When I saw that Cliff Lee had signed with the Philadelphia Phillies around midnight last night, it got me thinking about a few things:
The top four of their starting rotation is so stacked, they can afford to leave their offense the way it is—balanced but not loaded like the 2010 season (due to the departure of Jayson Werth)—and still win many, many games.
The Baltimore Orioles, too, are looking at having a more balanced lineup in the 2011 season than they did in the 2010 season with the remaking of the left side of their infield with the additions of Mark Reynolds and J.J. Hardy. Assuming they can grab a solid first baseman (we're all hoping for Adam LaRoche), then their lineup suddenly becomes even more balanced, much like the 2010 World Series champion San Francisco Giants lineup was.
The Orioles have five young starters, four of which saw big-league action last year, who have great potential pitching in the bigs. Orioles fans saw that potential shine the last two months of the 2010 season, once manager Buck Showalter took over, as he saw his young rotation pitch to a 3.16 ERA under him.
Pitching is everything.
The Giants proved that statement during the 2010 World Series, when they averaged a modest 3.9 runs per game during that set with the Texas Rangers. They won it all with good pitching.
Now that the Phillies have a rotation that includes four aces, they don't need to worry about replacing Jayson Werth's production.
And that's the kind of team the Orioles are going to need to have in order to compete in the AL East: a balanced lineup with some of the best pitching in the league.
Many of the pieces are already in place: The faces of the franchise, second baseman Brian Roberts and right fielder Nick Markakis are locked up for the long term. Adam Jones and Matt Wieters have high ceilings, and both have made strides in their careers already. Left fielders Felix Pie and Nolan Reimold also are players who have good potential, and with Showalter at the helm, the possibility of that potential being reached is very good. Luke Scott helps bring some veteran balance to a young lineup, and if LaRoche or, say, Derrek Lee were signed to play first, they would do the same. Newcomers Reynolds and Hardy have both produced in their careers offensively, and are solid defensive players.
But even that isn't the most exciting part of the Orioles' potential. Starters Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta, Brad Bergesen, Chris Tillman and Zach Britton are all guys whose potential is awesome, Matusz's especially. That's where the comparison to the Phillies' new staff of aces and the Giants' great pitching comes into play.
It might sound crazy, but the Orioles' young pitchers have the potential to compare to those two staffs in the sense that they will be great and they will be the leading factor for the Orioles becoming a playoff team again. The Orioles don't have the funds to compete with the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox in the AL East. Look at the guys Boston just added. There's no way the O's could pull that kind of thing off, especially after 13 consecutive losing seasons. And now is the best time to take advantage of the situation.
While the Red Sox got a lot better over the MLB winter meetings, the rest of the division has only gotten worse. The Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays have all lost guys, with the Rays taking the biggest blow. Now, I understand that the offseason is still early and there's plenty of time for each team to improve, but there's not much left on the market for any of them, and with the Rays not having large economic resources and the Yankees losing their man in Cliff Lee, there's definitely an opening coming in 2011 for the Orioles to bounce back and at least have a .500 season.
For that to happen, Buck's going to have to keep up whatever he was doing with his pitching staff when he took over. Sure, the bullpen still needs a lot of work, but I'm confident that Andy MacPhail is going to address that as the offseason continues, and I'm happy with what he's done already in bringing back Koji Uehara, going hard after Kevin Gregg, signing a potential steal in Jeremy Accardo and letting go of Matt Albers.
Matusz, Arrieta, Bergesen, Tillman and Britton, along with veteran Jeremy Guthrie, are what are going to turn this ship around, not some high-profile free-agent fielders. A lineup that's solid up and down—not a few good guys with a big free-agent bat thrown in the middle of them—a pitching staff that can make an opposing team cringe with every rotation turn and a shutdown back end of the bullpen, along with great defense is what the team needs to beat the Beasts of the East. And that's what's coming.
If you read the paragraph above and thought, "Well duh! That's what every team needs to win!" then you need to read the article again. Because it isn't necessary for every team to create in order to win. It's what's needed to compete in the AL East if you're not the Yankees or Red Sox.
The cavalry is coming.
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