Back to the Beltway

Any idea who the two hottest teams in baseball are right now?  If you had to guess at the beginning of the season, I'm betting nobody would have said the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles, but its true.  Surprisingly, both teams are on five game winning streaks and both teams are on the right side of 60 wins.  At this time last year, both of these teams were under .500 and well out of the playoff race.  Last season, the Nats (currently 68-43, best record in the majors) didn't win their 60th game until August 20th, and the as for the O's, well it took them until September 15th to notch win number 60 (they won a total of 69 games).  It's finally happening people.  It took fifteen years, but it looks like baseball is back in a big way around the beltway, and its about time.

The Washington/Baltimore corridor has always had a rich baseball history and passionate fan bases.  The Nationals were one of baseball's original teams, founded in 1899, and were home to one of the greatest pitchers of all time-Walter Johnson.  Behind Johnson's arm, the Nats (or Senators) won their only World Series in 1924.  Unfortunately, their 61 year tenure in Washington ended in 1960 when the team was moved to Minnesota.  Fortunately for baseball  fans, a new team had moved into the area six years earlier.   The St, Louis Browns were relocated to Baltimore in 1954 and renamed the Orioles in honor of the Maryland state bird.  The move to Baltimore was beneficial for the team as the Orioles spent the next four decades as a model franchise, keeping a stranglehold on the AL East and winning three World Series (1966, 1970 and 1983).  In 1992, the Orioles built one of the finest ballparks in the Majors in Camden Yards.  Cal Ripken led the team and their new ballpark to consecutive playoff appearances in 1996 and 1997, with 1996 being particularly heartbreaking.  In Game One of the ALCS, a young Derek Jeter stepped up to the plate, bottom of the eighth, with the O's leading 4-3...and then this happens (scroll to # 5).  Known by many as the "Jeffery Maier incident" this event set the tone for the rest of the series, which the O's would lose and begin a fifteen year downward spiral for the club.

That was the last taste of baseball related success the Washington DC area would get for a long, long time.   Since 1997, the Orioles have not finished with a .500 record.  That's 15 years of losing!  Meanwhile,  the return of baseball to DC in 2005 with the relocation of the Montreal Expos (now your Washington Nationals) was an exciting time for the area.  Finally, after years of fighting, the DC area would get its own team once again, and the 2005 team was surprisingly...um surprising, going 81-81, a clean .500 record to close out the season. The only .500 season  either team would have since 1997.  Now, in 2012, both of these teams are at the top of their respective leagues and have the playoffs firmly in their cross hairs.  So what's happened over the last season that has reinvigorated these once-struggling clubs?

I think a lot of people saw this coming for the Nationals.  Building around prized third basemen Ryan Zimmerman, the Nats' front office had been aggressive the past two off-seasons, signing the likes of Jason Werth, Gio Gonzalez, Adam LaRoche and Edwin Jackson. In addition, the recent draft luck the team has had netted back-to-back first overall picks which they turned into phenoms Steven Strasburg and Bryce Harper.  Finally, the team has developed many young players through their system as well which as led to unexpected successes from the likes of Ian Desmond, Mike Morse, Danny Espinosa, Jordan Zimmermann and Tyler Clippard.


Yes, the Nats have gone through the rebuilding process the right way.  They made smart off-season moves and hit on some draft picks and now they are built to be a contender for the next five or six seasons.  They currently hold the best record in baseball at 68-43 and have been getting the job done on both sides of the ball.   Over the course of the season, the Nats have outscored their opponents by 85 runs while maintaining the lowest team ERA (3.26) in the National League.  It sounds pretty cut and dry to me:  If you have the best pitching in your league while scoring the second most runs in your league, then you are going to have a monster record.

The Orioles, on the other hand, have not been so straight forward with their success. I hate to admit it, but before the season started, fresh off their preseason loss to The State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota chapter (I believe the Yahoo! Sports headline read "Orioles Humiliated By Community College"), I predicted that the O's would finish with the worst record in the AL, yet again.  This was a team in a decade-long downward spiral, full of terrible off season moves and one busted draft pick after another.  On paper, this season doesn't really look all that different from the past.  When you look at their numbers, the Orioles are either mediocre or sub-par across the board.  In contrast to the Nats' +85 run differential, the Orioles differential is a dismal -47, meaning they have been outscored this season by 47 total runs.   Since the modern baseball era, only four teams with a negative run differential have ever made the playoffs.  Four!  The team is also very middle of the road in team ERA, (currently at 4.06, good for 9th in the AL) The fact that the Orioles are still in this thing is astonishing in itself.

So how have they been able to do it?  I don't know if there really is an explanation for it.  There's really only one place where the O's stand out from the rest of the pack, and that's winning the close games.  The Orioles have won a franchise record 12 straight extra innings games (12-2 on the season) and have amassed a 22-7 record in one-run games.  When their backs are against the wall, they seem to be able to make the right plays to win games. This "will-to-win" mentality was something this Orioles team had instilled in them by one of the game's best manager's, Buck Showalter.  When he agreed to take the job for the Orioles at the end of the 2010 season, I  blogged that it was the most important move the Orioles had made in the past decade, and so far, I've been right.

Showalter is a master of the game, an old-school manager who likes to play the percentages and puts an emphasis on small-ball principles. Where starting pitching has struggled, Showalter has compensated by grooming one of the finest bullpens in the AL.  A healthy stable of Troy Patton, Matt Lindstrom, Darren O'Day, Luis Ayala, Pedro Strop, and All-Star Closer Jim Johnson have been cause for a bevy of nightmarish match-ups for opposing teams.  With some many successful arms in the pen, its hard for teams to adjust and allows for the O's to stay alive late in games.   As a result, when the team is in a close game, they come up with a way to win.  You can call it luck some of the time, but I think the managing know-how of Showalter has shown how important a manager can be to a game.  Could he be the teams best player?  I think you could make an argument for it.

Yes, it looks like both the Orioles and the Nationals have finally turned a corner.  The O's may be a little behind the Nats' curve, but they have some very promising prospects in their system.  2010 1st round pick Manny Machado (3rd overall) will make his major league debut tonight as the O's take on Kansas City, with hopes of adding some speed to a team who is at the bottom of the league in stolen bases.  In addition, 2011 1st round pick Dylan Bundy (4th overall) has been lighting it up in the minors.  This kid has the potential to be a Strasburg lite with a fastball consistently breaking 100mph.  Along with other future stars, it looks like both the O's and the Nats have the tools to be contenders for seasons to come.  This season however, everyone is thinking one thing: Playoffs.  When it's all said and done and the 2012 season is in the books, Washington area fans can finally look back fondly on a season and hopefully look forward to a successful October.

#9

Its 2012!!

Its back folks!!  (I know, I know, I need to update the logo) Aside from the fact that its now 2012,  I think anyone who's been following the O's this season knows there's plenty of reason for optimism.  Can someone please enlighten me as to how at team, 109 games into the season, has a -55 run differential and has still managed to come out with a 58-51 record, only a 1/2 game out of a playoff spot?!  I mean, its just incredible and I owe most of it to some clutch hitting and the managerial prowess of Buck "the Showaltzin'" Showalter.

You know why the Orioles are still at the top of the AL despite the high run differential?  Its because their record in one-run games is an astonishing 21-7 (including 10 straight). Not to mention the Os are 11-2 in extra inning games this season and winners of 11 straight (after dropping two in a row to the Yankees in the first month of the season).

They decided against making a move for a big arm at the trade deadline, mainly because they didn't want to give up any of their top prospects, and so far it looks like its working out.  Over the past few weeks, the recent call-up of minor leaguer's Miguel Gonzalez and Chris Tillman have really paid off.  Add the Taiwanese rookie Wei-Yin Chen into the mix and all of a sudden, it looks like the O's may even have a post-season rotation in the works, especially with ace Jason Hammel slated to return to action over the next few weeks.  I know O's fans, we aren't used to being competitive this late in the season, but let's just ride it out and hope the Birds' can keep winning these close games.  I don't know about you guys, but hosting a playoff game at Camden Yards would be A-OK with me.   Keep it O-ptimistic, Os fans.

Beal Chops

So I was conferring the other day with friend and fellow Gator alum Ted "P. Norris" Gibson about my previous post, "Epic Beal Time" when he brought some rather interesting facts to my attention.  I thought that they needed to be shared with my readers.

Despite his selection atop the draft, Beal was met with much scrutiny by scouts, teams, and pundits of the NBA for lacking the maturity expected of a player considered among the best in the draft.  If you look at his numbers over the course of his freshman campaign, they really aren't anything special. In 37 games for the Gators, Beal averaged 14.8 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.2 assists.  Aside from a few big games (including the one mentioned in my previous post against Marquette), Beal would seem like a pretty mediocre player to the untrained eye.  But to all of those pundits claiming that Beal "only turned it on during the tournament," I wish to call one thing to your attention that was clearly ignored: Beal was playing out of position the entire season.

That's right.  Beal had gathered many accolades during his high school career at Chaminade, including National Player of the Year as a shooting guard, but after being recruited by Florida, a team that already had a proven shooting guard in Junior Kenny Boynton, Beal had to switch roles in order to get maximum playing time.  Boynton, also a top recruit a few years earlier, was an essential part of a Gator team that made it to the Elite Eight a year before Beal's arrival and there was no way he was going to relinquish his role.

A one time Florida football coach (who for the purposes of this blog shall remain unnamed) once said that in order to succeed, a team needs to get the ball into the hands of their play makers by any means necessary.  I think it's safe to say that Coach Billy Donovan did exactly that by moving Beal from an appropriately sized shooting guard to an undersized small forward.  Now, for those of you who have played basketball before, you know their are some significant differences between these two positions, and moving Brad closer to the rim surely took him out of his comfort zone.  Add this to the pressures of being a highly touted rookie, and you are bound to hit some bumps in the road, and his numbers reflected that.

It took Beal the bulk of the regular season to adjust to his new role, but by the end, he embraced it and was able to be a difference maker for a team with National Championship aspirations.  The fact that he ended up going through an experience like this shouldn't be looked at negatively, but instead should be considered yet another attribute to an already promising young player.  Being able to adapt to a new role where he lacked size and fundamentals and eventually learning to excell in that role shows that Beal possess versatility unique to NBA rookies.  This adjustment should also help him to better defend different types of players and will make the size adjustment from the NCAA to the NBA easier now that he will go back to playing shooting guard with the Wiz.  Based on this information, I would be surprised if Beal doesn't turn out to be a home-run pick for a Wizards team that's on the rise.