Mike Flanagan

I got into a good exchange with @CamdenDepot today regarding the potential re-re-hiring of Mike Flanagan as pitching coach.  He contends that the "current pitching development system the O's run is still the model Flanny put in place."  Since Flanagan was previously the pitching coach in 1995 and 1998, I naturally wondered if that covered the entire time between now and then, or if this was a relatively recent plan put in place during Flanagan's tenure as an executive (which began in 2003).  Since pitching busts like Matt Riley, Mike Paradis, Richard Stahl, Beau Hale and Chris Smith all hail from the intermediate time, I think it's important to ask just when the development program took effect.  I think Crawdaddy is arguing that most of the plan went into effect in recent years (and not in the late 90s), but since this is difficult to discuss over Twitter and it seems like an important part of the organization's direction, I wanted to open up a thread for discussion.  If you've got anything to add, please do!

Bergesen Batting

Brad Bergesen came to bat yesterday in the top of the sixth inning yesterday having thrown 98 pitches.  There were two men on and two outs in the inning, and the Orioles held a 6-3 lead.  Inexplicably, Dave Trembley let Bergesen hit; Bergesen grounded out and the rally was snuffed out.  In the bottom of the inning, Bergesen gave up a single, a triple and a single and was pulled from the game.

What the hell was Trembley thinking?  Yes, I realize the bullpen was shortstaffed thanks to Koji's elbow soreness.  But this is why they carry two long men!  Berken was unavailable after Brian Matusz's short outing on Thursday, but Mark Hendrickson hadn't pitched since taking David Hernandez's turn on May 16.  It is simply inexcusable that Trembley would allow his struggling starter to bat in that situation in the 6th inning and then immediately turn to that very same long man just 3 batters later.

Which is why I'm flabbergasted that the O's MLB.com beat writer penned this: "Was it the right move? No. But it was his only move."  False.  Mark Hendrickson has a spot on this roster for this exact situation.  Pinch hitting for Bergesen and going to your long man is not only the right move, it is the only move.  What game was she watching?

On another note, if Koji had elbow soreness that originated during his outing in Texas, what the hell was the team doing adding another bench player instead of a pitcher when they called up Scott Moore on Friday?  I understand if you don't want Alberto Castillo in the 'pen, but does it really make sense to go shorthanded, especially after Matusz only lasted 2.1 IP on Thursday and Hernandez and Bergesen are the next two starting pitchers? 

This season has become an unmitigated disaster.  Between the Garrett Atkins signing, the fiasco of Mike Gonzalez's injury, Brian Roberts being pushed to come back quickly from his back injury, Matt Wieters never getting a day off, a plethora of ridiculous bullpen decisions, and the complete and utter failure of the young hitting to make progress, it's time for change.  Dave Trembley needs to go.  Now.  And that he isn't is another strike against Andy MacPhail.  I've been patient, realizing that rebuilding from within takes time.  The young pitching is oh-so-very-close to making a real impact.  But the rest of the club?  Wow.  They can't hit, they can't play defense, and the coaching staff doesn't seem equipped to help them improve.  What are you waiting for, Andy?  This is unacceptable.

Baseball Prospectus at the Ballpark

Baseball Prospectus will be hosting a Ballpark Event at Camden Yards on Monday, April 12. Tickets are just $25 (including your game ticket - this sounds like a fantastic deal), and the event will include none other than Andy MacPhail. I really wish I could go to the event and ask him questions about player valuation methodologies, lineup construction and the relationship between front office and field personnel, but alas, I will instead be studying International Economics around the corner. If you go, I'd love to have you write a guest post about the event.

Here are the details:

Monday, April 12, 5:15 PM at Camden Yards
BPro writers: Clay Davenport, John Perrotto, Will Carroll, Jay Jaffe, Steve Goldman, and more
Celebrity guests: O's President Andy MacPhail, Sirius/XM's Mike Ferrin
Tickets: $25, call Dan Stahl at 410-547-6239
______________________________

Nick Markakis Bunts

I hope this is just one of those crazy, half-baked Spring Training theories that will never see the light of day, but Dave Trembley is emphasizing bunting this year. His words:

It's the little things that obviously were prominent that might not have gotten done the way we wanted to get it done last year. So, let's brush up on it in Spring Training, but let's also emphasize the importance of it.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this statement. The Orioles absolutely should be emphasizing such little things as baserunning, pitcher defense, and thinking ahead on the field. These are areas where the Orioles have struggled in recent seasons and improvement would help the club more games. If Trembley, however, thinks having Nick Markakis work on bunting is going to help the Orioles win games, I think it's probably best for the sanity of all Orioles fans (and especially mine) if MacPhail makes a managerial change right now.

Wow, February 24 and I've already done my first "Fire Trembley" post. That can't be good.
_____________________________

Young Whippersnappers

Rob Neyer pointed me to this, a piece about a father and his son's obsession with sabermetrics, today, and I wanted to make sure that my own Dad, since he's maybe my only regular reader, saw it, too. I might not even tweet this post, but considering that Dad just got a BlackBerry (I received approximately 17 text messages with some form of "new Bbeery tring out txting" from him this weekend), so maybe I should.
__________________________

Organization Wide Philosophy

First off, Happy New Year to everyone. While the naughties failed to provide many Orioles highlights, I am confident that the teens will be much more fruitful for those of us that care about baseball in Baltimore. In case you missed it, I put together my All-Decade Team back in June. I know, I'm ahead of the curve.

In cleaning out my Google Reader today (it's amazing how far behind you get in just two weeks), I came across a very interesting Baseball Prospectus interview with Diamondbacks manager A.J. Hinch. Hinch, a former catcher at Stanford and with the A's, Royals, Tigers and Phillies, was a front-office employee in Arizona when he took over the manager's job midseason in 2009. Thanks to his background, he brings a very unique perspective to the bench, helping make the entire interview well worth the read. I wanted to highlight his closing comments:

One of the things I've learned over the course of being in the front office, and
now as the manager, is that all of the on-field experience, the data research,
the statistical analysis—they're all parts of this pie. They're all pieces of
the pie that can help lead an organization to being a winning organization. What
I want to be is someone who never turns away a piece of that pie if it's going
to help us get better and help us win more games. Hopefully, that's something
that can turn out to be a competitive advantage for us, that we accumulate as
much information as we can and implement it to help us win.

If I were the GM, I'd be looking for a manager that held those same beliefs.
_________________________________

Player Valuation

Joe Sheehan had a great column yesterday about all the goings on with the hot stove season thus far. In it he provides a really good assessment of what we've seen from teams in terms of player valuation:

I keep coming back to the trend line of the last few offseasons. The
industry is getting smarter, valuing things that matter—expected on-field
performance, applied skills, proper evaluation—over a knee-jerk preference for
experience. Teams are coming around to the idea, first expressed by Bill James
in the 1980s, that talent in baseball is not normally distributed, that for
every great player there are multiple above-average ones, and for every
above-average one many average ones. There’s no reason to pay extra money for
average performance, and the vast majority of players are at that level or
below. The majority of baseball players, even major leaguers, are fungible. If
you pay $4 million each for three players who will produce $2 million worth of
value, you’ve wasted six million that could be better spent on high-impact
players. The key mistake that continues to be made—and we’ve seen it with
Kendall and the Royals, Ivan Rodriguez and the Nationals, Brandon Lyon and the
Astros—is money wasted in dribs and drabs on players who are fungible by teams
that have no reason to chase wins.

This is an important concept when we're talking about moves for the Orioles. Yes, the Orioles could overpay a bit to lure Carlos Delgado or Nick Johnson for two or three years, but that ties up money that could be better spent on legitimate long-term solutions or contract extensions for players like Matt Wieters or Adam Jones. That's one reason I like the Millwood deal; it involves no commitment beyond 2010, and thus has no effect on whether the Orioles could pursue a top talent for the corners or the starting rotation. I know there are lots of non-believers out there, but the difference between the Orioles under MacPhail and the club under Flanagan is night and day.
_______________________________

Jayson Werth

I was watching the Phillies and Dodgers play last night, and a classmate pointed out that the Orioles drafted Jayson Werth in the first round way back in 1997; I did not know this. Inevitably, this sparked the "Who was he traded for?" question. Some quick Googling revealed the answer: John Bale, after the 2000 season. Yes, a 27-year left-handed relief pitcher who would throw a total of 26.2 innings for the Orioles. In hindsight, it would be nice to have Werth on the club now, and this has sparked the typical "The Orioles are idiots!" comments on various blogs. But were they? In short, yes.

Werth was drafted (as a catcher) out of high school with the 22nd pick of the 1997 draft. He signed quickly and reported to the Orioles Gulf Coast League affiliate. There, he batted .295/.432/.398 over 111 plate appearances. He walked just as much as he struck out (22 times; 19.8%), showing great plate discipline for an 18-year old a few weeks removed from his high school graduation. The next year, he played 120 games for Delmarva, notching a .265/.364/.387 line in 476 plate appearances. He struck out about the same (92 times; 19.3%) but walked a little less (50 times; 10.5%), though still at a very acceptable rate. The 1999 season saw the now 20-year old Werth promoted to Frederick, where he posted a .305/.403/.394 over 279 plate appearances, cutting back on the strikeouts and upping the walks (37 times each; 13.3%). He hadn't shown much power, hitting just 12 home runs in his career to this point, but his knowledge of the strike zone was obviously well-developed. The Orioles, perhaps a bit prematurely, promoted him to Bowie where Werth showed off the same skill set: .273/.364/.355 in 144 plate appearances with 17 walks (11.8%) and 26 strikeouts (18.1%).

After that 1999 season, Werth garned some acclaim as a top-prospect; he was named the #52 prospect in all of baseball by Baseball America. Plate discipline is a valuable skill, and the potential for Werth to be an offensive-minded catcher rightly made him a young player with lots of upside. Werth split the 2000 season between Bowie and Frederick (I can't find the dates he spent with each club), where he produced virtually identical numbers to his 1999 season: a combined .240/.358/.362 in 435 plate appearances with 64 walks (14.7%) and 65 strikeouts (14.9%). He was again named a top prospect by Baseball America (#48), but the Orioles were apparently unimpressed, perhaps in part because they knew Werth would not stick at catcher. Despite fielding a team that went 74-88 in 2000, the club chose to give up on its recent first round pick, deciding that what it really needed was a left-handed reliever who walked 3.65 batters per nine. Shockingly, this type of decision making led to a 63-98 record in 2001.

As if on cue, Werth's power began to develop in 2001. He hit 20 home runs in the Blue Jays minor league system, matching his career total, but he did need to move off catcher, shifting to play some first base in 2001 and the outfield by 2002. He spent the 2002 and 2003 seasons bouncing around the Toronto system, accumulating 104 Major League plate appearances before being traded to the Dodgers for reliever Jason Frasor. In Los Angeles, he showed significant potential as half of a valuable platoon (.290/.377/.690 vs LHP) in 2004, but he struggled in 2005 and then missed the 2006 season due to injury. After being granted free agency following the 2006 season, he caught on with Philadelphia and has been an excellent player for the past three seasons: .276/.376/.494, gaining more playing time with each successive season.

While the Orioles probably wouldn't have been the beneficiary of Werth's late-blossoming, their initial decision to trade him was still indefensible. Aside from the abhorent focus on batting average and not on-base abilities, teams that are rebuilding--as the Orioles were, or at least should have been, doing in 2000--should never value short-term roster construction over long-term potential. 21-year old prospects that have reached AA and exhibited impressive plate discipline are real prospects, even if they haven't yet developed the expected power; left-handed middle relievers are a dime a dozen. Fortunately, the Orioles have changed management and the new GM seems to understand this very concept. After all, he turned George Sherrill into Josh Bell.
_______________________

Fast Track to Success

As you're well aware, I've downed the Kool-Aid and am all aboard the Andy MacPhail train. This weekend, I found more evidence to my liking:

A year ago, when the Orioles began pondering a contract extension for second baseman Brian Roberts, they relied on number-crunching and statistical analysis of an advanced nature to help set fair expectations for his performance over the life of the deal.

That endeavor largely had to do with how offensive players of his type tend to age, a case study that used seven decades of baseball history as its backdrop and systematically eliminated some ill-suited matches.

Hey, that sounds fancy! And much like something I advocate myself.

In related news, Peter Schmuck reported in hiis Tuesday column that the Orioles are not going to rush their top pitching prospects. He compares the situation to the Ravens' handling of Joe Flacco, but the more apt comparison is the sad story of Hayden Penn.
__________________________________________

The Value of a Single Player

It's not related to the Orioles, but Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus broke down the CC Sabathia trade today. Joe's analysis is typically fantastic, but I especially liked how his column today applies the basics of how run differential affects wins and losses:

The Brewers have 73 games left beginning tonight. Throw in the All-Star break and what that could mean, and Sabathia is probably looking at 15 or 16 starts for the Brewers. Let’s say 15; that means the Brewers have traded for 105 innings in which Sabathia will allow 35 runs. That replaces 15 starts in which the Brewers could have expected about 85 innings and 50 runs. The 20 innings difference would probably be filled by back end pitchers allowing at least what McClung and Suppan did, so add another dozen runs, for 62.

By trading for Sabathia, the Brewers have probably saved themselves between 25 and 30 runs over the course of the rest of the season, making them between two and three wins better than they would have been without the deal. The marginal value of those wins could be astronomical, as there’s an excellent chance the Brewers will reach the postseason by that margin or less, and a postseason appearance pays off in direct and indirect revenues for years. No matter how it actually turns out for the team, this deal was the right move at the right time for Doug Melvin.

Even though the Brewers replaced a replacement level pitcher with an true number one starter, they are only two or three wins better over the course of a half season. That's an important thing to keep in mind as the Orioles approach the trade deadline.