Insider | Short Hops | Love Letters
The Baltimore Orioles are making a very early case in the American League East that, just maybe, they can hang with the big boys this summer.
Part of it is their own doing; part of it is circumstances.
But more than a few signs are beginning to point in the Orioles' favor:
- The biggest obstacle to anybody in the East aside from superpowers New York and Boston is that the unbalanced schedule hands them 19 games against the Yankees and 19 against the Red Sox. The Orioles have built up early collateral by winning five of their first six games against the Yankees. Suddenly, given that, those 19 games aren't so daunting against Joe Torre's club. They are 2-2 against the Red Sox.
- The Orioles will score. With Miguel Tejada raking, Brian Roberts an All-Star, Javy Lopez, Melvin Mora, Sammy Sosa ... this lineup is good. How good? At midweek, the Orioles led the AL in runs scored, slugging percentage and batting average. And they ranked second in the league in both home runs and steals and third in on-base percentage.
- Pitching, as always, will be the key. The Orioles at midweek, while ranking second in the league in wins, were way down at 10th in ERA. Those two numbers don't compute -- it's a fluke they're adding up to first place now, and they likely won't in coming months unless the staff slides down the Batpole a bit further and drops to, say, somewhere in the top six in the league in ERA. Starters Rodrigo Lopez and Erik Bedard have been fine. Bruce Chen has been surprisingly effective. Sidney Ponson needs to step it up, and so does Daniel Cabrera. Force-feeding youngsters such as Bedard and Cabrera a year ago should prove beneficial this summer.
- Where the circumstances part factors into Baltimore's good early karma is in the pitching staffs in New York and Boston. The Red Sox had a miserable week with both Curt Schilling and David Wells landing on the disabled list. The Yankees disabled Jaret Wright, continue to be perplexed by Kevin Brown's aches, pains and overall struggles and remain perplexed at Mike Mussina's inability to dominate. Common denominator there? Both Boston and New York put together old rotations, and in old rotations you have to leave room in your planning for injuries. That Wells landed on the DL should surprise nobody. That Schilling landed on the DL is only a minor upset, because there were questions from the beginning over whether he was coming back too soon. In New York, Wright's shoulder has a checkered history. Mussina never was an ace as dominant as, say, Roger Clemens or Randy Johnson, and he's 36 now. Johnson, meanwhile, is 41 -- he, too, could land on the DL at some point this season.
The combination of Baltimore's impressive start and the rotations in both New York and Boston showing their age is telling. The versatility of the Orioles' lineup is impressive. Second in both steals and home runs right now? Sure, roughly 140 games remain, but here's one thing to watch as the Orioles race through their season: To find the last team to lead the league in both home runs and steals, you must go back to the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers.
"The way the offense is, you have speed at the top, speed on the bottom and you have thunder in the middle," manager Lee Mazzilli told Baltimore reporters. "Guys are aggressive on the bases. They are running, they're stealing and they are making things happen."
Most impressively, those things they're making happen are being felt all the way through New York and Boston these days. It's a start.
- The Yankees, at 9-12, are guaranteed to have a losing April for the first time since 1991.
- Regarding sore-shouldered Jaret Wright, the Yanks inserted a clause in his three-year, $21 million deal that allows them to buy themselves out of that third year if he misses 75 days with a rotator cuff injury. The Yanks could buy him out of 2007 by paying him $4 million instead of his $7 million salary, thus allowing him to become a free agent after '06.
- One more from the Woe-Are-the-Yankees Dept.: Of 105 pitches Mussina threw in Wednesday's start against the Angels, they swung and missed at exactly ... five of them. Opponents are blistering Mussina this season for a .361 batting average.
- Without Wells and Schilling, the Red Sox likely will use John Halama as a starter and call up Jeremi Gonzalez from Triple-A Pawtucket.
- In firing hitting coach Mike Barnett, Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi told a Toronto radio station that part of the problem with Barnett was that this is the third consecutive April in which Vernon Wells has gotten off to a slow start.
- Neifi Perez has been fine at shortstop this week, but with Nomar Garciaparra gone for the next several weeks, the Chicago Cubs inquired about retired shortstop and current special assistant to the GM in Washington Barry Larkin as well as about Philadelphia infielder Placido Polanco. Larkin says no. As for the rest, stay tuned.
- Either Cubs skipper Dusty Baker is seeing things, or his sense of humor somehow is remaining intact with an injury list that has included Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, closer Joe Borowski, Garciaparra, second baseman Todd Walker and reliever Chad Fox. "I even saw one of the grounds crew guys limping," Baker quipped.
- Dodger Stadium fans have been uncharacteristically edgy this season, but the booing of Arizona outfielder Shawn Green this week was uncalled for. Green wanted to stay in Los Angeles until the current Dodgers administration made it crystal clear that they didn't want any part of him returning. Yet Green was booed for much of this week's three-game series.
- So up step Julian Tavarez and Ray King with closer Jason Isringhausen out in St. Louis. Isringhausen likely will miss two or three weeks with that abdominal muscle pull, and the fallout is that Tavarez will become the mostly full-time closer, King will get a few chances here and there when lefty matchups dictate and Al Reyes will gain additional responsibilities as a right-handed set-up man.
- Who let the Derrek out? The Cubs' Derrek Lee, with six RBI Wednesday against Cincinnati, now has 27 for the season. Most ever in April in Cubs history belonged to Billy Williams, with 25 in April, 1970.
- On the South Side, White Sox lefty Mark Buehrle has pitched at least six innings in 33 consecutive starts. Buehrle can extend that against Kansas City on Tuesday.
- The sharks are circling Scott Erickson, wondering how much longer he will remain in the Los Angeles rotation with that ugly 7.20 ERA.
- Mets manager Willie Randolph swears Pedro Martinez doesn't have a personal catcher, though Ramon Castro has started in place of Mike Piazza behind the plate in three of Pedro's past four starts.
- And while on the subject of Diva Pedro, the Mets said they sold nearly 12,000 tickets in the two days leading up to Tuesday's Pedro- John Smoltz rematch that added more spice to the Braves-Mets series. "I love that," Pedro told New York reporters. "It means a lot. Hopefully, it means the mets did the right thing by bringing me over. That all those fans who show up, regardless of whether it's here or on the road, follow the team and follow me specifically. And that's a great feeling. It's something that not everybody gets. For me to understand that I'm that person they're following around is a great joy."
- Brrrrrr: Fitting, somehow, that on the 10th anniversary of Coors Field, the Marlins and Rockies were snowed out. The, the next night, they played in 35 degree temperatures -- second-coldest night in the Rockies' Denver history, behind the Colorado-Montreal game on April 12, 1997, that was played when it was 27 degrees.
- It's a laugh a minute with this greenhorn Dodger owner Frank McCourt and his court. The club gave away fleece blankets before Wednesday's game boasting of World Series wins in 1962 and 1966. Except that, uh, in '62, the Yankees defeated the San Francisco Giants in the World Series and, um, in '66, the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Dodgers. Whoops.
