clubhouse) and other guys being dealt as well.

For us to win 90, almost everything has to go right.

So, end of the day, you meet in the middle and you have a team that should finish right around 500, give or take a few games either way.

You can throw out all the early stats you want but at this point in the season, they are meaningless.

A few bad games, just as a few great games, really skew the numbers.

A bad 20 ab stretch for a player makes it look like he is horrible.

It is still April. It just continues to amaze me every single year how freaked out people get early in the year.

You guys can b!tch about the talent all you want and sure, it is not a team talented enough to compete with Boston and NY(in all likelihood) but it certainly is a team that can compete with Toronto and a team that could/should give us our first winning record since 1997.

[bgfield]

I think Sports Guy just summed up this thread pretty well right there.

[DrungoHazewood]

The bottom line about this team is it is a team that can win 70 or win 90.

For it to win 70, everything has to go wrong, including injuries, Tejada being dealt(and whining before that to hurt the clubhouse) and other guys being dealt as well.

For us to win 90, almost everything has to go right.

So, end of the day, you meet in the middle and you have a team that should finish right around 500, give or take a few games either way.

You can throw out all the early stats you want but at this point in the season, they are meaningless.

A few bad games, just as a few great games, really skew the numbers.

A bad 20 ab stretch for a player makes it look like he is horrible.

It is still April. It just continues to amaze me every single year how freaked out people get early in the year.

You guys can b!tch about the talent all you want and sure, it is not a team talented enough to compete with Boston and NY(in all likelihood) but it certainly is a team that can compete with Toronto and a team that could/should give us our first winning record since 1997.

That's pretty well a spot-on summation of the Orioles.