Orioles Magic 2008: Because being over .500 this late in the season is worthy of song

As great of a song as “Orioles Magic” is, I think it is tempting fate WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much to being doing a “Superbowl Shuffle” style number at this time. Still, this further cements Kevin Millar as the baseball equivalent of William Shatner, only without Star Trek.

Boston Herald: It’s all bad news for Sox

A 5-4 loss to the Orioles merely was the last down note of the day, one marked with pain and suffering on all fronts.
...
On the medical front, right fielder J.D. Drew had to leave the game in the bottom of the third with a sprained left wrist after a sliding attempt to catch a fly ball. Drew’s wrist bent back awkwardly on the play and the ball dropped in front of him, but X-rays were negative.

And not long after that, center fielder Coco Crisp could not take the field for the bottom of the sixth because he was in the clubhouse dealing with an upset stomach, the result of an excruciating headache.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, Clay Buchholz is probable - not definite - for Sunday’s game against Milwaukee because of a nail issue on his right middle finger.
...
Spotted a 3-0 lead, Beckett (4-3) gave it back in the fourth, when the Orioles scored four times, the last three coming on a Luke Scott home run with two outs.

“It was a (expletive) pitch, right down the (expletive) middle,” Beckett said. “I threw (97) pitches and I think I executed one of them. The loss definitely goes in the right person’s hands tonight.”

Bored and restless, Leo Mazzone wants back into baseball

He’s got plenty of free time and still is being paid handsomely by the Baltimore Orioles, so there’s really no limit to what Leo Mazzone can do this spring.

He’s played golf, visited a few nice restaurants with his wife and planted strawberries, blueberries, onions and tomatoes in the backyard of their lavish new home in Roswell, Ga. Yet, Mazzone can’t remember ever feeling so useless, exasperated and miserable.

..."What I’m doing is sitting here dying to get back into baseball again,” Mazzone said. “When spring training hit, it was the first time in 40 years I wasn’t on the baseball field. It affected me pretty good.”

...After a highly successful run with the Atlanta Braves, Mazzone left for Baltimore after the 2005 season. He received a hefty raise and got to work with his best friend, Sam Perlozzo. But if he had it to do over, Mazzone would accept whatever Atlanta offered and assume his customary place in the dugout next to Braves manager Bobby Cox.

“At the time it was a great move, but now I regret it. You see the difference in organizations and how things are run and, believe me, the Atlanta Braves are about as good as it gets,” Mazzone said.

“I got a chance to go back to my home state. My dad’s 86 and my mother’s 81, and they got to see me more in two years than they had in the last 16. Then I have three boys that live up in western Maryland. So we were able to get a lot closer. That part of it was good. But now, as I sit here on my back porch, I second-guess it.”

Thanks to Ruddy Gilbreath. 

Longtime O’s groundskeeper Santarone dies at 79

While the Orioles produced some of the best teams in baseball over three decades, beginning in the 1960s, they went unchallenged when it came to their garden.

The tomato plants that grew at old Memorial Stadium, and the competitions between head groundskeeper Pat Santarone and manager Earl Weaver that sprouted along with them, are almost as legendary as any championships that were won. Santarone died unexpectedly Tuesday at his home in Hamilton, Mont. He was 79.

“Pat and I were very close. He was the best man at my wedding,” Weaver said. “And he meant a lot to Memorial Stadium. He was just like a part of that park itself.”

...Players loved to monitor the competition between Santarone and Weaver over the tomatoes they planted down the left-field line. “They argued like brothers,” Dempsey said.

So who had the better crop each year? “Well, he was there when I’d go on the road, and I think there was a little tomfoolery,” Weaver said. “He might have been pinching off some of my buds.”

Thanks to Camden Chat…

Baltimore Sun: O’s tired of defending good play

Even as they begin to get some national attention for the strong start that turned this week’s home series against the Tampa Bay Rays into an unlikely battle for first place, they are losing patience with the steady undercurrent of skepticism that accompanies each attempt to explain their early success.

“It’s not a fluke we’re leading the AL East just because some people were wrong with their [early-season] predictions,” first baseman Kevin Millar said before last night’s 8-1 loss. “This team’s a hell of a lot better than people think.”

It has gotten to the point where even-tempered manager Dave Trembley is starting to bristle at the carefully worded questions that - when you read between the lines - all seem to be getting at the same thing.

“I don’t like to keep hearing, ‘You guys are a piece of crap. How come you’re playing so well?’” Trembley said yesterday. “I don’t like negativity. I don’t have time for negativity.”

..."If you’re a fantasy baseball player, don’t pick anybody from the Orioles. ... Nobody is going to pop your eyes out,” Millar said. “But if you’re in the American League East, bring your lunch, because you’re going to need it.”

Go find yourself a warehouse factory man
I said, I need lunch

Feed me!!

ESPN Page 2: Step aside Yankees Universe and Red Sox Nation

Page 2 invites you to take a closer look at the next great sports rivalry … Orioles-Rays:

....

Just off Interstate 95, not all too from Florence, S.C., is a little place called Manning. In the giant battle zone that is the Orioles-Rays rivalry, this unassuming way station on the great coastal corridor just happens to be the very front line. Sitting equidistant to Baltimore and St. Petersburg, Fla., it represents the physical demarcation line of loyalties in this epic encounter of enmity. All those to the south of Manning are in the Rays’ camp. All those to the north side with the Orioles. Any deviance from this geo-fandom would be a betrayal of the natural order of things.

..
(greatest games in Orioles-Rays)
6. April 11, 2002: O’s win 15-6
The Orioles scored 12 runs in the sixth inning. The rally included back-to-back homers by Geronimo Gil and Mike Bordick, followed by a rare cameo by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Funniest thing ESPN has done in years.

N.Y. Daily News: Davey Johnson tells of Mets days, steroids and Olympic dreams

Clearing up some issues with Davey Johnson…

DN: Doc Gooden was a good pitcher after that 1985 season, but never the same pitcher.

DJ: Never the same. I blame it on the drugs, and I also blame it on the delivery change they had him make. I don’t even know where the orders came from, but they didn’t come from me or Mel Stottlemyre. They wanted him to shorten his delivery, lower that big high leg kick and not turn as much. Sure, he could be run on, but they could run on (Greg) Maddux, too; did they change his delivery? To this day I regret even going along with it.

...DN: You had Brady Anderson in Baltimore the year he went from hitting 16 home runs to 50. You didn’t have suspicions?

DJ: I don’t know what Brady was before, because I wasn’t there. I do know that I saw him working out, before and after games, and this guy was nuts. Brady would ride a bike to the ballpark from 10 miles away. I had no idea. I still don’t know. I mean, obviously everybody thinks he’s taking steroids, but I don’t know. If you told me Raffy Palmeiro was even working out, I would’ve said you are crazy. He had that Brooks Robinson body, kind of soft, a sweet stroke and a good talent. But I never would’ve guessed he was juicing.

When I was managing the Dodgers, we picked up Jim Leyritz and he was making this concoction in the clubhouse kitchen. I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m making a little something to pep the club up.” He had all these powders and cans and stuff. He gave me a shot of it. My heart started jumping out of my damn chest, and I didn’t have but a thimbleful. I was taking medicine for arrhythmia. I asked him what it was, he said mostly Red Bull with some other kickers in there.

Orioles manager lambasts fans who ran on field in Seattle

But I bet his spinnbarkeit is worse than his bite!

Baltimore manager Dave Trembley lambasted two fans who ran on the field during an Orioles game Thursday night at Seattle.

During the game, two spectators jumped onto the field and ran behind Orioles outfielder Jay Payton.

“It’s embarrassing to baseball,’’ Trembley said Friday night before a game against the White Sox. “I wasn’t happy because I’m a big proponent of respect. I think that’s the epitome of disrespect, when two idiots run onto the field like that.

“They came up from behind two of my players. ... I wish I could have taken them in the back room myself. I would have beaten the snot out of both of them.’’

Baltimore Sun: O’s fans pay homage to Wild Bill Hagy

Wild Bill...remembered.

I found some guys who certainly do believe, and they weren’t wearing those beards to hide their identities. (Hey, it’s not always easy being an Orioles fan.) They were paying tribute to an iconic figure: Wild Bill Hagy, he of the straw hat, the scruffy beard and the pony keg gut. From his seat in Section 34, he was the wand that stirred Orioles Magic each night on 33rd Street.

“He was part of our childhood,” said Charley Case, 39, who grew up a 15-minute walk from Memorial Stadium and now runs an inn in Aspen, Colo. Case and his buddies remember watching Wild Bill from afar during their grade-school years. Later they would sneak their way into Section 34, a rite of passage in Baltimore. In college, they dressed as Wild Bill at Halloween parties. And when Baltimore’s most famous fan died last August, the group of childhood chums passed around sad e-mails and shared old stories.

...In the van en route to the stadium, Case hypothesized that “if you have a dozen guys in fake beards, it’s a scientific fact that anything is possible,” and Clapp immediately readjusted the odds to 3-2 that someone might make it atop the dugout.

SF Gate: A’s philosophy looks at mileage, not years (Tejada)

Are the A’s still eying Milledg...oh.

In other words, Tejada’s age wasn’t a big deal to the A’s, except possibly when they signed him in 1993 as a teen out of the Dominican. He was much more signable at 17 than 19.

As to letting Tejada leave as a free agent, general manager Billy Beane said, “For us, losing players is not a function of age, but a function of the size of contract.”

The A’s front office had a good relationship with Tejada, and nobody in the organization liked how ESPN reporter Tom Farrey presented a copy of Tejada’s birth certificate to him on camera.

“I don’t know what it’s like to live in poverty in the Dominican,” Schott said. “If someone wants to play baseball so badly and it’s your ticket out, and it’s your one dream, you’ll do what a lot of these kids do. Either way, I always thought highly of Miggy.”

Globe & Mail: Jays drop battle for first place

It was a battle of the early-season titans, and, no, you don’t have to adjust your reading glasses.

It really did feature the Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles, not the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees as we’ve all been programmed to expect from recent seasons.
...
And by the time the frost settled — the game-time temperature was 14, with a stiff breeze blowing through Camden Yards — it was the Orioles who found themselves roosting all alone at the top of the standings, thanks to a 4-3 victory over the Blue Jays last night.

The spectacle of two teams jostling for first place did not exactly capture the imagination of Orioles fans, who for the most part chose to sit this one out, with only 11,510 on hand.
...
“They outpitched us, they outhit us and they outplayed us,” came the succinct summation from Jays manager John Gibbons. “But we hung tough. We made it scary.”

Oriole Post: Five Questions with Oriole Legend Brooks Robinson…

SSSSLLLUUURRPPP!...Sucking it up with “The Human Vacuum Cleaner.”

OP: The Mitchell Report has affected the sport in a way no one ever thought it would; thus, what are your opinions about it? Do you think players should be punished for their past transgressions, their records wiped from the books, or should the game just “move on”?

BR: The Mitchell Report proved to be one of the best documents. It brought everything to the front and exposed it. If there were 70 players mentioned you believe that there were 4 times 70 players actually using steroids. I think baseball is riding a wave of popularity right now. This issue is now in the past. I think we should move on and not punish the players.

OP: As a Hall of Famer, and fan of the game, who are the players today who impress you the most in terms of what they do on the field?

BR: Alex Rodriquez & Derek Jeter impress me the most.I have met Alex several times and and I don’t personally know Derek Jeter but I think they are 2 of the best players in the game today. There are a lot of great players but they are my favorites.

AP: Niemann wins major league debut, Upton homers in Rays’ 6-2 win over O’s

Jeff Niemann allowed one run over six innings in his major league debut and B.J. Upton hit a three-run homer during a six-run fifth, helping the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-2 on Sunday.

Niemann, taken fourth overall in the 2004 amateur draft, was recalled from Triple-A Durham to replace the injured Matt Garza in the rotation. The 6-foot-9 right-hander gave up six hits, one walk and had five strikeouts.

FOX Sports: Perry: Winning may turn out to be a bad thing for O’s

Book ‘em, Dayn-O’s

The only members of the pitching staff with any semi-serious upside are Adam Loewen, Dennis Sarfate, and Rule-5 pick Randor Bierd (we’ll hear no more arguments for the terminally disappointing Daniel Cabrera).

As for the lineup, Nick Markakis looks like a future star, and Adam Jones is brimming with promise. However, you’ve still got decline-phase vets like Kevin Millar, Melvin Mora, Aubrey Huff and Ramon Hernandez holding down too many jobs. As for Luke Scott, he boasts good raw-power skills and is off to a magma-hot start this season. But keep in mind that he’s already 29 years old.

Moreover, this is a team that lost 93 games last season and, at this moment in time, isn’t significantly better at the major-league level. With so many non-entities in the lineup and a rotation that figures to be among the league’s worst, the Orioles simply won’t be able to hang with the true power teams of the AL this season. So what’s happened thus far is an illusion.

Baltimore Sun: Angelos says he hopes Nationals succeed

Yea...Just as I hope the Kajagoogoo reunion is a smasharooroo!

Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who once fought to keep a team out of Washington, said yesterday that he hopes the Nationals are successful and doesn’t mind if Orioles fans occasionally slip away to catch a game at the new stadium.

“There’s no law against visiting the other franchise,” Angelos said in an interview with The Sun. “One’s a National League city and one’s an American League city.”

“Originally, I said [Washington and Baltimore] were very close to each other,” Angelos said. “But nonetheless, it is the nation’s capital, and the team is there, and it ought to be supported, and hopefully, both franchises will provide successful baseball.”

..."We definitely want them to succeed,” Angelos said of the Nats. “We’re partners in the MASN baseball network, and we have an excellent relationship with the Lerner family [which owns the Nationals] and with [team president] Stan Kasten, who is an old friend of mine.”

Dugout Journal: Oates left his imprint on both these teams

“I was Johnny Oates’ first roommate in the minor leagues.”

With those words from Orioles hitting coach Terry Crowley began a flood of emotions ... out of both dugouts at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

These were Johnny Oates’ teams.

Both of them.

Unknown Orioles off to a Fast Start

Gone are high-profile players Erik Bedard, Miguel Tejada and the underachieving Orioles that followed them. In their place is a cast of characters known only to hardcore baseball fans and their respective family members ... “We have a young team, including me, I’m not old, so we have energy,” catcher Ramon Hernandez said.

Brian Roberts, Aubrey Huff, Melvin Mora, Roberto Hernandez, Chad Bradford, Nick Markakis, Jay Payton, Daniel Cabrera, Steve Trachsel, Luke Scott, and Melvin Mora: you can’t tell all the young players apart without a program!

AP: AL-best Orioles make it 6 in a row with 8-1 victory to ruin Rangers’ home opener

“We’ve already had more fun than at anytime last year,” Huff said after Baltimore’s sixth straight victory, 8-1 on Tuesday to ruin the Texas Rangers’ home opener.

Huff matched a career high with four hits and drove in four runs after Scott Moore and Luke Scott hit early home runs in the first road game for the Orioles (6-1), who have the American League’s best record. The winning streak already equals their longest of last season.

“We had six (last year)? It didn’t feel like it,” said Huff, referring to the 93-loss season when they finished fourth in the AL East for the ninth time in 10 years. “We’re relaxed. Everybody’s written us off.”
...
Rangers owner Tom Hicks left his field-level seats in the top of the third inning, only minutes before the start of Liverpool’s game against Arsenal in the European Champions League. Hicks owns the Liverpool squad, and retreated to his bunker suite to watch that game, though it was still on the television he has at his field seat.

MLB.com: Orioles rally in eighth to win

Aubrey Huff belted a one-out, solo homer to right-center in the bottom of the eighth to give the Orioles a come-from-behind, 5-4 victory and complete a four-game sweep of the Mariners.

The matinee crowd of 10,774 was delighted with Huff’s 386-foot blast off of Eric O’Flaherty (0-1).
...
[Daniel Cabrera] gave up solo homers to Ichiro and Raul Ibanez in the first and let a run in during the fourth when Adrian Beltre scored as Cabrera forgot about him while arguing a call at first base.

Beltre was at third, and Cabrera was trying to complete a 3-6-1 double play, and started complaining to umpire Paul Nauert about his safe call, and Beltre alertly scooted home from third.
...
This was the Orioles fifth win in a row.

Baltimore Sun: 4-0 since disappearing act of ‘Orioles Magic’

If something seemed like it was missing at Camden Yards last week, you deserve points for your observational skills.

The campy “ Orioles Magic” song that hearkens to the days when there was a “thundering roar from [Section] 34” got scratched after Opening Day.

In the past four games, the Orioles have darted out of the dugout before the first pitch to “Click Click Boom,” a song by the rock band Saliva, which might or might not have been inspired by former Oriole Roberto Alomar.

The concept of never-say-die Orioles Magic seemingly expired years ago, and now the song has taken at least a temporary hiatus from pre-game at Camden Yards.

Uggh...Just pull something off ‘A Date With John Waters’ and be done with it.

Wieters starts with 2 homers— baltimoresun.com

Here’s some hopeful Orioles news. Don’t worry. There is no chance you’ll have to get used to this.

Injury forces Bedard out vs. Orioles

First Beckett, now Bedard. Are hip problems this year’s trendy injury?

“Bedard’s got a little inflammation in the hip,” Seattle manager John McLaren said Saturday night after a 6-4 loss to Baltimore. “(Head athletic trainer) Rick (Griffin) feels confident that with medication and treatment, he’ll be fine Tuesday.”

Baltimore Sun: Maese: Lack of Brooks Robinson statue here is monumental blunder

Yes...an Augie Donatello masterpiece would be a wonderful touch.

Why is Brooks Robinson being bronzed in York, where his career was born, but not in Baltimore, where his legacy was formed, carefully crafted, dipped in gold and deserving of preservation until the end of days?

The short answer you might find frustrating, and the long one, maddening. It’s the kind of travesty that only seems to happen in this city and with this franchise.

...It should come as no surprise that there has actually been a concerted effort to memorialize Robinson with a statue in Baltimore. There’s a small group of businessmen, philanthropists and baseball fans who raised all the funds, who had the sketch work done for a 16-foot statue, who even had a miniature model made. This was three years ago.

The plans were shared with the Maryland Stadium Authority, which oversees Camden Yards, and with the Orioles, who would have to approve such an addition. “The only thing we’re waiting on is Peter Angelos,” one of the group members told me. “All we have to do is get the green light, and we’re ready to go.”

Baltimore Sun: Huff solves boos, Rays

The booing of Orioles designated hitter Aubrey Huff was audible during his first two at-bats, even though it was done by the smallest crowd in Camden Yards’ 17-year history.

But as Huff rounded the bases after his two-run homer in the sixth inning put the Orioles back in the game, the jeers were suddenly drowned out by cheers.
...
Huff’s four RBIs and a four-run eighth inning sent the Orioles to a 9-6 comeback victory over the Tampa Bay Rays, secured when George Sherrill backed a scoreless night from the bullpen with his first save for his new club.
...
The Orioles just wish there had been more people there to watch. Only an announced 10,505 turned out, a significant decrease from the previous low of 13,194, which came on April 6, 2006, against Tampa Bay.

“We’re going to have to win back some hearts,” Huff said. “To be honest, it’s tough to get up to play in front of a crowd like that, but we have to win some games and give them a reason to come out.”

Baltimore Sun: MacPhail working on farm

His warehouse window
It is made out of bricks
I ain’t gonna work on MacFailies’s farm no more

Andy MacPhail isn’t promising any miraculous turnarounds in the Orioles’ minor league system this season, but the president of baseball operations is guaranteeing that the team’s future players “will get a lot of attention.”

MacPhail said: “I don’t think there’s anything more important to this franchise than to start to have a reliable supply of players come up through our system. We are going to do what we can to be as good at that as we can.”

MacPhail believes the Orioles are at a point where “it’s more than just talking. I believe the action that the organization has taken over the last eight months or so is indicative of that.”

Bugs & Cranks: Luke Scott wants to be your dog.

And so long as they don’t dive into the meaning of “TV Eye”…

When Orioles left fielder Luke Scott came to the plate in the fourth inning of yesterday’s Opening Day loss to Tampa, the Camden Yards PA system pounded out an unmistakable few bars of Iggy and the Stooges’ 1969 song “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

We’re still learning about Scott. He came to Baltimore as part of the trade that sent Miguel Tejada to Houston. He’s said to hit with some power, cranking out 18 homers last year. And during spring training, fans learned that Scott is the holder of a permit to carry a concealed firearm. Oh, and he’s a born again Christian.

The Stooges, of course, are Iggy Pop’s band of strung-out miscreants and misanthropes, the band that ushered out hippie music and, along with the MC5 and the Velvet Underground, paved the way for angry punk rock acts like the Ramones, the Clash and the Sex Pistols. And “I Wanna Be Your Dog” isn’t exactly a tune you’ll hear in church. I’ve never been able to figure out what exactly is so lewd about “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” but there’s something vaguely creepy about it. I love it, of course.

So, could Luke Scott also be a Stooges fan? Seems an odd match. I guess there’s always the possibility that he didn’t choose the music himself.

Baltimore Sun: Schmuck - Plenty of empty seats for a ‘sellout’

The Orioles announced a sellout for their regular-season opener today at Camden Yards, which probably evoked a measure of skepticism from anyone looking for companionship in the upper deck above left field.
...
Yet, the huge number of no-shows, albeit on a cold, gray afternoon with intermittent showers in the forecast and a less-than-enthralling opponent, raises a question the Orioles probably would rather not ponder: If thousands of people are going to buy tickets for Opening Day and not use them, how does that auger for the dog days of August, when there’s no orange carpet and the Yankees and Red Sox are playing elsewhere?
...
It could be I’m just nitpicking. It was not a very nice day and the 3:05 starting time always makes it tough for the lunch pail crowd, but it wasn’t hard to contrast this “sellout” with the regularly robust Opening Day attendance during the team’s better days.
...
“Actually, I thought it was a great showing,” [Kevin Millar] said. “I thought it was a great, great crowd, especially considering the cold weather. I don’t know what you were looking at.”
...
This is not meant as an indictment of the faithful fans who showed up. They displayed their passion from the outset, particularly when Aubrey Huff trotted down the carpet for the first time and got an earful for his offensive offseason radio comments. He also was booed before every at-bat.

“It was expected,” he said. “If I was in their situation, I would have booed me, too.”
...
No one in the clubhouse was surprised at the negative reaction from the fans. “I was booing him, too,” joked Millar.

AP: Orioles cut injury-riddled Gibbons, eat $11.9 million of his contract

Jay Gibbons was released Sunday by the Baltimore Orioles, who lost patience waiting for the oft-injured outfielder to regain the form that enabled him to hit 26 home runs in 2005… Baltimore owes him $11.9 million for the next two seasons as part of a $21.1 million, four-year contract he agreed to in January 2006.
...
“The decision was essentially down to two players, and we made a baseball decision,” said club president Andy MacPhail, who delivered the news to Gibbons.

“We laid it out pretty clearly,” MacPhail said. “For you to be a productive player you need to play, and that opportunity just doesn’t exist here absent some horrific injury. His words were, ‘I agree completely.”’

Gibbons also did not fit into MacPhail’s decision to rebuild the team with youth. “We just need to move forward… along the path we’ve decided we need to take,” MacPhail said. “I’m convinced that it’s the right thing for us to do.”

MacPhail, however, did not make the decision without first discussing it with owner Peter Angelos. “I gave him the ramifications and what my thinking was. I hadn’t really reached any conclusions myself; I was really wrestling with this one,” MacPhail said. “His advice was, ‘You gotta do what you gotta do.’”

Baltimore Sun: Kubatko: How Low Will The O’s Go?

I believe it was Billy Klaus Nomi that first operatically yodeled..."One ugly season may be etched into your mind forever...”

A scout from another organization predicted that the Orioles will lose 100 games but that they won’t be the worst team in franchise history. The major drawbacks include a rotation that’s missing a true No. 1 or 2 starter, a lineup that’s void of a prototypical cleanup hitter - leaving No. 3 hitter Nick Markakis vulnerable - offensively challenged shortstop candidates and a lack of overall depth.

“It could potentially get very ugly,” the scout said. “You don’t have a very good offensive club. You’re going to struggle to score runs. The defense is just OK. If [Adam] Loewen is healthy and [Daniel] Cabrera and [Jeremy] Guthrie do well, that’s not too bad of a rotation. The bullpen is improved. But if the pitching really struggles, that could be a very scary situation. They are basically starting from scratch here, and you still have a lot of dead wood on the roster. ...

“The thing that is going to destroy them is that division. ... You have to play the Yankees, Red Sox, Tampa Bay and Toronto. They just don’t have enough offense to compete with those teams.”

Mid-Level to Top-10 - Who Makes the Jump?

An analysis of under the radar, mid-level prospects that have a chance to move into their organization’s top-10 prospect list.

The list includes Bobby Parnell (Mets), Logan Morrison (Marlins), Zach Phillips (Rangers), Jose Martinez (Cardinals), David Hernandez (Orioles), Dustin Richardson (Red Sox), and Bobby Henson (Orioles).

Of these players, David Hernandez should be the most interesting to watch.  He was the Carolina League leader among pitchers with 65+ innings in K% and displayed above average command/control.  However, he was too hittable last year and we’ll have to see if a change in approach (throwing change-ups to right-handed batters, something he did not do last year) works for him.