Sanity check...

[Sports Guy]

I don't think playing .500 in a stretch where we faced some good teams is any more meaningful than the worse record since. If you go by little chunks of games, you get roller-coaster results, it's normal to see that for any team. You need a bigger chunk of games than just a few games here and there. Now, if you wanna ask what size chunk is big enough, well, that's a perfectly good question and I don't really know... the way baseball works, the proper answer is 162, but people are always dividing the season into a couple chunks for one reason or another... often to support whatever point they're trying to make, it's just a normal thing to do... yet, when we're talking about what is reasonable to expect of the team, people have a fit about it, mainly because they wanna believe the team is playing lousy because of DT, not because the roster has been decimated and filled with fodder...

First of all, YOU are the one asking us to look at a small chunk of games..ie the 33 games.

Secondly, if you acknowledge that teams go through ups and downs in small sample sizes, then it should be reasonable to think they should have gone 19-14 or something like that in those 33 games. Things even out...RISP numbers go up, BABIP normalize, etc....So, why couldn't we have expected better play?

They were showing that they could play with the better teams after going 7-9 against the 3 best teams in the AL and that was with those injuries..They then went 3-1 in the next 4.

KC is 11-8 in their last 19 games.

It seems to me that you just want everyone to say that we have had a lot of bad luck and no one should be to blame. That's just bs.

And if you think people only think we are lousy because of DT, you are naive, stupid or have an inability to comprehend words. I am not sure which it is but those are the choices. No one is even remotely saying this yet you are doing what you do best...trump up arguments that don't exist and put words into people's mouths.

[El Gordo]

This team should not expect to play .500 ball for any extended time while BRob is out. But you can also make too much of the injuries. I expected this team to play close to .500 ball this year, AND I expected that the team would have its fair share of injuries along the way. I never expected that somehow we'd get through the season with nobody of importance getting hurt.

That said, of every player on this team, the two I thought were most indispensable were BRob and Wieters. Losing BRob is a huge loss.

I wouldn't expect to lose 6 key players to injury over the course of the first 20 games and see the team maintain a .500 W/L %. I agree with DT, a closer is a key player, as well as a set up guy. I also think Pie was a key player.

[Sports Guy]

This team should not expect to play .500 ball for any extended time while BRob is out. But you can also make too much of the injuries. I expected this team to play close to .500 ball this year, AND I expected that the team would have its fair share of injuries along the way. I never expected that somehow we'd get through the season with nobody of importance getting hurt.

That said, of every player on this team, the two I thought were most indispensable were BRob and Wieters. Losing BRob is a huge loss.

Not as big a loss as you say...Wiggy replaced him.

You guys can play the Wiggy/atkins card all you want but Wiggy would not have started off playing everyday if BRob had been healthy...and because of that, he MAY not have had this start...He got to play everyday from the beginning and that helped him a lot.

So, you can't make the assumption that if BRob was here, that Wiggy would have been at first and playing at this level.

BRob is only a HUGE loss if you knew Wiggy could have had this same start while not playing everyday to start with and if they gave him all the first base at bats very quickly into the season..>That is a lot to assume IMO.

[NewMarketSean]

The O's are averaging 3.4 runs per game. How much is Roberts going to improve that RPG average?

That is the only answer to the question "how much have we missed Roberts?"

[RShack]

This team should not expect to play .500 ball for any extended time while BRob is out. But you can also make too much of the injuries. I expected this team to play close to .500 ball this year, AND I expected that the team would have its fair share of injuries along the way. I never expected that somehow we'd get through the season with nobody of importance getting hurt.

That said, of every player on this team, the two I thought were most indispensable were BRob and Wieters. Losing BRob is a huge loss.

I think folks are way under-estimating the impact of the long list of guys who have not been playing. (That list includes guys who were playing some when they shouldn't have been, and who helped lose games because of that.) To say that the absense of BRob, Pie, Nolan, and our 3 best BP guys (JJ, Koji, and Gonzo) is somehow just a couple losses is IMO plain goofy. That's 6 guys who had significant roles in our expectations of the team being a .500 team. The absence of them is huge, it's not just like a couple guys have been out, it's a honest-to-God very, very big deal. Plus, it also has a long chain of downstream effects too.

What amazes me is that there have not been tons of discussions around here about that very issue. As we all know, rosterbation is a favorite passtime around here. If there was ever a situation that provided overwhelming legimate reason for some good rosterbation discussion, this is it. But we don't have eleventy seven threads and hundreds of posts about that, instead we have them about firing the manager. We have had next to zero substantive thoughtful discussions about what the effects of the roster calamity might be estimated to be, it's just "fire the manager" 24/7. Now, I expect that from the non-savvy folks around here, but not from the folks who have a serious baseball-clue. This tells me that either the baseball savvy folks around here are not paying attention, or else their judgment is clouded by the frustration of losing, or something...

[Frobby]

Not as big a loss as you say...Wiggy replaced him.

You guys can play the Wiggy/atkins card all you want but Wiggy would not have started off playing everyday if BRob had been healthy...and because of that, he MAY not have had this start...He got to play everyday from the beginning and that helped him a lot.

So, you can't make the assumption that if BRob was here, that Wiggy would have been at first and playing at this level.

BRob is only a HUGE loss if you knew Wiggy could have had this same start while not playing everyday to start with and if they gave him all the first base at bats very quickly into the season..>That is a lot to assume IMO.

I like Wiggy, but give me BRob any day. He sets the table for the entire top of the lineup, he disrupts pitchers when he's on base, and he plays solid defense. Wiggy is very poor defensively, and that has cost us runs in numerous situations. With BRob here you'd have seen far fewer AB for Atkins and Lugo, none for Turner. And you wouldn't have had a bunch of guys trying to be a leadoff hitter when they simply aren't suited to the task.

[square634]

I think folks are way under-estimating the impact of the long list of guys who have not been playing. (That list includes guys who were playing some when they shouldn't have been, and who helped lose games because of that.) To say that the absense of BRob, Pie, Nolan, and our 3 best BP guys (JJ, Koji, and Gonzo) is somehow just a couple losses is IMO plain goofy. That's 6 guys who had significant roles in our expectations of the team being a .500 team. The absence of them is huge, it's not just like a couple guys have been out, it's a honest-to-God very, very big deal. Plus, it also has a long chain of downstream effects too.

What amazes me is that there have not been tons of discussions around here about that very issue. As we all know, rosterbation is a favorite passtime around here. If there was ever a situation that provided overwhelming legimate reason for some good rosterbation discussion, this is it. But we don't have eleventy seven threads and hundreds of posts about that, instead we have them about firing the manager. Now, I expect that from the non-savvy folks around here, but not from the folks who have a serious baseball-clue. This tells me that either the baseball savvy folks around here are not paying attention, or else their judgment is clouded by the frustration of losing, or something...

We are only missing Reimold in the same sense that we are missing Jones and Wieters, in that all three have been somewhere between terrible and atrocious at the plate. Maybe that's on the players themselves, but isn't a coaching staff supposed to get the most out of its players? And isn't it odd that compared to the expectations of projection systems and the national media, so many of our supposedly key players are underachieving at the same time?

[Sports Guy]

I think folks are way under-estimating the impact of the long list of guys who have not been playing. (That list includes guys who were playing some when they shouldn't have been, and who helped lose games because of that.) To say that the absense of BRob, Pie, Nolan, and our 3 best BP guys (JJ, Koji, and Gonzo) is somehow just a couple losses is IMO plain goofy. That's 6 guys who had significant roles in our expectations of the team being a .500 team. The absence of them is huge, it's not just like a couple guys have been out, it's a honest-to-God very, very big deal. Plus, it also has a long chain of downstream effects too.

What amazes me is that there have not been tons of discussions around here about that very issue. As we all know, rosterbation is a favorite passtime around here. If there was ever a situation that provided overwhelming legimate reason for some good rosterbation discussion, this is it. But we don't have eleventy seven threads and hundreds of posts about that, instead we have them about firing the manager. Now, I expect that from the non-savvy folks around here, but not from the folks who have a serious baseball-clue. This tells me that either the baseball savvy folks around here are not paying attention, or else their judgment is clouded by the frustration of losing, or something...

Entering the season, most expected us to be in the 75-82 win range...Let's take an average of like 77 wins, which is a winning % near 48%...So, let's say that losing those guys makes us a team that should win 42% of those games..That gives us around another 6 or 7 wins...Which is extremely reasonable to expect...21-22 wins with the roster being what it is and has been for most of the season. Still bad but not nearly as bad.

[El Gordo]

I think folks are way under-estimating the impact of the long list of guys who have not been playing. (That list includes guys who were playing some when they shouldn't have been, and who helped lose games because of that.) To say that the absense of BRob, Pie, Nolan, and our 3 best BP guys (JJ, Koji, and Gonzo) is somehow just a couple losses is IMO plain goofy. That's 6 guys who had significant roles in our expectations of the team being a .500 team. The absence of them is huge, it's not just like a couple guys have been out, it's a honest-to-God very, very big deal. Plus, it also has a long chain of downstream effects too.

What amazes me is that there have not been tons of discussions around here about that very issue. As we all know, rosterbation is a favorite passtime around here. If there was ever a situation that provided overwhelming legimate reason for some good rosterbation discussion, this is it. But we don't have eleventy seven threads and hundreds of posts about that, instead we have them about firing the manager. Now, I expect that from the non-savvy folks around here, but not from the folks who have a serious baseball-clue. This tells me that either the baseball savvy folks around here are not paying attention, or else their judgment is clouded by the frustration of losing, or something...

I think there are two issues being confused here. Should the manager be fired. I think most would agree that he should be at this point. Is the manager the main reason for our poor record. I would say no, hardly more than 2 W's if that.

[RShack]

I think there are two issues being confused here. Should the manager be fired. I think most would agree that he should be at this point. Is the manager the main reason for our poor record. I would say no, hardly more than 2 W's if that.

I agree that it is 2 issues. The problem here is that the manager issue drowns out any discussion of the roster issue. Every time to you try to discuss the roster issue, it gets turned into another "let's fire DT" thing... and when you point out that the roster thing is freakin' huge, people either ignore it or they say "How dare you!!!"

[Miller192]

I agree that it is 2 issues. The problem here is that the manager issue drowns out any discussion of the roster issue. Every time to you try to discuss the roster issue, it gets turned into another "let's fire DT" thing... and when you point out that the roster thing is freakin' huge, people either ignore it or they say "How dare you!!!"

That's really what you think is going on here?

[TonySoprano]

O.K. Shack,here's a twist on a question you put to me. The O's were 2-16 in their first 18 , 10-8 in their second 18, and currently 3-13 in the third set of 18. Which is the real O's team?

[AgentOrange]

O.K. Shack,here's a twist on a question you put to me. The O's were 2-16 in their first 18 , 10-8 in their second 18, and currently 3-13 in the third set of 18. Which is the real O's team?

I think they are a little worse than the second 18 team.

[Sports Guy]

I like Wiggy, but give me BRob any day. He sets the table for the entire top of the lineup, he disrupts pitchers when he's on base, and he plays solid defense. Wiggy is very poor defensively, and that has cost us runs in numerous situations. With BRob here you'd have seen far fewer AB for Atkins and Lugo, none for Turner. And you wouldn't have had a bunch of guys trying to be a leadoff hitter when they simply aren't suited to the task.

This is all well and good...but its highly unlikely that BRob would have produced the amount of runs that Wiggy has.

BRob is better but unlikely to have been a better player for the first 2 months of the season.

[El Gordo]

O.K. Shack,here's a twist on a question you put to me. The O's were 2-16 in their first 18 , 10-8 in their second 18, and currently 3-13 in the third set of 18. Which is the real O's team?

Good point. I think SSS makes this discussion silly. The next 18 could be more telling, regardless who the manager is.