The Good:

• In what could be (and probably should be, though I doubt it) Jeremy Guthrie's last start as an Oriole, he did a fine job; 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 5 K 1 HR.
• In what could be (and probably should be, though I doubt it) Koji Uehara's last appearance as an Oriole, he did a fine job himself; scoreless inning, 2 K's. Neat note from MASN; since 1900, Koji has the best K/BB ratio for all pitchers with at least 150 IP - his (now) 6.6 is way, way ahead of second place (5.4).
• Derrek Lee went 2-3 with an opposite-field homer, a double, plus a walk.
• Mark Reynolds hit a bomb of his own.

The Bad:

• The O's K'ed 11 times with only 2 free passes.
• Kevin Gregg didn't blow the save, though he tried; a run on two doubles and a walk.

The Final:

The O's take game one of the series in New York. Hopefully they follow it up with an organizational victory by picking up some prospects before the trade deadline.

The Good:

• Alfredo Simon did a fine job again; 5 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 7 K, 1 HR. He sat consistently 94-95 with his fastball, had some nice sink on it. He threw both some cutters (which had a 50% whiff rate) and a whole bunch of sliders (~37% whiff rate, it looks like), while going to the splitter more sparingly (and he left it up in the zone a little too often). With the slider coming in at only around 80 mph, the splitter at 85, the cutter at 90, and the fastball at 95, Simon has four pitches at different enough velocities that he really could hang around as a non-terrible starter. In 4 starts now, Simon has a 3.86 ERA, 3.28 FIP, and ~3.97 xFIP. That's not bad at all.

The Bad:

• Felix Pie got the start in left-field versus Ricky Romero because, apparently, Romero has reverse platoon splits. You know, a .281 batting average against by lefties in 2011, and a .211 batting average against by righties. Except career for Romero: vs. RHH: 3.81 xFIP, vs. LHH: 3.67 xFIP. O's lefties went 0-8 against him.
• It seemed like JJ Hardy had a tough time tracking the ball from Romero, since he repeatedly swung at junk and K'ed 4 times. Not that anyone else did much either.

The Final:

The Orioles threatened in the 9th inning, but a day after putting 12 on the board they were shut out. And they didn't trade anybody today either.

The Blue Jays put together a series of deal today, trading for Edwin Jackson and then flipping him to the Cardinals for Colby Rasmus. I looked a the trades for the Outside Corner:

"Cardinals:

Acquired: Jackson, reliever Octavio Dotel, and pitcher Marc Rzepczynski
Dealt: outfielder Colby Rasmus

I don't know why the Card's were pushing to trade Rasmus (besides whatever behind the scenes stuff he has going on with Tony La Russa). He's a 24 year-old outfielder with a career .259/.334/.444 batting line. He walks. He hits for some power. He's cut down on his strike-outs this year. He's under team control through 2014. His center-field defense may leave a bit to be desired, but Rasmus seems like he'd hit well enough to play a corner with at least an average glove. That's a player who's not only good but (still) cheap.

Dotel has been fine out of the pen this year, and is a free agent. Rzepczynski seems like a decent back of the rotation arm in the NL (he's been used as a reliever this year). Jackson ill obviously help the rotation as the Card's go for the NL Central crown in 2011. But overall, it seems like the Cardinals improved themselves by maybe a couple wins this year at the cost of trading Rasmus for Rzepczynski in the longer term. And that doesn't look like a particularly good deal to me.

Blue Jays:

Acquired: Colby Rasmus
Dealt: Zach Stewart, Jason Frasor, Octavio Dotel, and Marc Rzepczynski

The Jays basically used three relievers to upgrade from a 24 year-old pitcher with 3 career major league starts (with a 4.86 ERA) to a 24 year-old outfielder with 385 major league games under his belt who's already established himself as an above average player. Seems good."

Edit: There have been more pieces added on both sides (including Corey Patterson going to St. Louis), but the basis is still there.

The trade reminds me of the Yunel Escobar deal from last year, where the Jays upgraded by moving Alex Gonzalez. Not that more evidence was really needed, but it cements the idea that the O's front office is just well behind their AL East competition. Could the Birds have made this deal, given that the cost turned out much lower than expected? I think so.

Edwin Jackson vs. Jeremy Guthrie

Jackson is obviously better, but the Card's would get to keep Guthrie for next year.

Octavio Dotel vs. Koji Uehara

Koji is obviously better, plus the Card's would probably get to keep him for next year.

Marc Rzepczynski vs. someone (Brad Bergesen maybe)

The former is probably better, but it's not exactly a significant difference.

So would Guthrie + Koji + Bergesen (plus maybe some minor piece if needed) for Rasmus be a good deal? You bet.

Guthrie has around $2 M in excess value for 2011 and 2012 (assuming he falls of some but his salary goes up in his last arbitration year). Koji is in a similar boat (assuming his vesting option kicks in). Maybe add another $2 M or so for Bergesen (just because he's still so cheap) and change. That's ~$6 M in excess value. If Rasmus is even a 2 win player going forward (and he hit 4.3 fWAR last year), you're looking at $14+ M in value. And if he bounces back into the 3.5-4 range next year, it could easily be twice that. That is just way to good of a deal to turn down, and I'd hope that Andy MacPhail actually made the call to see if he could get it done.

My weekly post at MASN is up, looking at the Orioles stranding runners - "pulling an Orioles", if you will. Check it out here. no comments

The Good:

• JJ Hardy hit two homers and had a sac fly. Both longballs were more of the line-drive variety, on pitches up and in to Hardy. Pitchers may want to avoid that area with him.
• Nolan Reimold also homered, plus added a double.
• Derrek Lee led the O's hit brigade (every starter had a base-knock), with his 4-4 day (including a home run).

The Bad:

• Jake Arrieta's stuff looked good - he threw an especially sick curve to strike Jose Molina out looking - and did a pretty nice job keeping the ball away from the Jays' right-handed batters, but threw too many pitches (103) and got taken deep a couple times. Final line; 5 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 4 K.

The Final:

The Orioles beat the Blue Jays, in Toronto! That's gotta be worth, like, 3 actual wins. Very nice to see the offensive outburst - hopefully they have something left for the rest of the series.

The O's take game two of the three game set with the Angels and look for the series victory in today's rubber match.  The bullpen held up very well yesterday and Brad Bergesen got the quality start and the victory in yesterday's game.

Red Sox:

	Batting	Fielding	fWAR
Maicer Izturis	.267/.329/.376	-1	1.3
Torii Hunter	.234/.311/.379	4	1.0
Bobby Abreu	.265/.381/.348	-4	0.4
Vernon Wells	.223/.254/.422	3	0.7
Alberto Callaspo	.290/.365/.366	5	2.2
Howie Kendrick	.297/.354/.450	14	4.1
Mark Trumbo	.256/.302/.475	7	1.9
Mike Trout	.176/.243/.235	-1	-0.1
Bobby Wilson	.211/.279/.289	-1	-0.2

A decent lineup from the Angels, with the middle of the lineup being their best contact hitters.  Callaspo and Kendrick have a very good knack for getting on (see the high averages) and with Hunter, Abreu, and Wells good at drawing walks, Callaspo and Kendrick get more RBI opportunities.

Tyler Chatwood:

ERA	FIP	xFIP	K/9	BB/9	GB%	fWAR
3.71	4.43	4.89	4.6	4.8	45.0%	0.8

I don't think saying the Orioles are not having a good season is particularly audacious, but beyond bemoaning the team's record doesn't do much to explain why things are that way. One of the factors this year has been injuries: Brian Roberts has been out most of the year; Brian Matusz missed time and came back ineffective; Luke Scott has a similar story; and JJ Hardy was gone for a month. How significant have these losses been?

It's impossible to know for sure how these players would have performed if healthy, but a rough estimate using the pre-season projections should give a general idea.

Brian Roberts:

That he actually played in 39 games was a surprise to me - it seemed like he's been gone pretty much all season. He didn't do much in his 178 PA (.221/.273/.331, 0.2 fWAR), and it doesn't look like he'll return this year. I had Roberts projected at 2 wins in 575 PA (about 133 games). At this point in the season, assuming an even distribution of missed time throughout the year, Roberts "would have" played 78 games and produced 1.2 WAR.

So, expected: 1.2 WAR from Brian Roberts in 78 games, plus replacement level production from back-ups.
Actual production at second-base: 0.2 from Roberts in 39 games; 0 fWAR from Blake Davis in 15 games; -0.3 fWAR from Ryan Adams in 9 games; and about 0.2 fWAR from Robert Andino in 50 games. That's a total of around 0.1 fWAR.

So if you want to pro-rate Roberts' actual 2011 production out to 78 games, the team has lost ~0.2 wins. If you give some credence to the projection (and thus assume that Roberts would have started playing better - not a stretch given his .236 BABIP), then the team has lost closer to 0.8 wins.

Brian Matusz:

Matusz missed the start of the season, and then appeared to come back not at 100%; thus his 8.77 ERA and -0.5 fWAR. I had projected him for 175 IP and 3.2 WAR.

Expected: At this point it would be 103 IP and 1.9 WAR, plus replacement level production from back-up pitchers.
Actual: 25.2 IP and -0.5 fWAR from Matusz; let's say a month's worth of pitching from Zach Britton (assuming he wouldn't have been called up right away if Matusz was healthy to start the year), so around 42 IP and 0.6 fWAR; and the remaining 35 IP coming in a smattering from Tillman, Bergesen, Jakubauskas, and Atkins, at around 0.2 fWAR total. Overall that's around 0.3 fWAR.

Matusz's sucky pitching I think gets attributed to the injury in this exercise, so that's a loss of about 1.6 wins.

Luke Scott:

Luke's injury has likely had an effect on his performance even when on the field (like with Matusz). I had projected him for 2.1 WAR in 525 PA.

Expected: At this point it would be 308 PA and 1.2 WAR, plus a little bit in left-field and at DH (say, +0.1 WAR).
Actual: Scott has only 233 PA, and 0.1 fWAR. Reimold has been OK in left, but Pie has been so bad that the back-ups are like -1.3 fWAR. Vlad's at replacement level as DH, which makes that one easy. That's a total of around -1.2 fWAR.

So attributing at least some of Luke's poor production to his injury, this is a loss of around a win and a half (largely because Felix has been just so bad).

JJ Hardy:

Hardy missed about a month at the beginning of the season, though I think that's largely forgotten due to his play since returning. I had him projected at 2 WAR in 525 PA.

Expected: At this point it would be 308 PA and 1.2 WAR for Hardy, plus replacement level production from back-ups.
Actual: Hardy is at 2 fWAR already, in 295 PA; Cesar Izturis and Robert Andino round out the rest of the playing team at around 0.3 fWAR. That's a total of 2.3 fWAR.

So this is a marginal loss; if you assume Hardy had played at the projected level during his time out, then downgrading from that to the back-ups is maybe a run difference. If he had played at the level he actually has this season, then it's a drop-off of 0.3-0.4 wins. But really, it was always assumed that Hardy would miss some time so this isn't really a big deal and probably has no relevance (if we're talking about results compared to expectations).

Add things up for these injuries, and you get around 4 wins (expecting ~4.3 WAR from second, left, and #2 starter, and getting -0.8 fWAR, though not all of the latter is due to injury). That would change the team's record from 39-56 (17 games under .500) to 43-52 (9 games under .500); still not good, but at least with some small sliver of hope of making a run and ending up with a winning season. There are still problems with the team, obviously, but the lack of depth plus starters missing time has definitely hurt.

---

Stats: WAR