Ok so heres going to be a little overlook at the 3 team's performance over the first week of the season.
Baltimore Orioles: Not hell of a lot to bitch about or praise here, the Orioles are sitting at a 2-4 record after this week oddly enough their biggest issue of this week is also their biggest strength in a way. That of course is their pitching. I say that because in 2 of the 4 games they lost they got blasted, and it was obviously because they had a far more inferior starting pitcher on the mound for who they were facing. However on all the other games they either won (2 of the remaining 4 games) or barely lost by 1 run meaning that their pithing in those situations was able to keep them in the game, basically they need to get more out of those 2 starters who fucked up this week (Gonzalez and Jimenez). On the offensive side they did what Baltimore usually does, get a fairly high number of hits but still manage to make the game a close one, honestly I'm interested to see what they do offensively when Machado comes back and they have their full offensive core in place.
St. Louis Cardinals: Well it's been interesting for the Cardinals, their even 3-3 after the first week, which may come as a surprise but for the most part the young pitchers they slotted into the rotation, and Wainwright have delivered and even the games they lost were close with the exception of one. Now the one game I speak of was the first against the Pirates and Shelby Miller just didn't have his stuff that day, he left a fair number of pitches over the heart of the plate that game, hence why he allowed 3 home runs. As well I think it's safe to say he had a bit of shaky control during the game as well as he walked 3 and only struck out 2, which is fairly unlike him as his control is fairly pin point and usually allows him to get high strikeouts and low walks. In addition to poor pitching that game was very terrible for the Cardinals on offence as well only scoring 2 runs despite having players in scoring position 8 times during the game, and none of them could be attributed to the 2 runs. Now while I can say this, it's only one game and the offence and pitching of the Cardinals has done well otherwise so theres no reason to distrust Miller quite yet, though a couple more outings like that could change my mine
Toronto Blue Jays: What a roller coaster first week, we start with R.A. Dickey getting pounded, then Drew Hutchison and Mark Buehrle have a flash of brilliance, followed by 2 more stumbles by Brandon Morrow and Dustin McGowan, then to finish the week we get the exact opposite, a magnificent outing from Dickey and a horrible one from Hutchison. Now first off I think McGowan will get better as it came to light that he was tipping his pitches during that outing. Tipping your pitches basically means that your in essence developing a tell that is letting the batter know what kind of pitch your going to throw (ie. letting them accidentally see the grip of the ball before it's thrown) so if he can correct that and get over the nervousness of being back after a little over a year he'll be good to go. On the other hand Morrow looks like he's still completely lost and he seems to need a lot of work since he allowed 4 runs to the Rays and just didn't look like his dominant self we saw a couple years back. Hutchison and Dickey are harder to read strictly because we've seen two completely different outings and theres no real evidence to suggest one outcome is more likely than the other. Buehrle on the other hand is the master of consistency so I expect him to throw well, not like the last game but on average 4 strikeouts 7 hits and a couple runs, which should very well give us a chance to win if the offence can get moving. Speaking of offence we had a similar duality as with the pitching, when the pitching was bad we got a lacklustre number of hits and runs but when the pitching was good we all of a sudden were on fire. Now like I said in the last post there still are a fair number of very big positives to take home in regard to the Jays offence so like Miller of the Cardinals it's time to play the waiting game and see if the Jays can right themselves in the next series.
-Eric
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