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( Baltimore Sun photo by Karl Merton Ferron / February 19, 2012 ) Both Andy MacPhail and Dan Duquette are starting to look pretty smart: Andy MacPhail got Tommy Hunter and Chris Davis from the Texas Rangers for reliever Koji Uehara last summer and picked up Pedro Strop as the player to be named in the deal that sent Michael Gonzalez to the Rangers. Dan Duquette (pictured) got mixed reviews when he traded No. 1 starter Jeremy Guthrie to the Colorado Rockies for starting pitcher Jason Hammel and hard-throwing reliever Matt Lindstrom. In each case, the O's are smelling like the proverbial rose right now. Hammel just threw seven shutout innings against the Blue Jays to improve to 3-0 with a 1.73 ERA. Hunter is 2-1, Davis is swinging the bat well, Lindstrom has not given up an earned run yet and Strop has popped as a setup man and backup closer. |
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the Os are 28th in fielding, 20th overall in hitting, and 8th in the pitching department.
So the efforts to improve the staff have shown up in stats and translated to W-L.
It'd be nice to see Gregg turn it around, as it does nobody any good if he continues his struggles.
The offense just sputters when the ball is not leaving the yard, as they continue to be horrific with RISP. Reimold, Jones and Matt continue to improve, Davis looks like he just needs AB and playing time so they'll have to stick it out with him. Markakis looks pretty much like he did last year, Hardy looks nothing like he did last year, and Reynolds looks like he did 2 years ago. And how many DH types can you have on one team? Johnson is unplayable, and having Reynolds DH is taking ABs from Betemit, who you signed to DH. I expect Duquette to sort through this stuff at some point here and try to clean it up a bit.Or a whole lot. I think he'd prefer that.