Pete,

You are absolutely correct. The kid is a shell of himself. I was at the game last night and there is no way he was throwing upper 80's, I don't care what the park's radar gun said. I have seen high school pitchers with as much velocity this year. He needs to go down to Norfolk for awhile, not just two or three starts. His arm is dragging. Either that, or he tries to change his approach and become another left handed junk baller like Mike Cuellar or Jamie Moyer.

He's had I think 3 rehab starts and now 5 MLB starts. That's 6 weeks, the length of spring training.

How long is this supposed to take?

The only way a guy like Matusz will have his confidence chipped away will be if he can't regain what came naturally to him. We can only speculate on that because no one is going to get a straight answer from the powers to be. It's possible they are speculating themselves.

The trouble is when you project what is supposed to happen onto somebody, one of the assumptions is that somebody puts in the proper amount of effort and preparation. Sure, stuff happens. Jim Palmer had a 7-12 year smack dab in the middle of eight 20-win seasons. With Palmer, we knew it wasn't because of a lack of preparation as he almost drove people nuts with his meticulousness.

Matusz may have bad luck with his wart. And maybe the rib cage incident was bad luck, too. I'd be willing to give a benefit of the doubt on the latter.

According to my naked eye, Matusz hasn't just lost velocity. He looks pooped ten, fifteen pitches into an inning, and 50 or so pitches into a start. He looks like he is putting forth more effort to get his lesser results.

If I'm right, that means he didn't work as hard as he should have through his missed starts. And, then that also raises the question about the injury of which I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

If my speculation is true -- and I freely admit it is speculation fueled by observation -- keeping Matusz on his rotation may be just the thing to tell him he has a responsibility that goes with projections made my the organization.

On the other hand, Matusz is just 24 years old. Last year, he pitched 175 innings -- a fairly large amount. His finish suggests concerns of too many innings (which I made) may have not been warranted concerns. However, if those extra innings translated into an offseason of too much rest and recovery, and too little preparation, all that was gained was also lost.

Obviously, Matusz won't get anywhere near 175 innings this year. If he's battling himself, he could do damage unto himself that could affect his career. There are plenty of examples from the Orioles of the early 1960's who had great success, then had one stumbling block that led to more stumbling blocks, and those pitchers were never quite right again.

But there was also Palmer. His career was threatened between beating Koufax and winning three Cy Young awards. His attention to detail (and stubbornness) prevented his career being an after-thought. Matusz needs to follow that example.

Making him miss some starts or sending him down to "work on some things" would be grossly counter-productive at this stage. It would make no sense to put him in the same category as the other young pitchers who have both flashed their brilliance and flamed out in a short amount of time in the bigs. Matusz moved beyond that by virtue of last year.

So, regardless of what the powers to be know or don't know, they are placed in a position of hoping against hope. If Matusz can regain his strength and conditioning, I hope he takes it a step further and makes a year-round commitment to it. If it happens without further or lasting damage, his confidence will still be his strength.

Agreed Mr. Schmuck. Let Bergeson or Tillman take his place until August.
Any idea on how Tillman is doing in the minors?
I feel like there has to be a better option than Matusz right now. They have got to think long-term with him.

I agree with you Peter, I think they should send him down to Norfolk to get things straightened out. The only problem then is who starts. It'd really be nice if Justin Duchsherer could get healthy.

Pete i truly like buck and believe he is eventually going to be a winning manager for this team. But there are times when he say's things regarding his players that i find strange, and i guess he say's them most of the time to protect them. Yesterday he said that brian might have to live with the velocity he has now for the rest of the season. Pete where does 4 or 5 miles off a fastball go, does it just disappear, unless you are hurt how does a young fit 24 year old lose his fastball.Now tillman lost his fastball and buck said he needed to go to the minor leagues and learn how to pitch , but in this case it's ok for brian to stay in the major leagues and experiment on how to pitch with anything but his best. Brian's fastball set up his other pitches, without it throwing just 87 his changeup doesn't nearly have the same effect. All of a sudden this young pitching staff doesn't look so promising like it once did. I still say that bill connor fouled this kid's mechanics up but nobody will admit to it. He pitched lights out for rick.

Who is to blame for the problems that our young pitchers are having. Last year they were just fine. This year high era's and lost of velocity. What is happening to our pitchers. Why don't management let Matusz get well and stop trying to rush him back.

Matusz strikes me as a player who's not humble. His interviews after a loss are just horrible. He talks about positives and what he learned. I get that, but you've got to be a man and say: I freaking stunk out there, and I will get back to the drawing board and prepare better. I'm not certain he understands the things he is doing wrong, because he is in denial.

I hear him one more time say "my stuff was good tonight", when he's throwing batting practice fastballs, I'm gonna vomit.

Send Matusz to Norfolk to work on his arm strength and not get his brains beat out in the AL East.

Now that Arrieta has an ailing elbow, we have Guthrie and Britton, and are trying to give Britton extra time between starts to keep his innings down. Jak is a gamer, but may not be a fixture as a starter.

It's time to bring up the kids and let the 2nd half of the season be an open audition for a spot on the starting rotation. The O's aren't going to make the playoffs, so let's see what we've got. There are a couple of guys at Norfolk, a couple at Bowie, and a couple at Frederick who are starting and have good earned run averages. Bring them up and see what they can do. Sign Bundy and bring up both him and his brother.

Let's start thinking about next year and the year beyond by auditioning the young guys who are hungry to make the big leagues.