Posts Tagged ‘Nick Markakis’

Nicky Mark Shows a Little Bark

Posted by darnold on Thursday, June 17th, 2010

In case watching Orioles baseball has made you feel like the team has already mailed it in, what with their apathetic attitudes and lackadaisical efforts, know that at least one Oriole has had just about enough of this crap, like us.

Nicky Mark sounded off to the Baltimore Sun’s Jeff Zrebiec earlier this week, and laced into his teammates for just the kind of scratch-your-head hitting approaches we fans have been grumbling about all year:

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On team needing better approach: “Sometimes, guys are going up there and it looks like they have no idea what they’re doing. I’m not saying that to bash guys. I want guys to be successful, I want this team to be successful, and I have to produce as well. I’m part of this. But it takes a lot more than one big bat. We definitely need that one guy who could hit you 40 home runs, but from top to bottom, you need guys getting on base. You need guys in there who have a plan, who have a clue and who know how to execute that plan and get on base. We don’t need every guy in this lineup trying to hit home runs. We’re paid to get on base and figure out how to score and drive in runs. You look at the Yankees. They have guys who can hit home runs but everybody in that lineup can get on base.”

On hitting coach Terry Crowley and player accountability: “You have to go up there with an approach. [Crowley] has 110 percent nothing to do with the way we are going about our business at the plate and on the field right now. You can have anybody come here and you still are going to have a couple of guys who are not going to change their approach and fix it. It’s worthless. You can point your fingers here and there, but it is what it is. You’re in the big leagues. You have to change your approach on your own. If you go up there clueless, you’re going to come back [to the dugout] clueless. It’s that simple.”

On direction of the club: “At this point, yeah, where are we going? I know we have a lot of injured guys, we’re in the toughest division in baseball and we’re a last-place team. But at this point, it’s mind boggling. You don’t even know what to think, but you still have to be professional and go out and play every day.”

You gotta feel for Nicky Mark. The guy’s power numbers are (way) down, but he has his average back up to .300, and his .394 OBP is 18th in the Majors (thanks Camden Chat). He is a #2 hitter being forced into a #3 slot because his team is ridiculously terrible, he just signed a long-term deal and is seeing his team get progressively WORSE, not better. He’s always been the quiet clubhouse type, so maybe this is him realizing that hey, if the coaching staff aren’t going to hold anybody accountable, than SOMEBODY better start speaking up? Hopefully he is in his teammates’ ears privately, specifically the ones he called out anonymously in the article.

This is Birdland.

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Lots of Baseball Left, but a First Week to Forget

Posted by darnold on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

It took the Orioles all of one week’s worth of “real” games to pretty much squash that whole “hope springs eternal” feeling of Spring Training baseball.

The fact that last night’s paid attendance of 9,129 was the lowest in the history of Camden Yards just underscores the point that the O’s are walking a very thin line with the fans, as the small number of remaining die-hards continues to dwindle year after year. The performance of the team on the field has been completely uninspired, and a 1-6 mark after the first week is worse than even the sky-is-falling-est O’s fans could have foreseen. In reality, they are very lucky to not be 0-7, as their one victory was a 5-4 nailbiter that saw the Rays load the bases on closer Mike Gonzalez in the bottom of the ninth.

The one team that they were supposed to finish ahead of in the AL East this season, the Toronto Blue Jays, just swept them at home. Apparently, nobody told the Jays that it was their turn to be relegated to the basement.

With the exception of Gonzalez, the Orioles’ pitching has not been the issue through the first week. The starters haven’t let the lumps they were taking in Sarasota carry over into the regular season. Jeremy Guthrie and Kevin Millwood have pitched 13.1 and 12.2 innings, respectively, over their first two starts, with Guthrie’s ERA at 4.05 and Millwood’s at 2.13. David Hernandez gave up just 2 runs over 6 innings in his first start, and Brian Matusz just 2 runs and 2 hits over 5. However, those quality starts have not translated to wins, as Guthrie is 0-2, and Millwood and Hernandez 0-1.

The problem has been the extreme lack of offense. The O’s are second-to-last in the Major Leagues with 20 runs scored (only the 0-7 Houston Astros have scored fewer), and their team batting average of .232 is 10th out of 14 American League teams. Their .365 slugging percentage is worse, 12th in the AL. They are a dismal 9-for-57 (.158) with runners in scoring position for the season, and just 1-for-17 with RISP over their last three games, all losses.

Will those numbers improve? Of course. Nick Markakis won’t hit .143 all season. Adam Jones won’t hit .233 and Miguel Tejada won’t hit .207. Someone will EVENTUALLY hit more than one home run. Brian Roberts will (hopefully) be back. Comparatively, in 2009, the O’s were 5th in the AL with a .268 batting average as a team.

Still, knowing that the hitting numbers WILL improve does nothing to alleviate the wincing pain of that 1-6 start. Despite what some of the Orange Kool-Aid Brigade will try to convince us, these games COUNT! Just as much as games in July or September, unfortunately. The apologists accuse Baltimore fans of bringing our football mentality to baseball season.

First off, who could blame us for wishing the orange team was more like the purple one? That aside though, their point has a hint of merit. In football, we treat every game as life and death because there are only 16 of them all season, and that one loss can easily mean the difference between playoffs and an early offseason. The baseball season is over six months long, and each team will play 162 games during the course of the year. So, basically, every 10 baseball games have the impact of one football game; that is, a single loss during the NFL season carries the weight of 10 during the MLB year. The O’s have played just 4.3% of their schedule – that would translate to late in the third quarter of the Ravens’ opening game.

Yes, there is PLENTY of baseball left to be played. But for a fan base that was promised, and was banking on, improvement THIS season, in year three of Andy MacPhail’s “plan,” it’s just very tough to suppress our frustrations at being in last place, again, already. Especially when we witness the same kind of inexcusable fundamental breakdowns from our team (Adam Jones, Luke Scott-Ty Wigginton getting picked off last night) that were so prevalent in recent seasons, and that we were told were a thing of the past.

Let’s get it together, birds.

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O’s Pick Up Right Where They Left Off, but Fans are Torn

Posted by darnold on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

The Baltimore Orioles opened up 2010 by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as has pretty much been their staple over the past decade-plus.

The O’s had plenty of chances to seal this game before Mike Gonzalez ever even took off his jacket in the bullpen. They were an abysmal 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position, and, despite putting up 9 hits, the Orioles’ only three runs came on solo home runs – one each by Adam Jones, Luke Scott, and Matt Wieters.

All of that was a moot point by the time the bottom of the ninth rolled around though. The Orioles debuted their new $12 million closer, who started off strong by whiffing Pat Burrell, but would fail to record another out. Carl Crawford’s bases loaded single scored the tying and winning runs, and just like that, the O’s were in the loss column despite never having trailed in the game.

After the game, in the Facebook and Twitter universes, O’s fans were going at each others’ throats in quite a disturbing manner. Cries of the “ugh, we’re terrible again!” sky-is-falling variety were met with “it’s only one game you fairweather fans!” replies from the orange kool-aid brigade.

If nothing else, it’s at least good to know that a team that has become so irrelevant to the rest of the baseball world can still elicit such emotions from the home town faithful. When (and I do mean when) the O’s return to relevance, you can rest assured that the stands at Camden Yards will again be full night after night – of that I am reasonably certain.

However, I find myself somewhere in the middle of the two fanatical extremes pointed out above. Both sides have very valid points, to my mind.

Yes, this is simply one of 162 games. It is equally true, though, that losses DO count in April. As Rob Long pointed out on his show on FOX1370 today, “the Orioles are not 0-0*. They are 0-1.”

Yes, there were plenty of good signs – Matt Wieters picked up right where he finished 2009, stroking a home run and barely missing another; Adam Jones hit the ball hard several times; Luke Scott launched one that might have just landed; Nick Markakis had a typical Nicky Mark game: walk, outfield assist, opposite-field double; Kevin Millwood, while unspectacular, was solid; The bullpen, right up until Gonzalez, was near perfect. These are all obviously good things. But they do nothing to alleviate the fact that the team lost the game in the end. You don’t have to be an eternal pessimist to say that the “culture of losing” in Baltimore is still alive and well after last night.

The ones that will accuse critics of being fair-weather fans, well…I just have to laugh. The term “fair weather fan” in itself implies that there are periods of, you know…FAIR WEATHER. Here in Birdland, we have been mired in a mix of “steady drizzle” and “torrential downpour” for the extent of recent memory. The clouds may be clearing on the horizon, but it’s still raining buckets on our heads. Indeed, the Baltimore baseball climate is one in which Al Gore would have trouble selling nary a single book – it hasn’t changed much.

To quote a guy from the other local team (you know, the one that wins): Bottom line, yes it was only one game. But, bottom line, every loss counts, and losing like that makes last year’s 98-loss season seem too close for comfort in that rear view mirror.

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