Mitch Atkins was picked up by the Orioles this past off-season on a minor league deal. The 25 year-old right-hander spent most of 2011, as expected, starting in the minors (at three different levels, but mostly Triple-A), where he was mostly mediocre (4.85 ERA, 2.2 K/BB ratio). Atkins got called up for a brief stretch in July, making three starts and getting knocked around.

Stats in 10.2 IP don't mean much, but he would have been relatively happy for his ERA to match his xFIP of 5.19. The 7 strike-outs to 3 walks (plus a hit batter) is pretty bad by itself, but then add 5 home runs on top of it and it's not surprising Atkins had a 8.44 ERA and 8.93 FIP. Maybe he's a replacement level pitcher going forward, though it'll probably as a long-man in the bullpen given his relatively straight 90 mph fastball; perhaps he can put his breaking-balls to better effect facing more right-handed batters.

Adam Jones has been a solid big leaguer for the Orioles since coming over in the Erik Bedard trade. He's constantly tantalized with his raw skills, but hasn't been able to fully utilize them to turn into the star player many hoped (or expected) he'd be.

I didn't think a break-out season was coming in 2011; just a bit of steady improvement:

	Projected	Actual
PA	600	618
BA	.278	.280
OBP	.330	.319
SLG	.451	.466
wOBA	.340	.339
BB%	5.4%	4.7%
K%	19.3%	18.3%
HR	20	25
BABIP	.320	.304
Defense	-2	-9
WAR	2.3	2.9

Despite the various stats being pretty close, Jones' actual offensive production was more impressive (+9 runs instead of +3-4) because offense was down as a whole in baseball. 2011 was more "step forward" than "a star is born" overall though (it could have been the latter, but his .295 wOBA in August/September dragged his line down).

Still chasing the ball out of the zone all the time? Check. Rarely walking as a result? Check. Helping bump his OBP up be getting plunked (more on that here)? Check (9 times). Bump up his hits total by dropping down the occasional bunt (more on that here)? Check (6 times). Reverse platoon splits? Check (at this point, I think even regressing his career splits will get them to close to even for versus righties and lefties).

That Jones hit 25 home runs despite still hitting the ball on the ground a lot speaks to his power (and his HR/FB rate of almost 17% was the second highest of his career), and he continued to show the ability to hit the ball out to center as well as left-field. If Jones elevated the ball more often, I certainly think he could hit 30+ homers.

The .304 BABIP was the lowest mark of Jones' career, but still above average - which kept his batting average from getting too low. The plate discipline numbers moved in the right direction a tad, but they're still not very good. I think part of the reason he doesn't strike out more (even with a below average contact rate), is that his at bats end relatively quickly (only 3.6 pitches seen per plate appearance).

Before the season I looked at how guys who had poor strike-out to walk ratios developed, and it wasn't encouraging; they didn't tend to improve much in that particular area (went from awful to bad) or overall (OPS went up about 20 points from their first 5 years in the league to their next 5).

In mid-August, before the slump had taken much of a toll, I looked at what could happen from Jones going forward:

"I see, with some obvious blurring, two main factors that lead to four different paths:

1) More walks, great hitter: Jones continues to hit for this kind of power with his higher BABIPs, while also refining his game on the plate discipline side. That's the kind of guy who can hit .300/.375/.500 and be a star; the kind worthy of, say, a $25 million-a-year contract if he were a free agent now.

2) More walks, not-so-great hitter: He trades some slugging percentage for some OBP, and ends up being pretty much as valuable as he is now - a very good player (the kind worthy of, say, $18 million a year). This is where I was hoping he'd start going after 2009, since his raw talent leaves open the chance to jump to the above.

3) No walks, great hitter: Guerrero has not only imparted his proclivities for hacking (even more) on Jones, but also some of his amazingly rare ability to be a plus hitter anyway, and therefore Jones will continue to be a very good player (same $18 million yearly contract).

4) No walks, not-so-great hitter: The 2011 power surge is at least partially aided by a few cheapies, his plate discipline doesn't improve and he goes back to being an average to slightly above player (the kind worthy of, say, a $9 million a year)."

The end of the season pushed Jones from #3 towards #4, which is not where the team needs him to be.

Defensively, the disconnect between the numbers and the eyes (of some) continued. Jones was named by Baseball America as one of the best center-fielders in baseball (based on opinions by, I believe, managers and the like). On the other hand, his UZR was -9, his DRS was -9, and his TZ was -17(!). Jones occasionally makes an amazing looking play - he has the tools to be a decent fielder, I think - but sometimes an actually good fielder would have made the same play in a routine looking manner. Shifting Jones to a corner is something that may need to happen at some point, but at least he still has a good arm.

With Jones moving into his second arbitration year, he's going to start getting expensive (I could see him doubling his salary to the $6.5-7 M range). Signing him to a longer-term deal could cost upwards of $50 M at this point. I don't know if that's a risk the team would take with a talented player going into what should be his prime years (he only just turned 26), but who may actually not develop much more.

28 year-old left-handed reliever Pedro Viola spent most of the 2011 season in Double-A, where he did a nice job (2.04 ERA, 9.1 K/9, 2.9 BB/9). He was called up to the majors for a couple games at the end of May, and then again for a couple weeks at the end of June. Viola only appeared in 4 games total for Baltimore, pitching 3.2 innings and allowing 4 runs on 3 home runs (2 of them to lefties). He also K'ed 4 and walked 2.

Viola seems to have a decent fastball (92-93 with some movement, but he only has a 7.2% whiff rate with it in his major league career) and a good slider (53% whiff rate). The propensity to give up the longball (6 in 12 career IP now) has hurt him at the big league level, as well as in Triple-A (8 HR in 59 IP) - not totally unexpected given that he's a flyball pitcher. With his ability to miss bats though (9.9 K/9 career in the minors), there's a chance he could be an OK cheap bullpen arm if the O's need a third LOOGY out there.

Nolan Reimold broke on the scene in 2009 with a very nice partial rookie season, hitting .279/.365/.466 despite suffering from an Achilles injury. Personal issues, among other struggles, made 2010 a year to forget though, as his line fell to .207/.282/.328 and he spent most of the season in the minors. That's where he started 2011, but Luke Scott's injury opened up a spot in left-field.

Three home runs in his first four games in Baltimore made a nice impression, though his playing time thereafter was still somewhat sporadic. I had projected Reimold to hit .242/.318/.392 after his call-up, but the early home run barrage helped him beat that handily (mostly in the SLG department). His .247/.328/.453 line made him a solidly above average hitter (though it was just .234/.317/.410 after those first games).

Reimold showed his usual plate discipline, not chasing pitching out of the strike-zone and walking at a good clip (9.2%). He even cut down on the strike-outs (a league average-ish 18.7% K rate), after whiffing quite a bit in Triple-A. The reason for the lower batting average is Reimold's .264 BABIP. Given that he doesn't hit a ton of line-drives but does pop the ball up often enough, that might not be completely fluky (though his career BABIP is now .284). And some of that is cushioned by Reimold's propensity to get infield hits - his rate of infield hits per groundball this year was the second highest in the majors (min. 300 PA). Luckily Reimold was able to put the ball over the fence; his 14.8% home run per flyball rate was similar to the one he had in 2009, after the drop last year.

Defensively, Reimold's numbers come in a touch above average (+2 UZR, +1 DRS, +2 TZ). Perhaps his poor showing in 2009 was indeed related to the injury (though these aren't tremendously large sample sizes). That, combined with his bat, made Reimold an above average caliber player (1.5 fWAR in only 305 PA).

Assuming the Orioles don't make an unexpected outfield addition this off-season, Nolan should come into 2012 as the team's main starter in left. Given that he's about to turn 28 years old, there may not be a lot of prime seasons left for him, and I'd hope the O's don't waste them. Reimold could certainly do a decent Luke Scott impression going forward. And boy am I glad the team didn't end up trading* him for Jason Bartlett** before the season; Reimold - 1.5 fWAR, Bartlett - 1.8 fWAR (in twice as many plate appearance).

* Not to mention that JJ Hardy > Bartlett.

** Plus, the Rays wanted Alferdo Simon (1.1 fWAR in maybe half a season).

The Orioles took a flier on Jeremy Accardo this off-season, hoping to bolster the back end of the bullpen. I noted that giving (just) over a million dollars to (basically) a replacement level player wasn't the best idea, but that it wasn't a significantly terrible move.

Accardo started the year in Baltimore, but struggled and ended up getting sent to the minors in mid-June (he was called back up when rosters expanded in September). In the majors this season, Accardo continued not striking out batters (just 5.4 K/9) while displaying poor control (4.3 BB/9). The 5.73 ERA might be a touch high (5.04 FIP, 4.99 xFIP), but it pretty much told the story - he wasn't good at all. Slightly below replacement even (-0.2 fWAR in 37.2 IP). In the minors, things were a bit better; 2.16 ERA with a 2.5 K/BB ratio (though he did benefit from allowing only one home run, which seems a little lucky). Another swing and a miss on the free agent reliever front, I guess.

Maybe the scouts saw something in Accardo they thought they could fix and get him back to his old self. His repertoire did look different - fewer change-ups/splitters and a lot more slider and cutters. And his fastball velocity dropped about 1 mph. I'm not sure why he moved away from the split, since it seemed like his best pitch - especially since he faced about as many lefties as righties this season, and the splitter had a whiff rate about 6 times higher than the slider to lefties (but he still threw the breaking-ball to them more).

Giving Jeremy Accardo $1 M to be bad isn't going to cripple the Orioles' franchise, but spending half of that on someone who would be equally good and the other half on international prospects or whatever seems like it would have been a better investment.

Matt Wieters came into the 2010 season with some people considering him a disappointment. The guy who was supposed to be "Mauer With Power" and demolished the minor leagues was just a .266/.328/.393 career hitter. Many of the raw tools were still there, but we hadn't seen them put to use in games consistently.

Here are by pre-season projections for Wieters, compared with how things shook out:

	Projected	Actual
PA	500	551
BA	.263	.262
OBP	.334	.328
SLG	.404	.450
wOBA	.327	.339
BB%	9.5%	8.7%
K%	18.2%	15.2%
HR	13	22
BABIP	.305	.276
WAR	2.5	4.3

I said I wouldn't trust the home run output to go up until it actually started to happen - and it did indeed start to happen. Wieters' home run per flyball rate jumped from the 8-8.5% range to 13.6%, allowing him to more than double his career home run out put (he had 20 in 2009-10 combined) while actually keeping the same batted-ball profile (it wasn't a case of elevating the ball more).

There were a couple of big changes with the home runs. One was their location. In 2010, Wieters had 502 plate appearances and ended up hitting 10 home runs to left and right field (combined). In 2011, Wieters had 551 plate appearances and ended up hitting 13 home runs to left and right field (combined). The difference was, in '10 only one ball went out to center (and it was about as left-center as you can get and still be in the middle third of the diamond), while in '11 there were 9 balls that went out to center (one of which was also right on the left/center line, but the other 8 were not). It's nice to see Wieters being able to go yard to the deepest part of the park.

Additionally, there was a huge reversal in his platoon numbers. Here are his percent of plate appearances ending with a home run from each side of the plate:

Year	Right	Left
2009	2.0%	2.6%
2010	1.6%	2.4%
2011	7.7%	2.7%

You can see that his power production from the left side stayed pretty much constant. From the right side though, he began to crush the ball. Wieters had been stronger against righties in his career, coming into 2011 - .335 wOBA from the left side, .275 wOBA from the right side - but that flipped around this season (and how!). A pedestrian .290 wOBA against righties that might have made the season look bad was saved by an almost Bondsian .472 wOBA against lefties. He walked in over 14% of his plate appearances against south-paws, and took them deep 11 times in only 142 PA. In fact, the only player in the majors to hit better versus lefties than Wieters was Jose Bautista (who crushed everyone).

The question is, will this persist (obviously it won't to this degree, but will it at all)? If something changed permanently for Wieters from the right side, and he bounces back from the left side, then he can certainly keep his overall production going at 2011 levels. If this was a fluke occurrence though (and the .380 BABIP and 25% HR/FB rate as a lefty in a relatively small sample of at bats indicate that it might be), then Wieters might not progressing quite as much as it appears.

Looking beyond the home run output, things didn't change much in the aggregate. Wieters' walk rate fell from 9.4% to 8.7%, but his unintentional walk rate went from 8% to 8.2% (he effectively walked one more time than in 2010). His strike-out rate fell from 18.7% to 15.2%, but because his BABIP also dropped once again (from .287 to .276), there wasn't much of a positive effect on his batting average there. Improving the plate discipline would really be a plus, as Wieters still expands the zone sometimes (though he's gotten better at actually going after strikes).

A 110 wRC+ from a catcher is mighty fine though, especially when he's so good behind the plate. There were 0 wild pitches on his watch, and only 1 passed ball allowed (tied for the fewest in the majors, but Wieters caught more innings than the other guys with 1). He nabbed 37% of opposing base-stealers - the second highest mark in baseball. The advanced metrics love him; Defensive Runs Saved had Wieters as catcher in baseball at +14 runs, with +5 runs on stolen bases (#2); Total Zone had him second at +10 runs; and based on some research by Mike Fast, it appears that Wieters might also save some runs with his pitch-framing. While in the past I've often been one to try to head off the home-town fans clamoring for an Oriole to win a Gold Glove (Jones, Markakis), I think that Wieters is more than deserving - and there's a good chance it'll happen (I think appreciation for his defense is partly why he was chosen for the All-Star team this year).

The offense plus the defense made Wieters around a 4-5 win player this past season - that makes him the team MVP in my book, and should hopefully quiet many of his (unfair) critics. Hopefully he can build on his 2011 success going forward.

Yesterday the 2011 regular season came to an end - certainly in extremely exciting fashion, as the Orioles came back in the bottom of the 9th inning against Jonathan Papelbon and the Red Sox to win game 162 and knock Boston out of the play-offs* (in conjunction with the Rays erasing a 7-0 deficit to the Yankees, having pinch-hitter Dan Johnson tie the game in the bottom of the 9th with two outs (and two strikes) on a home run before winning on an Evan Longoria walk-off homer (his second of the game) a few innings later - and just after the O's beat the Sox). It was, perhaps, the most amazing day of baseball ever. And it was a great way to cap off what was surely a disappointing season in Baltimore.

* I actually wrote about the O's playing spoiler a week ago at the Outside Corner.

Given the way the 2010 season ended - and the off-season acquisitions - there were some raised expectations going into 2011. Vlad Guerrero's a Hall of Famer! Buck Showalter's a proven manager! A winning season is coming at last! I wasn't quite so sanguine, but did think the O's could improve on the previous year and at least have an outside chance at getting to .500. After a strong start (6-1), the Orioles lost 8 in a row to fall below par. They hung around for a while - getting to 3rd place in the AL East on May 12th, staying in 4th as late as May 27th - but May 26th (at 24-24) was the last time the O's didn't have more losses than wins.

A 69-93 season is indeed an improvement over 2010's 66-96, but it's the 5th straight season the Birds have failed to crack 70 - an amazing run of futility (easily the longest going in baseball, with the Pirates having won 72 games). This O's team was, indeed, very bad - like many O's teams before them.

Offensively, the additions (mostly of JJ Hardy and Mark Reynolds) did make things better. They hung around league average most of the season, and ended up just below with a 97 wRC+ and a .257/.316/.413 batting line. The O's hit for power - their 191 home runs were 4th in baseball - but not much else. Few walks (7.3% BB rate) and a slightly below average BABIP kept their batting average and on-base percentage down, which contributed to the relatively mediocre overall offensive production given all the pop. Beyond having fewer baserunners than many teams, the O's erased to many of them on double plays (154, 2nd most in the majors). The did steal bases at the most efficient rate in the AL though (76.4%), even if they only nabbed 81 total. That, at least, was a positive development.

I had the team projected to hit .265/.333/.426. Some of the "underperforming" is that offense was down overall. They also didn't walk as much. The total production ended up being pretty close to expected though - they were supposed to be around an average offensive team, and they were.

While the position players did a non-terrible job at the plate, in the field things were a different story. The O's turned balls in play into outs less than 70% of the time - the 3rd worst rate in baseball. Their UZR of -53 runs was 2nd worst, as was their -54 run Total Zone rating. Defensive Runs Saved of -45, dead last. Pretty much any way to slice it, the O's defense did an awful job helping out their pitchers.

I had the team projected to be about average defensively, do being off by ~50 runs is a full 5 wins in the standings.

On the pitching side, well, it was same-old same-old. The Orioles had - by far - the worst ERA in the majors at 4.92 (though some of that was obviously on the defense, of course). Their FIP was - by far - the worst in the majors at 4.67. The 4.29 xFIP was amazingly not worst (they were just ahead of Minnesota), which is where SIERA had them as well. The pitching was bad, is what I'm saying. Having Brian Matusz go down early and then never really come back as himself hurt. Jake Arrieta made progress, but got hurt. Chris Tillman showed some flashes, but mostly was ineffective. All the O's really had was the usually steady Jeremy Guthrie and a surprisingly solid rookie season from Zach Britton. The bullpen, thanks to a couple of very good arms (Koji Uehara, Jim Johnson), actually ended up OK overall. Giving starts to the Chris Jakubauskases and Jo-Jo Reyeses of the world means the rotation has some serious issues though, and it surely did.

O's pitcher just didn't miss bats - their 6.5 K/9 was 4th lowest in baseball - while their control was only mediocre. Oh, and they gave up a ton of homers - Alberto Pujols could have taken Houston pitching deep 21 times yesterday, and the O's still would have ended up allowing more longballs than the Astros.

I had the team projected for a 4.53 ERA (well, FIP - defense wasn't factored in). That they came in worse than that isn't good, and that they came in worse than that in what turned out to be a lower scoring environment really isn't good.

So the Orioles were outscored by a 152 runs - implying a record of 67-95. And that's about how well they played. I had pegged them for 76 wins (which was actually one of the lower estimates around at the time). A summer of bad baseball and disappointment in Baltimore - what else is new?

This commences the 2011 Orioles Retrospective series. An even 50 players appeared in an O's uniform this year, and I'm going to take an individual look at each of them. You know, because who doesn't want to hear about Josh Rupe?

As far as the off-season and the bigger picture for the franchise goes, my guesses are (1) that Andy MacPhail leaves and the new GM will be a push at best (Buck Showalter taking over seems like going backwards - if the O's want to compete in the AL East, they need the next Andrew Friedman or Alex Anthopoulos), (2) that no really major moves are made (either trades or free agent acquisitions), and (3) that we go into 2012 once again cautiously optimistic that improvement from the young(er) players leads to a .500 season. More on all that later, and as things develop.