Week in Review – June 28th to July 4th

If the Playoffs Started Today

League Leaders

Batting Average – Justin Morneau – .344
Runs – Kevin Youkilis (BOS) – 65
Home Runs –  Jose Bautista (TOR) – 21
Runs Batted In – Vladimir Guerrero (TEX) – 70
Stolen Bases – Juan Pierre (CHW) – 30

Wins – Ubaldo Jimenez (COL) – 14
Saves – Heath Bell (SD) – 23
ERA – Josh Johnson (FLA) – 1.82
Strikeouts – Jered Weaver (LAA) – 124
WHIP – Cliff Lee (SEA) – 0.95

Roster Movement

To the Disabled List: Dallas Braden, Shaun Marcum, Jason Varitek, Manny Delcarmen, Luke Scott, Chase Utley, Placido Polanco, Jason Heyward, Victor Martinez, Joel Zumaya, Shin-Soo Choo, Will Venable, Manny Ramirez,

Return from the Disabled List: J.J. Hardy, Tim Stauffer, Jair Jurrjens, Matt Diaz, Chad Billingsley, Bud Norris

To the Minors: Max Ramirez, Dontrelle Willis,

Called Up: Edwin Encarnacion, Marc Rzepczynski, Dustin Moseley, Josh Bell, Dexter Fowler, Michael Brantley,

Trades:

• The Rangers acquired C Bengie Molina from the Giants for P Chris Ray, minor league P Michael Main, and cash.
• The Red Sox acquired C Kevin Cash from the Astros for minor leaguer Angel Sanchez.

Top Stories and Weekly Links

• I think that the biggest surprise of the week has to be the firing of both manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Josh Byrnes in Arizona on Thursday. Ben Nicholson-Smith of MLBTradeRumors wrote up a pretty solid post with some gathered reactions around the Majors about this, and Mark Polishuk of MLBTradeRumors also had a pretty good write up of the history of both men with the Diamondbacks.
• July 2nd was the start of the international free agent signing period, and there was a surprisingly large amount of action out of the Athletics, who signed 3 players out of Venezuela according to MLBTradeRumors.
• The Phillies and the Red Sox both seem to be walking MASH units, as the Phillies lost All-Star 2B Chase Utley for 8 weeks with a thumb injury, and 3B Placido Polanco to the disabled list as well. Over in Boston, they can’t buy a break that doesn’t hurt them, as they lost both Victor Martinez and Jason Varitek to the disabled list this week.
• The All Star teams were announced on Sunday morning. I wrote up my predictions late on Saturday of who I thought would make the team, and the one thing that stands out to me more than any other is the snub of both Joey Votto and Jered Weaver. I will have more of my reactions up on Thursday.
• Stephen Strasburg made two starts, and it looks like the league may be starting to catch up a little bit, as he struggled in his start on Saturday. He’s going to be just fine long term, and I think these struggles are what the National were hoping he would have while in the minors.
• The Diamondbacks struggled really badly on Saturday, committing 6 errors with the “B” team of Tony Abreu and Rusty Ryal both playing out in the field. Even Vin Scully didn’t have a whole lot to say that was good about how they played, but was pretty happy the Dodgers won.

From the Twitter Followers

If you aren’t yet, you can follow me over at Twitter here. These are some of the better reads from the Twitter followers from last week.

• From 2131andBeyond: 2131 and Beyond follows his favorite team, the luckless Baltimore Orioles. His most recent post of June’s Tweets of the Day about the Orioles was a pretty good read, and had some other excellent posts recently as well.
• From CapitolAvenue: Peter Hjort runs a really good Atlanta Braves blog over at Capitol Avenue Club. He wrote up the previous snubs of Brian McCann from the All-Star game this week, and after reading it, I am a bit glad that McCann made it this season. The National League catchers aren’t particularly strong, and McCann is still the signal caller for the 1st place Braves.
• From HOVG: The Hall of Very Good does a lot of writeups about players in relation to the Hall of Fame. This week they looked at the career of non-All Star Billy Wagner of the Braves and previously at his case for the Hall of Fame.

Upcoming Posts This Week:

Tuesday and Wednesday: Midseason Prospect Review – I will be taking a look at the players that I reviewed back in January and February to see what they have been up to so far, and see which ones have progressed, and which ones are having some difficulties.

Thursday: My Review of the All-Star Rosters – I will look at the announced All-Star rosters, some snubs and undeserving players, and comparing them to the rosters I built as a part of my Month in Review on last Thursday.

Friday:  Trade Retrospective of Frank Viola to the Mets – The trade, completed midway through the 1989 season, had a pretty significant impact on the pennant races for that year, and I’ll take a look back at how each team ended up doing overall in the trade, and what return they got.

Original Draft Series: Team #30 – Baltimore Orioles

For those that missed the guidelines I am using for this series of posts, you can find them here.

Team #30: Baltimore Orioles

General Managers(since 1994)

Roland Hemond (1994-1995): 134-122
Pat Gillick (1996-1998): 265-221
Frank Wren (1999): 78-84
Syd Thrift (2000-2002): 204-281
Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan (2003-2005): 223-263
Mike Flanagan (2006-2007): 70-92
Andy MacPhail (2007-current): 201-284

Team Performance

Playoffs			Division Finish
WC	League	Playoff App	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
0	0	2	1	2	2	9	2

Well, the Major League team hasn’t shown a whole lot of success in the past 15 years, with only a pair of playoff appearances in 1996 and 1997 while under the tutelage of general manager Pat Gillick. When looking through the rosters, these were the best players that I could come up with at each of these positions. I realize that a few of them are barely in the Majors as it is now, but unfortunately I really didn’t find anyone that played these positions that I would consider to be better than the players listed. All information is drawn from Baseball Reference.

Position	Name	Acquired	Years with Org.	Stats with Organization	Left?
C	Matt Wieters	2007 – 1st Rd (5)	3	153 gm, 13 HR, 60 RBI, 49 R	Currently with Org.
1B	Nolan Reimold	2005 – 2nd Rd	5	133 gm, .265/.353/.442, 17 HR, 55 RBI, 8 SB, 56 R	Currently with Org.
2B	Brian Roberts	1999 – 1st Rd (50)	11	1139 gm, .283/.355/.420, 77 HR, 443 RBI, 258 SB, 730 R	Currently with Org.
3B	Mike Fontenot	2001 – 1st Rd (19)	4	No Major League Appearances for Organization	Traded to CHC – 2/2/05
SS	Jerry Hairston	1997 – 11th Rd	8	530 gm, .261/.334/.371, 26 HR, 160 RBI, 94 SB, 241 R	Traded to CHC – 2/2/05
LF	Jayson Werth	1997 – 1st Rd (22)	3	No Major League Appearances for Organization	Traded to TOR –  12/11/00
CF	Willie Harris	1999 – 24th Rd	3	9 gm, .125/.125/.167, 3 R	Traded to CHW – 1/29/02
RF	Nick Markakis	2003 – 1st Rd (7)	7	688 gm, .297/.366/.466, 80 HR, 383 RBI, 37 SB, 393 R	Currently with Org.
DH	Gregg Zaun	1989 – 17th Rd	7+1	146 gm, 8 HR, 40 RBI, 1 SB, 57 R	Traded to TB – 8/7/09
SP	Erik Bedard	1999 – 6th Rd	8	40-34, 3.83 ERA, 639 K, 254 BB, 658 IP, 1.339 WHIP	Traded to SEA – 2/8/08
SP	Brian Matusz	2008 – 1st Rd (4)	2	7-9, 4.38 ERA, 99 K, 41 BB, 119.2 IP, 1.479 WHIP	Currently with Org.
SP	Brad Bergesen	2004- 4th Rd	6	10-9,  4.36 ERA, 79 K, 50 BB, 177.3 IP, 1.415 WHIP	Currently with Org.
SP	John Maine	2002 – 6th Rd	3	2-4, 6.60 ERA, 25 K, 27 BB, 43.2 IP, 1.672 WHIP	Traded to NYM – 1/22/06
SP	David Hernandez	2005 – 16th Rd	5	6-15, 1 SV, 5.19 ERA, 101 K, 77 BB, 151 IP, 1.570 WHIP	Currently with Org.
RP	Jim Johnson	2001 – 5th Rd	9	7-12, 12 SV, 3.87 ERA, 97 K, 60 BB, 153.1 IP, 1.396 WHIP	Currently with Org.
RP	Koji Uehara	Int’l FA – 2009	2	2-4, 3.89 ERA, 54 K, 15 BB, 71.2 IP, 1.242 WHIP	Currently with Org.
RP	Arthur Rhodes	1988 – 2nd Rd	11	43-36, 9 SV, 4.86 ERA, 579 K, 316 BB, 622.1 IP, 1.432 WHIP	Free Agency – 11/1/99
RP	D.J. Carrasco	1997 – 26th Rd	1	No Major League Appearances for Organization	Released – 6/14/98
RP	Jason Berken	2006 – 6th Rd	4	6-13, 5.65 ERA, 86 K, 52 BB, 151.1 IP, 1.632 WHIP	Currently with Org.
CL	Chris Ray	2003 – 3rd Rd	6	10-17, 49 SV, 4.11 ERA, 177 K, 86 BB, 192.2 IP,  1.370 WHIP	Traded to TEX – 12/9/09
BN	Darnell McDonald (OF)	1997 – 1st Rd (26)	7	17 gm, .156/.206/.188, 1 RBI, 1 SB, 3 R	Free Agency – 10/15/04
BN	Jake Arrieta (SP)	2007 – 5th Rd	3	1-0, 4.50 ERA, 6 K, 4 BB, 6 IP, 1.333 WHIP	Currently with Org.
BN	Augie Ojeda (IF)	1996 – 13th Rd	3	No Major League Appearances for Organization	Traded to CHC – 12/13/99
BN	Adam Loewen (OF/P)	2002 – 1st Rd (4)	6	8-8, 5.38 ERA, 134 K, 106 BB, 164 IP, 1.640 WHIP	Free Agency – 10/20/08
BN	Garrett Olson (P)	2005 – 1st Rd (48)	3	10-13, 6.87 ERA, 111 K, 90 BB, 165 IP, 1.818 WHIP	Traded to CHC – 1/18/09

Clearly, I had to stretch quite a bit to get some of these starting positions filled. Nolan Reimold has never played at 1B in the Major Leagues, but has been working at 1B in the minor leagues this season. The next best player to fill that position would have been Gregg Zaun, who has played 2 games totaling 8 innings at 1B in his major league career, none of which were with the Orioles. Overall, this team looks pretty sad overall. You’ve got solid players at 2B, LF, and RF, and a single starting pitcher. After that, you have good young players who are too new to have shown exactly what they can do yet at C, 1B, and 2 of their starting pitchers. There are some good role players, but unfortunately the build for this team kind of looks similar to the real-life organization at this point: Very raw, and not particularly good.

Looking at their drafting results, they have had 29 first round picks in the last 15 drafts (not including 2010). Ignoring the 2009 draftee, they have had only 11 of these picks even play a single game in the Major Leagues. Even giving the benefit of the doubt for the 4 players who were first round picks but have not made it to the Majors yet, that still brings the Orioles to 14 misses in 15 seasons. Generally, the first round is the one round where an organization will have the best chance of finding a MLB quality talent, and with the poor performance of the Orioles throughout the years, they’ve had 8 picks in the top 10 in the last 9 years. As evidenced by the revolving door that has been the general manager’s office, that’s not getting it done.

Something else that has really illustrated itself as I go through the players is the lack of players from international markets, the ones outside of the draft. While it remains to be seen if there are specific reasons that the Orioles are not concentrating any effort to Latin America and Asia, the fact that they aren’t is clearly hurting their development as an organization.

Overall Grade: I think I have to give them a D-, due to the fact that I was barely able to fill the whole roster with players, and the fact that they’ve missed on so many first round picks. This team would have a hard time competing against nearly every major league team on a day-to-day basis. Throw in the fact that this 25 man roster is essentially 14 or possibly even 15 pitchers really doesn’t bode well for them. Hopefully the Orioles will start to see some of the fruit of the system shortly, as they really need it.