The Orioles' hitters "have no idea what they're doing," right fielder Nick Markakis told The Sun yesterday, in an interview grappling with the question of how a club that looked solidly mediocre and due for improvement on paper has become the worst team of 2010 and potentially the worst team of modern times:
"You need guys in there who have a plan, who have a clue and who know how to execute that plan and get on base. We don't need every guy in this lineup trying to hit home runs. We're paid to get on base and figure out how to score and drive in runs. You look at the Yankees. They have guys who can hit home runs, but everybody in that lineup can get on base."
Markakis said the team's offensive woes shouldn't be attributed to longtime hitting coach Terry Crowley, who is known for advocating an aggressive approach at the plate.
Crowley "has 110 percent nothing to do with the way we are going about our business at the plate or on the field right now," Markakis said. "You can have anybody come here, and you still are going to have a couple of guys who are not going to change their approach and fix it. It's worthless. You can point your fingers here and there, but it is what it is. You're in the big leagues. You have to change your approach on your own. This is the best of the best, and if you go up there clueless, you're going to come back [to the dugout] clueless. It's that simple.
This is nice and diplomatic, but the Orioles are a stain on baseball, and Markakis' defense of the hitting coach makes no sense. Bless Terry Crowley for his years of service to the club as a player and coach, but he needs to have been fired weeks ago. The team is full of players, and especially young players, who are doing everything wrong at the plate, and are getting worse.
Yes, the players are at fault. But if Terry Crowley is not also at fault, then what is Terry Crowley's job, as hitting coach?
The Orioles are awful hitters. No one wants a baseball team to hit the way the Orioles hit. Suppose Markakis is right, and Crowley "has nothing to do with the way we are going about our business at the plate." That would mean Crowley is completely useless.
Dave Trembley had to go and deserved to go. He seemed nice, and I liked the idea of Dave Trembley--I always like a baseball manager who Never Played in the Big Leagues--but the Orioles should never have brought him back for this season.
It was not Dave Trembley's fault that the Orioles are a lousy team this year. They are a lousy team because they have a lousy collection of players. A little over a week ago, this finally sank in, when they fielded the following lineup:
As of Thursday, I have another Web log. This new one is called "Scocca," and it is published by Slate. It will be a more professional version of this, meaning probably not as many child pictures or rants about marginal roster moves by the Orioles. Meaning probably more of those here!
The victory wasn't assured until Patterson unleashed a throw from left field that nailed Josh Wilson at the plate for the final out. Wilson tried to score from second on Ichiro Suzuki's single.
Patterson, who also homered, was in the midst of a postgame television interview when he received a shaving cream pie to the face from teammate Will Ohman.
Nice touch that the pie was flung by Will Ohman, who has given up 8 hits and 7 walks in 11 innings, with an ERA of 0.00. Does Corey Patterson win games? Corey Patterson just won this one. Welcome back to the majors, Corey Patterson!
Why are the Orioles so bad? One answer is that they might not really, truly be so bad--that if you overlook their catastrophic 2-16 start, they are a feisty, competitive 8-8 since. That even their catastrophic 2-16 start was somehow feisty and competitive, probably the best performance ever by a team that was losing 16 out of 18 games.
Signed as a minor league free agent on April 21, Patterson was batting .368 in 14 games with the Tides.
He was immediately placed at the top of the lineup in Wednesday's game against the Seattle Mariners. With Roberts out, the Orioles tried Adam Jones and Julio Lugo at the leadoff spot and experienced little success.
[...]
Replacing Reimold, who was batting .205, with Patterson served as an indication that Baltimore wasn't going to stand pat while owning the worst record in baseball.
"I hope it is a twofold purpose here," manager Dave Trembley said. "We need to get somebody that can spark our offense. I am not putting it all on Corey, but he has been a leadoff guy in the past. He was playing very well at Triple-A. Nolan wasn't playing well here. It's unfortunate that these things happen, but they do happen."
Now, Nolan Reimold has not played particularly well. He is coming back from Achilles tendon surgery, and it may help him if he goes to recuperate somewhere other than in the major-league lineup. "Trembley said it was obvious that Reimold had lost his confidence, both at the plate and in the field," the news story reports.
Funny thing, confidence. Reimold may look uncomfortable at the plate, but 1 out of 9 times he steps up to hit, he draws a walk: 11 walks in 96 plate appearances this year. Actually, the rate works out to a walk every 8.7 plate appearances--exactly as often as Reimold walked last year, when he was a Rookie of the Year candidate.
That walk rate means that Reimold has a .302 on-base percentage. And that is to say, this year, hobbled by surgical aftereffects and batting without confidence, Nolan Reimold was so awful, his on-base percentage through 29 games was TWELVE POINTS HIGHER THAN COREY PATTERSON'S CAREER ON-BASE PERCENTAGE.
Uh-oh. Am I shouting? Corey Patterson, in 10 years in the majors, has reached base 29 percent of the time. And Dave Trembley is hoping that will solve the problem of the leadoff slot. Patterson will "spark the offense," except for the 71 percent of the time he will turn around and go sit back down on the bench, because he made an out, because Corey Patterson is the exact opposite of what a baseball team needs from its leadoff hitter.
Some of the things that have made the Orioles the worst team in the majors are genuine baseball mysteries. How can a starting pitcher be as good as Kevin Millwood has been without ever winning a game? How and why, in the course of 12 months, has Adam Jones deteriorated from the next Eric Davis to the next Jeffrey Hammonds to his current condition, in which he looks a lot like the next Corey Patterson?
But other parts of this season's debacle are easy to explain. The Orioles have decent pitching, but can't score runs. To fix this, they are going to put Corey Patterson at the top of the batting order. This is the kind of decision that the people who make decisions for the Orioles make, when they make decisions. Other teams make other kinds of decisions.
