Blogging's been pretty light recently because, well, "pitchers and catchers soon to report" hasn't brought with it the usual sense of excitement. The Orioles will obviously not be very good this year - not new - but things also seem relatively boring. Despite people sometimes saying to the contrary, I've tended to be an optimist about the O's in recent years ("maybe they'll get to .500!", "maybe the pitching won't be awful!", etc.) - I don't think it's been really likely, like some, but I've at least held out hope that those were real possibilities. That just isn't coming in 2012.

Another year of Nick Markakis not bouncing back in 2011 means that hope of it ever happening is pretty much gone. Matt Wieters and JJ Hardy had nice seasons in the power department, but expecting improvement from either seems somewhat doubtful* (and regression from the latter is fairly likely). Whereas last Spring there was some hope that Brian Matusz could turn into an above average starting pitcher, now I'm left hoping that he can just be a major leaguer again. It'll be interesting to see how Wei-Yin Chen and Jason Hammel do, I guess, and if Zach Britton can build on his rookie season - but the stakes for the former pair are relatively low, and it's unfair to expect Britton to become the ace of this stuff already (though it may happen, perhaps more by default than anything else).

* Projections for 2012 coming soon - guess off the top of my head says 70 wins.

Beyond the issues at the major league level, the farm system seems pretty shallow after the first few names (looks like I underrated Machado at the time of his draft, and Bundy might be up quicker than I expected). I'm not as down on Dan Duquette as some, since the really important things he can be doing now involve rebuilding the organization as opposed to signing Prince Fielder to a stupid contract to make them a slightly better 5th place team in 2012. Things still don't look too promising in the short term though - something ESPN's power rankings of teams' prospects over the next five years indicated (note; Insider required).

Jim Bowden, Keith Law and Buster Olney got together to rank all 30 teams based on five categories; major league talent, minor league talent, finances, management, and mobility (sort of the liquidity of their player assets, I guess). The Orioles, not terribly surprisingly, came in 30th (just behind the Astros, who I certainly would have said are in worse shape before their recent front-office turnover - now it's a toss-up).

The main culprit, also not terribly surprisingly, is management. I've defended Peter Angelos against people criticizing him for not wanting to "open up the purse strings", since adding a huge contract or two to a last place team isn't going to do a lot in the AL East, but his impact on baseball operations seems to have been bad enough that the Orioles had trouble even finding someone who wanted to be the GM. The unfortunate part is that even if you give the O's a competent management score (say, 15), that still only launches them up just passed the Brewers into 21st place. The team is behind the eight-ball in too many places to be competitive in the near term without huge amounts of luck.

Here's how they'd rank in the five categories, just in the AL East in my opinion - the ranking for 1-20 aren't out yet):

Major League Talent: 5th. Probably not too too close to the Jays.

Minor League Talent: 5th. Maybe within striking distance of 4th (or even 3rd!) but the O's need Machado and Bundy to hit (and their history of developing prospects in general isn't exactly encouraging).

Finances: 4th, ahead of the Rays. Depending on how Toronto would support a contending Jays team, maybe the O's get up there with them. Clearly behind Evil Empires I & II though.

Management: 5th. I'd go 6th or 7th if I could think of some snarky stuff to put in front of them. The gulf between 5th and 4th (Yankees maybe?), seems pretty massive.

Mobility: 4th, ahead of the Yankees. Could argue maybe ahead of the Red Sox.

That is not a particularly cheerful next five years. But! These things can change. If Dan Duquette gets free(ish) range, and turns out to be a more forward-thinking GM than his long time spent away from the game would indicate, then it's not unreasonable to think a true-talent (ie, not fluky) winning Orioles team could be coming down the bend. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but perhaps some time before Matt Wieters Jr. is the team's starting catcher. For now we more or less have to be content with whatever little victories we can find (maybe Matt Antonelli will post a .330 OBP!).

I thought the Orioles should have been trying to trade Jeremy Guthrie (during the deadline last year, if possible), given his age and proximity to free agency, but I never thought the team would do it given that Guthrie - though not exactly an Ace by any stretch of the imagination - is the only pitcher on the club they could count on to be productive (ie, he's their ace). But I guess Dan Duquette felt comfortable enough with the thirty or so #4/5 starters on the depth chart to move Guthrie, who'll be going to Colorado in return for pitchers Jason Hammel and Matt Lindstrom. This seems like not at all the type of return the Orioles should have been looking for (though that's not the same thing as saying they didn't get enough back).

Honestly, Guthrie isn't worth a King's ransom on the trade market. He's going into his last year of arbitration, and was going to be paid $8-10 M*, which cuts into his value. As a good but not great pitcher - he's been between 2.1 and 2.6 fWAR in four of the past five seasons - his production is worth something in the neighborhood of $12.5 M for the season (sure there's aging and injury risk to consider, but Guthrie also posted his best strike-out rate since 2008 last year (still only 5.6 K/9) and has shown a relatively consistent ability to beat his peripherals - I'm not uncomfortable calling him a 2.5 win pitcher for the purposes of this exercise). It is interesting that the Rockies have added yet another flyball pitcher to their staff - we'll see how that works out.

* It's possible that the arbitration issue - the Orioles filed at $7.25 M and Guthrie at $10.25 M, and it looked like there might not be any sort of agreement - may have played into the move. Guthrie actually settled with the Rockies for $8.25 M already.

Jason Hammel is a 29 year-old right-handed (mostly) starter, who will be a free agent after the 2013 season. He was very good for the Rockies in 2009 and 2010, striking out around 7 batters per nine and walking just over 2, but things fell off last year (5 K/9, 3.6 BB/9). He's been able to get some groundballs though, which is nice (45% career). Hammel has actually been sort of an anti-Guthrie, with a career BABIP allowed of .314 and a 4.99 ERA but a 4.38 FIP and 4.27 xFIP. By comparison, the starter the O's traded away is at 4.19/4.68/4.61. It's entirely possible that Hammel and Guthrie are similarly good pitcher, with the ERA favoring Guthrie while the "advanced" stats favor Hammel (tERA says Guthrie 4.82, Hammel: 5.09 while SIERA says Guthrie: 4.60, Hammel: 4.37, for what it's worth). If the Hammel of old shows up in 2012, there's a good chance the Orioles will have actually upgraded their rotation.

Hammel is a four-pitch pitcher, who leans heavily on his ~93 mph fastball and compliments it with a slider, curve, and a change.  The heater looks like it gets a bit of extra sink, which makes sense with the groundballs. The breaking-balls also seem to have pretty good movement, though they're not big-time strike-out pitches. The whiff rates on his offerings:

Year	Fastball	Slider	Curve	Change	Overall
2009	12.70%	23.40%	46.80%	31.90%	21.50%
2010	11.70%	27.30%	29.70%	18.60%	17.50%
2011	10.40%	27.60%	26.20%	26.10%	16.80%

Given those numbers, it might be fair to say that Hammel should have struck out more than 5 batters per nine last year, but also should have struck out fewer than 7 per nine the year before. I guess we'll see next season.

After two years at 3.9 fWAR followed by one at 1 fWAR, calling Hammel a two win or so pitcher doesn't seem too unreasonable. He's set to make $4.75 M in 2012, and with decline, salary inflation, arbitration rates, and all that factored in, should give the O's around $6-7 M in surplus value over the next two years.

Matt Lindstrom is a soon to be 32 year-old right-handed reliever. For a dude who throws 96-97 mph (that's average fastball velocity), he doesn't generate a lot of strike-outs (just 7.2 K/9). He does get some groundballs though (47% career) and isn't too too wild (3.4 BB/9). While he'll miss some bats with his four-seamer and his curve (but not an ungodly amount), his sinker tends to meet the bat and that's partially why his punch-out numbers aren't so impressive. Career 3.81 ERA, 3.48 FIP, 4.03 xFIP (solid if unspectacular numbers).

Lindstrom is already under contract, making $3.6 M in 2012 with a $4 M option for 2013. That seems pretty fair for a guy who's averaged about 0.7 fWAR for his career, so there's probably not much surplus value (if any) to be had here. It does mean that Kevin Gregg has another pitcher to beat to get back to the 9th inning though, which I imagine will make some fans happy.

So the trade looks like a mild win for the Orioles on paper - they pick up a year of team control on a (maybe) relatively equivalent starter (with some upside?) and add an interesting arm to their pen. Much like with the Koji Uehara trade though, I don't understand the point. Maybe it makes the team better in the short run by a couple wins if things work out well, but it leaves things in the same shape they were post 2013, which is where the organization should be looking anyway. They can finish in 5th place with Guthrie, with Hammel/Lindstrom, or with neither. Trading Jeremy Guthrie was a good idea, but I don't particularly like the execution - a potential opportunity to add depth to a shallow farm system was wasted*.

* So, it seems like Dan Duquette may have tried to do this and was unable:

""We didn't have any offers of young prospects for Jeremy,"  Duquette told reporters".

If that's the case, then I guess I'm more OK with the deal - as I said, it's not a bad return, with at least some upside. Could the O's have gotten actual prospects last year though? Who knows (and that obviously isn't on Duquette). Maybe they could have gotten something at the deadline this year, I guess, but it's not unreasonable not to want to take that chance (and end up with nothing). Non-zero chance that Hammel and/or Lindstrom has a solid year and can be traded for something.

Couple of minor moves, as the Orioles added some minor league depth by signing reliever Pat Neshek and catcher Ronny Paulino.

Neshek, now 31 years old, broke into the majors with the Twins back in 2006, posting two fine seasons as a middle reliever before getting hurt and missing most of 2008 and all of 2009. He came back somewhat less effective, showing worsening control (in 2011 with the Padres, his walk rate - 8 BB/9 - was actually higher than his strike-out rate of 7.3 K/9).  Despite being a side-armer, Neshek has been a flyball pitcher throughout his career. The home runs were less of a big deal when he was whiffing tons of batters (10 K/9 career), but as that's gone down and the free baserunners have gone up it's become more of a concern. Given that Neshek is now throwing 85-86 instead of 89-90, I wouldn't expect him to return to his old ~3.50 ERA self (which would be even lower today anyway by virtue of the decrease in scoring). Small sample size last year, sure, but he didn't even manage to handle righties better than lefties (whereas he used to give them fits, as would be expected from a right-handed pitcher with his delivery). But hey, I've been a fan of Neshek's in the past and I hope he can find something with the O's.

Paulino, turning 31 early in the season, makes a fine third-string catcher. He doesn't seem to do anything really well, but won't hurt you behind the dish (+2 runs career on stolen bases according to DRS) or beside it (for a catcher) with his .273/.326/.379 career line. Not much power there (.106 ISO), but at least he doesn't strike out a ton (16% of the time) and will take an occasional walk (7% of the time). Half a win (fWAR) per 40 games played, career, is none too shabby on a minor league deal. If Matt Wieters goes down the Orioles are obviously going to be hurting, but if Taylor Teagarden goes on the DL (or just sucks), then at least the team will have a fall-back option other than playing Wieters 13 out of every 14 games.

The Orioles have agreed to a two-year* contract with switch-hitter Wilson Betemit. The 30 year-old is expected to get some playing-time at third-base and DH. Betemit is a career .269/.336/.448 hitter, usually as a part-time player. That's pretty good for someone who can play third-base competently (he can't; -14 runs per 150 games there career according to UZR) but not that impressive for a DH. He'll take a walk and has some pop (though he's only at 16 home runs per 500 plate appearances career, and he does swing and miss quite a bit), which is nice, and he really mashes against righties (.350 career wOBA, compared to just .299 versus lefties).

* This post was originally written when it was reported as a one-year deal. The actual contract - two years plus an option - seems kind of crazy. Why is a 5th place team investing multiple years in a guy who's averaged just about 0.5 fWAR per 100 games in his career? The money hasn't been released yet, but if it's for anything more than a couple million dollars a year then I don't understand why the O's needed to do this.

Update: looks like it's for just $3 M total for the first two years, though the option is a vesting one and with the incentives it could go up to $6 over three years. That doesn't seem so bad, but it's still unclear why they had to give Betemit 2+ years.

It'll be interesting to see how playing-time is doled out - and where - given that Betemit, Chris Davis and Mark Reynolds all have similar all-hit, no-glove profiles. Maybe there will just be a merry-go-round from first to third to DH so that fans can't get to disgruntled with any one guy's defense before they forget about it? Matt Antonelli and Ryan Flarety (the team's Rule 5 pick) probably lose out, with the latter fairly unlikely to stick in Baltimore now.

The signing seems like OK value, but giving at bats to an older guy without too much upside doesn't seem like what should be Plan A for the Orioles in 2012. Maybe if Betemit plays well, the O's can get something for him at the trade deadline, I guess.

Jake Arrieta started out the year doing pretty well, despite having a high ERA. He was throwing more strikes and missing more bats, which is always nice to see. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to stay healthy all year, as an elbow injury led to surgery and Arrieta missed the last two months of the season. It's possible that the bone spur in his throwing elbow had negative effects on his performance for parts of the season, but - assuming he starts 2012 healthy - there were some good signs.  

Overall, Arrieta greatly improved his strike-out rate, from 4.7 K/9 to 7.0 K/9. It never made sense for him to have so few K's given his stuff, and more around league average seems like the "correct" range to expect going forward. Here are his whiff rates by pitch type: 

	Fastball	Sinker	Slider	Curve	Change-Up
2010	10.2%	11.3%	22.9%	18.7%	19.8%
2011	12.2%	12.4%	26.4%	29.3%	18.5%

Everything went up except for the change (which is the pitch he threw least often, and even less in '11 than in '10). By getting ahead in the count more often - he went from going to two strikes on a batter 43% of the time to over 48% of the time - Arrieta was able to get batters to expand the zone more. That can help allow the breaking-balls - which it looks like he may have become a little more consistent with - to be more effective.  

Part of the improvements were due to platoon splits. Righties started to get more sliders, which they swung and missed more often (same thing to lefties, but they didn't see the pitch nearly as often), at the expense of fastballs. Lefties actually saw more heaters (with some closer to "cutters", having little horizontal movement), and their whiff rate on the pitch jumped from 8% to over 12% - matching the rate for righties (which stayed about the same - thus the overall increase from 10% to 12%).  

The platoon splits on the curve were especailly interesting, as righties went from missing the pitch 28% of the time to 20% of the time, but for lefites the rate increased from 14% to over 33%. For sinkers the movement was in a similar direction, but to a much lesser degree. No wonder Arrieta went from having a very slight platoon split for strike-out rate to a somewhat large reverse split:  

	2010		2011
	Righties	Lefties	Righties	Lefties
K/9	4.8	4.5	6.2	7.8
BB/9	3.7	4.9	2.7	6.0
xFIP	4.76	5.52	4.13	4.88

It's like Arrieta was two different pitchers; to righties he was Aaron Harang, and to lefties he was Fransisco Liriano. To left-handed batters he really worked away from them, which resulted in missing off the plate quite a bit (and hence the walks, as they declined to swing fairly often). If you combine the strike-out rate versus lefties with the walk rate versus righties, you've got a pretty solid pitcher (FIP ~ 4).  

Beyond wakling 15% of the left-handed batters he faced, Arrieta also got taken deep with regularity. His HR/9 allowed was 1.9 against them, and a stilll bad (though better) 1.3 against righties. Some of that is surely flukey, given he improved his groundball rate from 42% to almost 46% (with much of the increase actually coming against lefties) - I wouldn't expect a 15% HR/FB rate again. Despite the ERA and FIP both going up (4.66/4.67 to 5.05/5.35), Arreita dropped his xFIP by over a half-run (5.17 to 4.52). There are some reasons for optimism going forward, even if he's unlikely to be much more than a #3 starter at the high end (that's like a #1 on this team!).

The Orioles have added some depth to their rotation by bringing back left-handed pitcher Bruce Chen! Wait, no... that's left-handed pitcher Wei-Yin Chen, coming over from Japan (though he is Taiwanese - woops) as Dan Duquette continues investing in the international market.

Chen's only 26 years old will get three years and $12 M, which seems like a fine deal. His career numbers in the NPB include a 7.1 K/9 (though it was down to 5.1 last year, which is mildly concerning), a 2.2 BB/9, and an 0.7 HR/9. Chen is supposed to be a harder thrower than Tsuyoshi Wada, coming in in the low 90s with his fastball (complemented with a slider - potentially plus, according to Keith Law). Using the same kinds of translations as with Wada:

Here are Chen's last three years: 

Year	IP	HR	BB	K	"FIP"
2009	164	10	40	146	2.94
2010	188	21	49	153	3.81
2011	164.2	9	31	94	3.33

Adjusting the last year for the new NPB ball:

Year	IP	HR	BB	K	"FIP"
2009	164	10	40	146	2.94
2010	188	21	49	153	3.81
2011	164.2	14	34	86	3.90

Translating to MLB: 

Year	IP	HR	BB	K	"FIP"
2009	164	17	45	132	3.74
2010	188	35	55	138	5.04
2011	164.2	24	38	77	4.83

Using a 3-2-1 weighting for more recent years: 

Year	IP	HR	BB	K	"FIP"
2012	172.1	26	45	107	4.73

And then regressing 50% to the mean for the rates: 

Year	IP	HR	BB	K	"FIP"
2012	172.1	23	50	118	4.42

A 4.50 FIP in even 120 IP for the first year, with some decline in years two and three, still would leave the contract "fair" the O's. $4 M isn't a crazy amount to play for a quality reliever (thought three years might be excessive), which seems like a reasonable expectation - and given that Chen is left-handed, I imagine that unless he crashes and burns some team would be interested in maybe trading for him.

It's a nice low-risk, medium reward move, and a much preferred alternative to giving multiple years to, say, Joe Saunders (who is probably a surer bet for a 4.50 FIP but doesn't have the potential up-side). The O's starting rotation now has some serious depth of average ot below arms; Guthrie, Britton, Arrieta, Chen, Wada, Tillman, Matusz, Simon, Eveland, Bergesen. The O's should have their starters go 3-4 innings and then bringing in another "starter" for 3-4 more each game! Thinking outside the box! Add in Berken and Jim Johnson to close things out - hey, it could work (I'd pay $5 to see them try this for two weeks, maybe after they're clearing out of contention just to keep people from freaking out as much).

The Orioles have essentially completed a three-team deal in which they traded cash to the Oakland A's in return for outfielder Jai Miller and then picked up cash from the Texas Rangers while sending them Brandon Snyder.

Taking the latter deal first, trading prospects for cash doesn't seem like something the O's should be doing, but I've never thought all that much of Snyder. The 25 year-old's chances of being a good Major Leaguer took a huge hit when he had to give up catching, as his bat didn't seem likely to play at first-base. In three seasons at Triple-A, Snyder hit just .256/.317/.394. He didn't walk much (7% of the time) or hit for power (only 13 home runs per 150 games), while striking out to much (22% of the time) to hit for a high average even with good BABIPs (~.317). I've heard that Snyder has turned himself into a fine defensive first-baseman at this point, but he'd need to be Keith Hernandez over there to sniff replacement level unless hi improved offensively. It would have been nice to turn Snyder into another (possibly higher ceiling but lower level) prospect, but I can imagine no team being willing to part with one. It is interesting that Dan Duquette once again showed a willingness to trade away a mediocre prospect for nothing worth much long-term in return.

Jai Miller will take Snyder's 40-man roster spot. The (in two weeks) 27 year-old similarly has very little major league playing team, but has hit .271/.351/.516 in four Triple-A seasons. He swings and misses more than Snyder (a 31% strike-out rate in the minors is pretty awful), but at least he's hit for power (30 homers per 150 games, though much of that comes from 2011 in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League) and taken some walks (10% of the time). 47 stolen bases isn't a lot over 423 games, but at least his success rate is about 80%. Miller's minor league Total Zone numbers are in positive territory (both in the corners and in center), but that data is only through 2009 (though he's supposed to have a good glove). Given that it took a BABIP around .356 for Miller to hit even .271 in Triple-A, I wouldn't expect him to be much of a hitter (even if he draws a couple free passes and hits some dingers). If the glove-work is still a plus though, that might play as a 4th outfielder. This trade is the kind in which one should pick up these kinds* of players.

* Chris Davis, admittedly, has much better minor league numbers. But he doesn't play center-field, does he? I probably wouldn't trade Davis for Miller, but I think one can consider it at least.

The O's have also brought on pitching coach Rick Peterson to do work with minor league pitchers in some capacity ("pitching guru" is how I've heard it described), and trainer Chris Correnti to do rehab and conditioning work (also with minor league pitchers). These are the kinds of organizational moves that can have real longer-term effects, and could easily swamp the impacts of the minor trades Dan Duquette has made this year. The Orioles have been pretty bad with developing their young pitchers, so focus on that process is very nice to see.