Monday, June 11, 2007

Change not gonna come...

I guess Sam Cooke wasn't an Orioles fan.

Anyway, here it is, only June 11th, 63 games into the season, with 99 games still yet to be played and we're already into the dog days of the Orioles' season.

The offense has crawled back into their shell, the bullpen is still a leaky ship, and management is too paralyzed to make a move in order to shake things up.

If not for the starting pitching, this team would be well on its way to losing 100 games. But that wouldn't be Orioles baseball, now would it? They're not even good at sucking.

Instead, here we are on June 11th, without anything to say about this team that hasn't been said a million times before. Never did I think I'd run out of things to say about this team's ineptitude so soon, but leave it up to the Orioles to leave you at a loss for words. In a bad way.

Albert Einstein says that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So maybe that's it, maybe the Orioles are just insane. That would explain a lot about the last 10 years. And to learn that the warehouse has been turned into zombies would at least be a decent excuse for the baseball we've been force to watch over that time.

But alas, such is not the case. Unfortunately, Angelos, Flanagan, Duquette and Perlozzo are human, even though they resemble the undead more than the living. They're still reluctant to make the in-season moves that can improve a team, even if it's temporary by calling up farmhands to sure up the bullpen and offense as well as making a trade or five.

But let's not place all the blame on the front office, even though they do deserve a large share of it. The players have done their share of sucking too.

Aubrey Huff's miserable .668 OPS is .139 points below his career average of .807.

Jay Gibbons' .581 OPS could probably be matched by a handful of 18 year old American Legion ballplayers.

The broadcasters fall all over themselves whenever they talk about Jay Payton, but his deceptive .276 average is trailed by a disgraceful .676 OPS. If ever there was a player ripe for platoons, it's Payton, who has a .789 OPS against LHP. But the O's would rather a 2 year player in Payton be happy, than bettering the team.

Then there is Mevlin Mora and his numbers which are declining with age.

Even Tejada's OPS is well below .800, something that has never happened since 1999.

But then again, the front office brought these players here.

Anyway, what else can you say? We've been over the Jon Knott, JR House, Jason DuBois love triangle before. We've talked about how Corey Doyne and Radhames Liz would look good in our bullpen with John Parrish and Danys Baez struggling, while Todd Williams and Scott Williamson are constantly battling injuries.

We've been over the 10 years of losing, the bad decisions, and the general feeling of no one at the warehouse seems to care about it all. So why should we?

I don't.

And if it weren't for this blog and the occasional post at Orioles Hangout, I'd be "that guy."

You know who "that guy" is. He's the guy who comes into work and asks if the Orioles won or lost. He's the guy when told that Jon Knott should be on the team asks "Who is he?" He's the guy who looks over the roster and asks, "When did we get him?"

Problem is, we're all becoming "that guy" with each game the O's lose. We're becoming nothing more than baseball zombies.

Pardon me while I go snack on some brains.

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