Bird Watching - RIP The 2015 Baltimore Orioles Season
Here lies your 2015 Baltimore Orioles.They pulled us in last week after they swept the most overhyped team in MLB history, and had a chance to really put themselves into the Wild Card chase with a series against the Red Sox. Then they went out and got swept, didn’t even score a run in the series. Biggest series of the season, and they don’t show up. I guess that is kind of the story of the year, they had the chances, but couldn’t put it together.
After getting swept in Boston they came home and split with the Blue Jays, great right? Wrong, they also had to watch the Blue Jays celebrate their A.L. East title on the same field that the O’s celebrated on last year. After the split they are now 78-81 with 3 games against the Yankees left, that means no winning record for the O’s this season after 3 straight. Why did this season not go like O’s fans thought it would?
What Went Wrong For the 2015 Orioles?
-Corner outfield spots
I’ve talked about this before. But the Orioles letting Markakis and Nelson Cruz walk, and trying to replace them with guys like Steve Pearce, Alejandro De Aza, Delmon Young, Ryan Flaherty, Nolan Reimold, David Lough, Dariel Alvarez, Chris Parmelee, (deep breathhhh) Junior Lake, Travis Snider, Gerardo Parra, Chris Davis, and Henry Urrutia. DD tried to make chicken salad out of chicken shit and failed. Half those guys were DFA’d during the year. You can’t win games when you’re mixing and matching corner outfielders every game. Just won’t work.
Parra struggled after he was brought over from the Brewers before the trade deadline, batting .213 with 5 bombs, and 15 driven in. A free agent after the season, I expect the O’s to make a push to bring back Parra to sure up one of the corner outfield spots. I’d like to see Steve Pearce back as well on a cheap short term deal. Maybe the O’s make a run at a guy like Jason Heyward, or see if Dariel Alvarez can make strides in spring training. No matter what they do, they can’t go into next year with a grab bag of corner outfielders. Maybe the Orioles not getting an outfielder in offseason had something to do with their GM trying to take another job?
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– Failed Offseason Acquisitions
Talked about it a little up above, but failing to go out and get guys to replace the lost starters killed them. They let some big pieces go, and did nothing to replace them. Lose Markakis, bring in Travis Snider, lose Cruz, bring back Delmon Young, lose Andrew Miller, bring in Wesley Wright.
I understand not bringing back Cruz because of his age, and not giving Markakis the extra year because of his bulging disk, but then to just sit on the money and not bring in any replacements? Open the GD check book Peter.
-The Pitchers
Say what you want about the Orioles offense, and the long stretches they went without scoring runs, but the pitching is what doomed this team from the start. You saw it all year, the inability to get the strikeout pitch, inability to get that third out, inability to get deep into games, and their inability to get a shut down inning. The O’s starters ranked 14th out of 15 teams in team ERA, gave up the second most HRs, and were tied for second to last in innings pitched. All a recipe for disaster.
Lets call the O’s rotation what it is, a bunch of fringe 2’s and 3’s. Guys who had career years last year and suddenly fell back to earth. Miguel Gonzalez, Bud Norris, and Chris Tillman, who combined for 38 wins last year, all had terrible years. Norris was DFA’d at the trade deadline due to his 2-9 record and an ERA above 7. This was a guy who started the clinching game for the O’s in the ALDS last season. Maybe it was the law of averages evening things out, him getting sick early in the season and losing a ton of weight, or Bud being in a contract year and having that hang over his head, whatever it was, it got to him and he wasn’t the same.
Tillman, the team’s “Ace”, is 10-11 with an ERA of 5.05. Name another team expected to compete for a division title with an ace throwing up stats like that? You can’t. Miggy wasn’t terrible before the All-Star break, going 7-6 with a 4.24 ERA, but things went south quick after the break. 2-6 with a 6.14 ERA, 35 earned runs in 51 innings. He was so unreliable towards the end of the year that people are questioning if he will even be on the team next year. Does he have a spot in the rotation? Since July 30th, he’s pitched 7 innings ONLY ONCE. If he’s throwing meatballs down the middle again, I want nothing to do with him on the team. Gausman and Chen were really the only guys who held their own. Gausman struggled early, but seemed to really come on strong late- looking for big things out of the Gasman next year. Pitching has to be addressed though, whether it is throwing $80 mill at Chen (won’t happen) or getting someone in free agency, they CAN’T go into next year with a rotation of Tillman, Ubaldo, Gausman, Gonzalez, and Mike Wright or Tyler Wilson. Wilson was solid in his starts, and Wright looked good in his first two starts, but went downhill quick. Seems better suited for a bullpen/Tommy Hunter like role.
Upcoming
Well this is it, the last 3 games of the season against the Yanks at home. Meaningless games since the Yankees won the Wild Card and earn the right to lose to Houston or Los Angeles. What better way to end the year than to watch what could be Chri$ Davi$, Matt Wieters, Darren O’Day, Steve Pearce, Gerardo Parra, and Wei-Yin Chen’s last games as O’s than to watch them win one last series against New York.
Sucks this year is ending like it is, a few bad weeks really did this team in and cost them a playoff spot. Would they have won the whole thing? Probably not, but hey, we’ll never know. This team which has swiss cheese holes throughout the lineup, pitching staff, and bullpen still managed to stay in contention for the Wild Card until there was a week left. A lot of good things happened this year, some bad things.
Next week after the season, I will have some wrap up blogs, and compare my predictions I made at the beginning of the season. I’ll also be going over what I think the club will do with their upcoming free agents, and what has to happen to get this team back to their winning ways.
Make sure to follow me on Twitter and listen to Yuppie Junk this week, as I’ll be making my YJ debut to talk Orioles baseball, and whatever else you freaks want to talk about. Send questions to BarstoolRDT or BarstoolJJ.
(h/t the2belo on Orioles Reddit for the thumbnail pic)