The Orioles Warehouse

Hello, people. If you're looking for our old website, it's here. But we'll begin moving over to this new system, and hopefully we'll be able to keep it up.

Greetings, everyone. David has graciously given me permission to post here on a temp-to-hire kind of basis. Expect me to contribute O's news, links, and commentary to this blog. I should warn you, however, that my tastes tend toward statistics and analysis, so expect a heavy dose of both. I may also contribute some back-end work to other parts of this site, but that part of my role is yet to be determined.

I look forward to helping make the Warehouse the best source of Orioles-related information and analysis on the Net.

Warehouse readers, I apologize for my lack of output on this site in recent months. For a host of reasons, I haven't contributed much time and effort to writing about the Orioles since last season ended, although I haven't stopped following the team. I had hoped to ramp up my writing once the season began, but it just hasn't happened. But all that will soon change.

I won't go into all the reasons for my lack of production, but it certainly wasn't for a lack of topics to write about. The Birds' front-runner status in the first two months of the season has been a welcome surprise to all those who stuck by the O's during the last seven woeful losing years. Two major contributors to the team's surge out of the gates have been Brian Roberts, whose extraordinary start has thrust him into the national spotlight, and Erik Bedard, who has markedly improved his command to become one of baseball's top starting pitchers in the season's first two months. A rash of injuries has slowed the O's in recent weeks, however—after going 20-10 (.667) in their first thirty games, they've gone 14-12 (.538) since—and it appears that the AL East will be a dogfight from now until October as Baltimore tries to fend off Boston, New York, and Toronto.

Meanwhile, the MASN-Comcast tussle has been running in and out of the headlines all year. Because of its direct repercussions on the Orioles and Nationals and their fans, that legal battle is providing plenty of fuel for the burgeoning Baltimore-D.C. baseball rivalry despite the absence of head-to-head competition (the teams won't face each other in the regular season until next year).

That's just an overview of the obvious stories. There is plenty going on with the Birds these days, and plenty more angles from which to peer into that orange and black prism. I'm going to do my best to get myself out of offseason mode (i.e., infrequent writing) and return my pontification analysis to the increasing cacophony of Orioles talk on the Internet. That means long-form articles approximately once a week, and miscellaneous entries and comments on a continual basis.

Soon, expect a few of my thoughts on the upcoming amateur draft and the Orioles' psycho-athletic methods of player evaluation.

Commendations are in order for the Orioles' four 2005 All-Stars: Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts, Melvin Mora, and B.J. Ryan. Tejada and Roberts were voted to start for the American League at shortstop and second base, respectively, by the fans. Mora made the team as the third-base reserve and Ryan as the top relief pitcher in balloting by players, managers, and coaches.

And all four are deserving of the honor. According to the Baseball Prospectus's Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) metric, Tejada and Roberts have dominated their peers offensively this year: Tejada's 52.8 VORP are eleven runs more than the second-place AL shortstop, Texas's Michael Young, while Roberts stands alone above all other AL second basemen with his 51.6 VORP (the next closest, Texas's Alfonso Soriano, is at 24.3). Tejada and Roberts have handily topped their NL counterparts as well.

Mora, though not quite as proficient as he was last year when he was left off the team due to injury, has accumulated 23.9 VORP, which place him far behind the Yanks' Álex Rodríguez (49.0) and a few runs in front of the next batch of AL third basemen consisting of four players in the 19-21 VORP range. But because Mora spent about two weeks on the disabled list, his production per plate appearance well exceeds that of his closest competitors and thus solidifies his standing as the league's second-best third baseman at the break.

Ryan clearly is one of the top firemen in the league. Although his nineteen saves in 22 opportunities are just the seventh highest total in the AL, his 13.50 strikeouts per nine innings lead all relievers in the junior circuit (the Birds' Tim Byrdak has racked up 16.62 K/9, but he has only pitched in four games) and his 4.92 K/BB and 1.09 WHIP are also excellent. Ryan is at the top of his game right now, and among closers he is as feared as anyone in baseball.

I'm back... albeit in slightly modified form.

Circumstances forced me to take a break from blogging and the Orioles for a few months. And honestly, I don't think there were any really noteworthy transactions in Birdland since my last post in October; most people seem to agree that the acme of the Orioles' offseason came early on with the Leo Mazzone signing—which, I should reiterate, could turn out to be quite a significant acquisition.

I suppose I could have written about the Miggy-wants-out soap opera, but that was short-lived, overblown, and ultimately of little consequence, so I'm glad I didn't waste any words on it. The trade that brought Anna Benson and her husband Kris to Baltimore brought a lot of buzz, too, but most of it has been focused on the outspoken Mrs. Benson, who will not be starting any games for the Orioles last I checked. And there were other low-key signings and trades, but none of them exactly seized my attention. I will, however, sling together a few thoughts about the new faces during the next couple of weeks.

As some of you may have noticed, this site just upgraded its blog software, Movable Type, to version 3.31. We had been using 2.661. The new version has features that should improve your experience with the site and make things easier for us to manage as well. Thanks to the people at Six Apart for making the latest version of Movable Type free for personal bloggers.

We've also spiffed up the appearance of The Orioles Warehouse a little — and I stress a little. We have not demolished the old site and rebuilt it brick by brick. Consider it more like a new paint job.

Inevitably, a few problems have cropped up amidst the changes. For example, many internal links to old entries do not work. Also, if you subscribe to the RSS feed, note that the feed address has changed (it's now index.xml, not index.rdf). We're fixing these issues as we encounter them, so if you notice something awry, let us know.

As the Orioles prepare to open the 2011 season against the Rays tonight in Tampa, I've decided to resume blogging here after a few years of inactivity.

Yes, I'm still an Orioles fan after all these years. I still follow the outcome of every O's game, if not with the same obsessiveness that I did before, and I still hope (against my better judgment) that this will be the year they finally turn it around and return to contention.

I plan to get some commentary and analysis here on a more or less weekly basis.