Yeah, Pete! Have we seen your predictions for the Orioles (and MLB) this year yet?

Your column pretty much sums it up, this year is up in the air, but I finished that bottle of whiskey last night and decided we are going to have a winning season, until I get hungover. Anybody see Mr. Schmuck's video? Nice facial hair boss.
Adam Jones has the better video up right now. Encouraging violence against Yankee fans is A-OK with me. I love it and insist upon it.
It's astounding too what he says about certain fans donning different uniforms depending on whether the pinstrips or soxs are in town.
DISGUSTING. Those people definitely need beatdowns and I'm glad to here he won't sign their stuff anymore.

Breaking news! Another Addams family movie is in the works, and hendrickson got the Lurch role!

I don't have low expectations going into this season. That in itself makes me feel different about the 2011 incantation of the Baltimore Orioles. Nor do I have high expectations. Other than Zach Britton, the starting rotation was hit pretty hard this spring, several of them literally. Handicapping the final record of the team right now is nearly impossible. Anyone who is predicting 82 victories or more is probably even money with someone predicting 75 wins or less.

I like Pete's approach..... the good, the bad and the non-committal.

Agreed Gil,
We have to be better than last season, but damn if I didn't say that for th start of the 2010 season...
Enjoy it for what it is and hope for the best.
I personally believe in the players and the coach, which is something I would not have said last year so that's a leg up.
Let's out pitch and out play the AL east, more than ever I think wins and loses are less important than player development. I know you, Gil, and others might disagree, but I think if the core players as a group can coalesce then we could be looking good for 2012. If PA was willing to spend (some) money after last season, imagine what he would do with a true core effort from the young players?
Go O's

Just read your article Pete,

I don't think anything under .500 can be considered an improvement. That means 14 straight losing seasons. That's redefining catastrophic failure. I get it that MacPhail has pretty much shattered the bottom off our expectations; however another losing season is unacceptable in my book.

By the way, has MacPhail declared whether this year is about wins and losses? Has anyone in the media asked the question of how success will be measure this year?

Change in attitude means nothing, if you don't back it up with results. It's kinda like a boxer who talks smack all the time leading up to the fight and gets knocked out in the first round.

@G2,

If Angelos was willing to spend some money, we wouldn't be losing for 13 straight years. Why is that about to change now or in 2012?

Another blog entry that just includes a column link.
Yep, Schmuck's back from vacation.

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Pete's reply: Get over it. I've posted links from the very first day of this blog. The whole point of doing it was to expand the audience for my column and promote things other Sun writers were doing. The number of posts here will be reduced because the newsy Orioles stuff has to go over to Orioles Insider. Give it a look if this doesn't float your boat.

G2,

I think your basic premise would be wonderful if it works out that way. There are two ways to look at this: The Orioles surprise, pitch very well, and the players signed to one year contracts perform well.The team exceeds expectations, Angelos gets a tasts of victory and finally decides to invest the resources in marquee talent and International Scouting. and the franchise is off and running. I'm all for that.

Scenario two: The starting pitching collapses and several of the regulars with injury histories spend considerable time on the DL. The team is out of it by the trade deadline and Macphail unloads the one year contracts for prospects. Angelos is now convinced that spending money on free agents won't get him anywhere and the Orioles are back to square one in 2012 with no immediate help in the minors and no investment in International scouting. I hope that doesn't happen but it may be just as likely as scenario one. Maybe ther is a third possibility, something in between, some progress, yet another sub .500 year. I don't know what would come out of that.

Meso,

I am all Andy Macphail'ed out, as I'm sure you are. He has about as much of an idea how this team will end up performing as you and I. Of course, he will take all the credit if things work out well after flushing 2008, 2009, and 2010 down the drain. If things don't go well, he will simply trade veterens for prospects and say it is part of the plan and that we are still in the early stages of rebuilding. Rome wasn't built in a day. After all, look at the mess he inherited 4 years ago. If it's still a mess after 2011 he will simply bob and weave as usual. That's how he has lasted this long. He is good at it, I must say.

My thinking is that the O's brass is pushing hard for a big improvement this year. Otherwise the Lee and Guerrero signings don't make a lot of sense.
But in the context of building a competitive lineup quickly, they do.

Lee and Guerrero allow all of the O's other peices to fall into their most productive slots in the lineup. As a 5 hitter behind Guerrero, Luke Scott's a dangerous man. Jones can grow up as a hitter in the 6 hole, and you can live with a big power/high strikeout hitter in the 7 hole. And they took the expectations of franchise savior off of Wieters and let him grow up as a hitter at the bottem of the lineup.

An injury to Robert could hurt, but with Hardy on hand the O's are better prepared then last year. Hardy could lead off, and Andino/Izturis can play second and bat ninth.

With Markakis in the 2 hole, with Roberts in front of him, and Lee and Guerrero on deck I'm looking for Nick to have an Allstar year.

Besides Britton, the pitching didn't shine this spring, what I noticed was that Conner and Showalter seemed to have a lot of guys trying to "tweak" things in the spring. A lot of guys were putting in time in simulated games or Minor League games where they pitched extended innings to get a set number of pitches in. That indicates to me the O's had something specific that pitcher was working on. That not the normal pattern for a pitcher just building up to opening day.

I asked Jeff and Dan about Conner's tweaks and how the pitchers were responding to them, and didn't get an answer. But Conner's got a pretty proven track record with pitching staffs so we have to trust he knows where he's going with these guys.

But due to the tweaks, I'm thinking that maybe the pitching doesn't break camp in top form yet. Some guys may end up back where they were before if they can't settle in. And it may require some additional adjustments on the fly.

The talent seems to be there, it's just getting these guys to perform at a hign level on a consistant basis at the ML level. My quess is we'll see some changes in the rotation from where it is now and things won't shake out until May, or June. Until Duke gets healthy, and Britton gets back a couple of these guys have a short period to grab a spot in the rotation, then their window closes.

I hope the offense keeps the team in enough games early that the O's can get off to a decent start. This is a team that could get on a roll come summer, I think with Buck driving hard they'll finish near the 81-81 mark. But if the pitching comes together they might do even better then that.

They will be improved, by how much is the question...

The really encouraging thing about the O's this spring is that the "gurus" at SI have picked the O's to escape the AL East cellar!!!!

This team is an enigma. They could win 90 games. They might win only 70. But even 70 is four more than last year!

I got burned pretty badly with my optimism last year so I'm taking a wait and see approach this year. The potential improvements could be huge. Barring wholesale collapse the O's will score a lot more runs this year, but the pitching situation is much more uncertain.
What keeps me on the sunnyside is Buck's performance last year. He has proven to me that he knows how to get the best from his players.
I think this is the best chance the O's have had to break the horrid streak in quite a few years, but it is hardly a done deal.

I think the point is you're too lazy to put any effort into your blog.

Gil;

My reaction to the first part of the first sentence of your 11:00 am post addressed to Meso in which you said, "I am all Andy Macphail'ed out" was to think to myself, "Oh no your not".

You didn't disappoint me and, without so much as pausing for a breath, you launched into another anti MacPhail screed.

Are you beginning to see you have a problem Gil? Even when you're tired of talking about him, sick to your back teeth with it, you can't stop yourself. Take a vacation or something. It's eating you up.

@dan qz,

And like clockwork, you never fail to jump on all "anti-MacPhail" post.

Meso;

An anti MacPhail post is fine, but hard on the heels of someone saying they're fed up talking about him? My post wasn't about MacPhail at all, but about Gil's obsession with him.

"If Angelos was willing to spend some money, we wouldn't be losing for 13 straight years. Why is that about to change now or in 2012?"
Mesotheliangelos

And if I might add let the people hired to run the team actually run the team. Starting when we had Mr. Gillick ..