Ok so first bird watch of 2014 eh? Anyhow as the title states I'm going to give a quick run down of the opening games for Baltimore, St. Louis and Toronto and give them a letter grade.
Baltimore:
Pitching - Ok so looking at the score initially we can tell this was a prototypical Orioles game as the score was low and the margin they won by was only 1 run (they had the most of those wins last year in I believe the entire MLB). Anyhow you had Chris Tillman taking the hill against Jon Lester and in both cases each pitcher performed very well, Tillman isn't known as a strikeout pitcher so his 4 K's on the game is pretty typical of him and he managed to stay in control of his pitches and only allow 1 run and 1 walk, which is good in my book (especially if you watched the Blue Jays pitching). Additionally surprisingly Tillman only allowed 7 hits, I say that because he pitches to contact so you would expect the potential for more hits but since there isn't that means the Orioles defence was obviously on the ball today. As the Orioles usually do they had Tillman handle the first 5 innings of work then turned their bullpen on the Red Sox and again worked out fantastically, together all 4 pitchers only allowed 2 hits and 2 walks while striking out 2 as well. Now Tommy Hunter did get into a bit of bind in the 9th inning when he hit Will Middlebrooks and then one out later allowed Pedroia to single and get 2nd and 1st base full with David Ortiz coming up thankfully he was able to get out of it and get the next 2 outs. Overall the pitching in this game from the Orioles was solid, not perfect but definitely solid, the type of play that would ensure you get into the playoffs if you can repeat it at least every 2nd game.
Hitting - Ok on the hitting side theres not a whole lot to talk about, mainly because the game was so low scoring, however it is telling that about half of the batting order got on base at one time or another, and like I said in the last post about the Jays the Orioles had the hits dispersed throughout their lineup allowing to keep an offensive wave going. On the other hand however the people who didn't get on base did strikeout a fair bit like Chris Davis (and Matt Wieters to a lesser extent), now while Wieters is expected since you don't really associate catchers with high averages Chris Davis, one of the 2 big hitters for the Orioles, is expected to have an AVG in the high .200's so this start is not necessarily good for him. As well their team batting AVG with RISP (runners in scoring position - a runner at 2nd or 3rd base) was 0-1 so that tells me that despite having several hits and getting people on base not many times only once did someone get over the 2nd base. Now a surprise show was the home run from Nelson Cruz in the 7th that ended up being the game winning run. I'll be honest that I've been down on Nelson Cruz and it's mainly because 1.) his skill set is declining and 2.) the timing that showed he could finally stay healthy coincides with when he started taking PEDs leading me to believe health could be a risk for him again. However he surprised me by hitting a home run off of Jon Lester a tough opponent.
Grade: Pitching - A-, Hitting - B-, Overall - B+
An overall quality job pitching and about average performance from the offence, though I' m skewing this grade a bit considering that the Orioles have been geared for these types of games for the last couple seasons.
St. Louis:
Pitching - Ok so this was a pitchers duel if I've ever seen one, both guys went 7 innings and allowed only 3 hits a piece, unfortunately for Cueto one of those 3 hits was a home run that cost them the game. On the other side Wainwright issued 4 walks throughout the game, now I guess I could call that 3 since he intentionally walked Brayan Pena, however 2 of these walks were almost right next to each other in the 6th inning and could have cost him. To make up for it Wainwright was dominant the rest of the time striking out 9 over the 7 innings he did pitch, now I think that I can't really fault him that much for the walks when he puts up stats that basically show he more than doubled his walks in strikeouts, allowed less hits than walks and didn't allow a run. After the 7th they threw in the bullpen and just like in the Baltimore game the St. Louis bullpen cleaned shop with Trevor Rosenthal ending it with 2/3 strikeouts in the final inning, Pat Neshek did allow 1 walk in the 8th, however thanks to the Cardinals having a very smart manager they continued with their patented match ups on pitching and continued to dominate on pitching.
Hitting - The Cardinals had the same problem on offence that the Orioles had only to a bit more of an extreme, their team RISP was 0-4 again showing us that they managed to get guys on base but just couldn't get them home, and because of that they were lucky to get the home run from Yadier Molina or it would have just been a war of attrition. As well if you were to look at the box score of the game those times when players got on base it was narrowed down to just 3 players (Kolten Wong, Yadier Molina and Matt Adams) now thats not good, yes it's a positive that the guys in the lower to middle area of the batting order got hits because thats usually where the offence weakens in a typical batting order, however in this case the guys in 3 and 4 positions who are supposed to be the power hitters who drive base runners in didn't get a single hit, and even worse their lead off man, Matt Carpenter, was only able to get on base once. Now just as a side note I'll include defensive flops in here because the Orioles had 3 errors on the game by Boujos, Wong and Adams another unsightly issue during the game and again something they were lucky didn't cost them the game.
Grade: Pitching - A, Hitting - C+, Overall - B+
Now the Cardinals had a DOMINANT game on the mound however the offence was not what we expect from them on a regular basis and the defensive errors they made were pretty bad and they got lucky it didn't cost them a run or just like the Orioles game it could have moved into extra innings and given that the Cardinals had used double the relievers that the Reds used could have made it difficult.
Toronto:
Pitching - I'll be honest I was excited to see/listen to this game because despite the lack of movement from AA in the offseason Dickey had a decent spring and said in his last outing he was working on other pitches to throw into games to throw hitters off balance and McGowan and Hutchison looked great in spring training as well, there still was hope. Or so I thought, this game pretty much embodied everything that was bad about last season. Now the pitching, if you can call it that. Was just like what happened early last year, Dickey's pitching was wild as hell he allowed 5 hits, but topped that off with a 666 line, 6 runs, 6 earned runs and 6 walks, with only 4 strikeouts to write home about. Now the issue here is that this is EXACTLY what Dickey was like last year, I think most attributed his bad start to him rushing through spring training to open for the World Baseball Classic and the back injury he played through the first half of the season. However if this is whats going to be coming out every time he takes the mound I'm really worried. Now things smoothed out when Esmil Rogers got the ball as he cleared through the following 2 innings with a couple of hits, a walk and a pair of strikeouts fairly typical performance by him but then things were handed to Jeffress in the 8th (who honestly I don't think should be in the bullpen) and he proceeded to allow another 3 runs on 1 inning. Oh man that pitching was BAAAAD today.
Hitting - Ok so unfortunately just like how Dickey's pitching today was pretty reminiscent of his pitching last season the offence had the same problems as last year as well, first off we lost Reyes to injury in the first inning (god damn it, was after the first 10 games not soon enough?!?!?!!?), then the same usual hitting happened, the front of the batting order got on base but as soon as we moved down the order everyone ceased to be able to hit leaving the team with a RISP of 0-5, which again is pretty atrocious. Now I did see some glimmers of hope in this game, Izturis managed to get on base even against David Price, Navarro got on base as well (which was a nice surprise to see our crap acquisition from last year and this years acquisition were productive against a heavy handed pitcher). As well Rasmus and Lawrie were both MUCH more patient at the plate, hell I saw Lawrie take balls and force Price to throw 10 additional pitches to get him out, and like I've said even if you can't get on base the next best thing to do is tire the pitcher out by forcing him to throw as many pitches as possible, so good on Brett for making such progress from being a bit of a strikeout machine last year. Now while those were great Lawrie did strike out 2 of the 4 times at bat and because of that in conduction with Thole and Goins we had a section that acted again as the 'strikeout alley', where offensive rallies go to die. Basically the inability of Goins and Thole to actually make an offensive impact often ended up ending innings where we had multiple men on base, which is why we should have been looking for a 2nd base option during the offseason, I'm not knocking Goins' defensive prowess but he needs more time in the minors to develop his offence before he'll be an impact player. On the other side Thole came as expected, we notched him as Dickey's personal catcher and he came to us as an offensive mess so can't expect much but you would think that Kratz might get a little more of a nod since he's much better with the bat (hell he was responsible for 2 of their 3 runs). Now my argument when they sent him down was because his ability to catch Dickey wasn't as good as Thole, but on the other hand if we stretch out their spring training both to 51 innings Kratz would have allowed less stolen bases and caught more players stealing, in addition his range is better than Thole. It seems to me after that display today Kratz should get a shot over Thole.
Grade: Pitching - D, Hitting - C, Overall - D+
Like I said that pitching was some of the ugliest I've seen in recent memory (though it looked like the Rangers v. Phillies game was worse) the reason the pitching didn't get an F was because there was some good pitching by Esmil Rogers who held the Rays to their current score for 2 innings and struck out a pair on the way. Hitting wise I'm sure some would think that it should be lower but again people got on base, some strikeout heavy players last year had better use of their eyes in this game and overall it showed the team has at least progressed a bit and it's hard to doc their score that much do to the shitty performance of 2 players.
-Eric
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