Magic as an organizational philosophy: the 2013 Baltimore Orioles

The players all understand why the front office was idle, Showalter said, and they take it as a vote of confidence. They know what they are and what they can be and are quite content to let others dismiss them as one-year wonders who’ll never be able to repeat all the magic of 2012. “We’re very comfortable,” Showalter said, “laying in the weeds.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/madden-o-plan-buck-trend-doubters-article-1.1267508

Laying what in the weeds?

http://www.masnsports.com/school_of_roch/2013/03/reimold-will-take-a-few-days-off-from-throwing.html

because the new year isn't official until nolan reimold gets hurt

matusz lives?

even accounting for spring meaning jack, near perfection over 4 ip w/ 7 K and five groundouts is...something.

let me have this moment!

Markakis RF
Machado 3B
Jones CF
Wieters C
Davis 1B
Hardy SS
Reimold LF
Pearce DH
Roberts 2B

uuuuuuugh i don't know why reimold isn't the full time DH

but !!! @ machado batting 2nd

mclouth is utter dogshit against lefties...but, yeah...i'd love to see reimold batting 2nd.

in the big inning was the bat, and the bat was with the three-run homer, and the bat was the three-run homer

and the bat shineth in the dome, and jake mcgee comprehended it not

if brooks is 5, if brooks is 5, if brooks is 5
and melvin mora is 6

BELANGER IS SEVEN

a+

this earl has gone to heaven?

chris davis

11 rbi in 3 games

beast

dang,

one of those things... every time it happens you feel stupid for thinking this time it'll be different, this time he's really changed

r u talkin bout Roberts' leg?

http://laurengiordano.com/illustration/

friend of mine made

http://static.squarespace.com/static/4ff5fe6ee4b00d513bad7bcc/4ff7b2b0c4aaf2f6d6c9a70f/515b6819e4b0afec121663b5/1364944952353/I_Bmag_Orioles.jpg%3Fformat%3D750w

lol nate mclouth

http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2013-04-05/orioles-rays-result-score-boxscore-chris-davis-fast-start-rbis-first-three-games

3,4, 5 hitters doing the job.

Brian Roberts out on 15 day DL with leg injury that occurred while stealing a base

only out 2-4 weeks

with a grannie chris davis has driven in 16 of baltimore's 29 runs

jesus

when chris davis is hitting you kind of can't believe he will ever not hit

carly rae jepsen is throwing out the first pitch today

!!

http://twitter.com/Britt_Ghiroli/status/320946452463497216/photo/1

lol

lol why??

MANNY

meltdown, ugly, horrible

i actually had this thought process: "oh good thing jones will have a chance to redeem himself after giving away three runs... well unless there's a triple play... HA HA HA SNARF"

New York Yankees ‏@Yankees 4m
Tonight’s triple play was first 4-6-5-6-5-3-4 triple play in @MLB history.
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Has anybody outside Baltimore noticed that Wei-Yin Chen is a good pitcher?

that was one of the more disgusting losses ever and i hate the A's so much, but 3/4 in a stadium that usually makes us look like a AA team is fine. and on the plus side, mclouth and manny both had 4 hits and manny's now batting over .300.

for those too busy gawking at harper, manny is 0.3 fWAR behind him this season, third in the majors in fielding and only three months older

why do you hate the a's so much

it's just what they've done to the o's over the past 4-5 years. maybe longer than that. it's not just that they kill us, they do it in a way that makes me feel ashamed of my team. they're pesky and they do everything right even when they suck and the o's basically spend those games slipping on banana peels and getting stuck in doorways

this series wasn't like that at all but i still hate them and dread the coliseum

Was yesterday's game the end of the O's streak of winning games when leading after seven innings?

yes

no. they were tied after 7 yesterday. i think they were 75-0 when winning after 8 last year.

O's defense has been notably bad all season long; I think of Jones as a good center fielder but the defensive metrics disagree and he's clanked several balls in important spots this year.

has it been? jones has made some terrible blunders and isn't a good centerfielder, markakis is pretty bad too, but those are the only real problems imo. mclouth in left is above-average, reimold is ok there, machado is amazing at third, hardy is great, wieters is great, davis has been quite good, casilla and flaherty have been fine at second. it's a much better defense than it was most of last year

whatever utility can be extracted from defensive metrics at this phase of the game seem to rate the o's reasonably well overall, but, yeah...outfield defense seems shaky, which is maybe more problematic w/ a lot of flyball pitchers and hammel's gb rate down. markakis' arm...man, what happened?

hard to imagine anyone w/ a better left side if their infield right now, though.

Maybe you're right -- this was just an impressionistic view and I'm probably overweighting my frustration with Jones.

starting to think routine outfield errors inspire a lot more rage than routine infield errors

i don't know if jones even makes errors more than the average CF, he just always makes them at the worst moments

...but errors are a small part of the puzzle, y'know?

fwiw, there was a whole bunch of stuff about manny machado on espn today...in his article, crasnick said the o's lead the league in defensive efficiency...can this be possible?

idk, it's a bit early for that isn't it? but every o's fan knows how beautiful manny's been at third. i've been waiting for it to all come crashing down. he isn't even supposed to be that good at short!

and then i think maybe it's a jeter thing where he just makes easy plays look hard, but all the defensive metrics loving him sort of defy that. it's still a SSS

also may be influenced by following jones on twitter, where he darkly mutters about having to "clean up his ish" after each bad defensive game

this needs 2 be here too http://cdn2.mocksession.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHIBA.gif

never take a good bullpen for granted

Here's how Davis's home runs compare to other guys with 30+ at the break (All-Star Game era only--I checked Ruth in 1927, and he hit his 30th in the Yankees' 83rd game):

http://mlb.si.com/2013/06/29/two-homer-day-brings-chris-davis-to-30-and-select-company/?sct=uk_wr_a2

The break takes place at different points for different players, and Davis still has 10+ games to go.

Most second-half HR: Bonds, 2001 (34)
Fewest non-strike, non-injury second-half HR: Mays, 1954 (10), Reggie, 1969 (10)

I was wondering why Greenberg wasn't on the chart the year he hit 58. The All-Star Game was July 6th that year; Greenberg had 22 at the break, 36 after. The year Foxx hit 58 (1932, so pre-ASG by a year), he had 33 in the A's first 81 games, 25 the rest of the way.

"select company" includes Dave Kingman, eh?

Greg Vaughn and Brady Anderson, too--it's just numbers. Actually, if he hadn't gotten injured in '76, Kingman might have scooped George Foster by a year as the first guy to hit 50 since Mays; he had 32 when he went down on July 19, the Cubs' 93rd game. The whole story, which you probably remember:

http://mets360.com/?p=8585

"Mets' 93rd game," I meant.

organizational magic - brian roberts homers on 1st pitch seen when back healthy

made a great barehanded play too. he'll be great for us the week he's healthy.

oh it's def like 80% hes hurt again by the allstar break

oh god

not to bee ok all over this thread but they look horrible right now

i don't think they look horrible overall, actually. if there was an expectation that the bullpen was going to bail them out all the time this year, though, i think that can be put to paid.

definitely curious to see what kind of dark magic duquette rousts.

chris davis has 36 home runs

37 now, tied for second most pre-break. And 27 doubles to boot--I wonder if that's a record for XB hits. (Reggie had 63 in 1969, with a break that was 10 days later.)

one more homer than any royal has ever hit in a full season

Without checking, that's gotta be Balboni.

CHRIS TILLMAN, SOMEHOW ALL-STAR

"THE SOMEHOW KID" THEY CALLED 'IM

This is interesting, as is the poll (73-27 Maris), but:

1) The record belongs to Bonds and Bonds alone. "True record" is silly--not being in any hurry to celebrate Bonds' 73 (or McGwire's 70) is a lot different than pretending it didn't happen.

2) If Davis is smart, he'll leave the commentary to others and not weigh in himself. I guess it's welcome whenever a professional athlete departs from the script, but doing so in a way that could be construed as self-aggrandizement is hazardous.

Oops:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/38178/would-chris-davis-be-the-true-hr-king

Lots of stuff about Manny Machado, not behind the paywall yet:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/manny_machados_doubles/

chris davis on pace for 107 XBH, which would tie bonds (2001) for third-most in mlb history.

Taco-Rod, more like.

buck showalter might be the best manager in baseball who completely sucks at actual in-game managing

gary thorne saying 'three-rbi homer' never gets old

GOD I HATE THIS, when did he start doing it?

Johnson sucks

this is about to become the most miserable series ever

i took great pleasure in reminding him in San Francisco on Saturday about the game he blew in Toronto a few months earlier, wherein I was repeating to him that he was going to blow the game. he then promptly blew the save. (although the O's came back to win)

Don't run on Wieters, kids.

inside info: this game wasn't any less depressing in person

would be nice if this team could manage to win more than two games in a row, like, ever.

freaking machado just threw out soriano on a slow roller from the infield grass...after starting the play with his heels on the outfield grass. what a 3B

Chris Davis just got his 40th double to go along with the 49 HR. 40/40 was rare for a long time; Willie Stargell was the only guy to do it between 1940 and 1995. But a number of people have done it since 1995. Still relatively rare, I guess. (List is four years old.)

http://www.themlbblog.com/2009/albert-pujols-makes-history/

chris davis

Gausman been in the pen long?

Man, I don't really believe the Orioles can make it to the wild card, but they are not going to go down easy.

went down easy today, stick the fork in

rip manny machado

(haven't seen the play and am pretty sure i don't want to)

AND they lost on a Loney walk-off HR.

aw man, fuck this. hope he's ok

17-29 in games decided by one run.

Magic as an organizational philosophy: the 2013 Baltimore Orioles

Machado may not need surgery, best possible diagnosis apparently

60 years of orioles media guides

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhRida3CUAArjLO.jpg

orioles pr director monica barlow has died after a four-year battle with lung cancer. she was 36

geez, that's horrible

on the lighter side:

Frank Robinson visited Orioles camp and spoke to the team... and was walking with Showalter past (19-year-old supplemental pick Josh) Hart before the Orioles skipper decided to test the youngster. When Hart didn't know who Robinson was, Showalter assigned him a one-page paper on the Hall of Famer.

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/2/28/5456768/buck-showalter-josh-hart-frank-robinson-orioles-essay

<3 buck

not me; even when his goal is virtuous, tends twd dickishness

minor-league deal for Johan