Alex Kellner

[cross posted at NL Beast]

I will be heading to Camden Yards tonight to see Josh Beckett face off against Jeremy Guthrie. In light of that, this week’s AL roundup will discuss the Baltimore Orioles record thus far this year. The expectation of the Orioles coming into 2008 was that they would be vying with the Giants for the worst record in baseball. Having traded away star shortstop Miguel Tejada and ace Erik Bedard (and making attempts to trade away Brian Roberts, which may still happen), Baltimore was in a full-blown rebuilding process.

Peter Angelos, the owner of the storied franchise, ran the team into the ground and last year “handed”* the reigns over to Andy McPhail. McPhail definitely got good value for Bedard in centerfielder Adam Jones, which gives the Orioles a great young outfield with Nick Markakis and too a lesser extent Luke Scott (who came over in the Tejada deal).

*Angelos certainly didn’t hand over the team to McPhail. He is still meddling in trades and the day-to-day operation of the team. He is right up there with Jeffery Loria and the Nutting family as the worst owner in baseball. The Orioles fans deserve better, but he doesn’t appear to be leaving any time soon.

The Orioles have surprised baseball analysts thus far with what has been a better-than predicted-start, coming into tonight’s game at 19-19 and 3^rd place in the American League East ahead of the Yankees. However, it hasn’t come at the hand of good hitting as the Orioles are 12^th in the AL in runs scored. Their stars have not been carrying the team, as each have batting averages under .270 (Markakis .267, Roberts .257, Ramon Hernandez .215 and Jones .223). Their pitching has been carrying them, although it is only good enough for the 6^th best in the AL.*

*Guthrie, who was a contender for rookie-of-the-year last season, has not lived up to last years numbers. A star in the making, he is mired in a sophomore slump; or at least that’s what the Orioles hope. While certainly not pitching awfully, he is not the un-hittable pitcher he was for stretches last season.

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The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are continuing to play above everyone’s expectations, being lead by, of all things, their pitching staff. Yes, you read that correctly; I will give you a second to compose yourself. With Scott Kazmir back and the offense clicking, the Rays have won their last 5 games and come into tonight with a record of 22-16, half a game back of the division leading Red Sox.

Cliff Lee continues to pitch out of his mind for the Indians. Dave Cameron at FanGraphs says that Lee’s current stretch compares with Orel Hershiser’s first 6 starts of 1988 when he set the ML record for consecutive scoreless innings. The Indians are 1.5 games back of the Minnesota Twins in the AL Central, whom they will likely overtake soon.

Last week’s favorite baseball site of the week was Joe Posnanski’s blog. This week, I suggest you check out FanGraphs. It’s got a very cool tool that maps out WPA (Win Probability Added) as the game progresses. Check out the Rangers-Mariners game from last night as an example.

Goose Gossage thinks that Joba Chamberlain celebrates too much. I agreed with the argument that hitters couldn’t get away with Joba’s screams until I thought about Manny Ramirez’s tendency to pose after homeruns. I think both Joba and Manny should stop showing people up (especially when Manny’s poses on balls that occasionally end up being outs). However, I tend to think that if it’s more acceptable for the sure-thing all-star than it is for the rookie. Joba may one day become one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but he isn’t yet, and for now he needs to stop the celebrations (note: take that for what its worth from a Red Sox fan).

ESPN ran an interesting piece on Yu Darvish, a 21-year-old pitcher that has been untouchable in Japan. The article claims he’s the next Daisuke Matsuzaka. Daisuke by the way has the most deceiving statistics of anyone in baseball. His 2.45 ERA is 5^th in the AL, but his walks are way up and his BABIP is very low, which leads to my belief that his ERA will rise fairly soon. As a Sox fan, he is infuriating to watch pitch because of his tendency to nibble outside the strikezone and avoid using his changeup (his best pitch by many accounts).

Asdrubal Cabrera turned the 14^th unassisted triple play in Major League history last night. It was a great diving catch, but as with any unassisted triple play, luck played a major role in it.

First he’s a poet now he wants to be win a gold glove*. The Boston Herald reports [Thanks Buster Olney]:

“I think I’m the best ever to play left field in Boston,” the slugger said.

Manny does judge the bounces off the Green Monster fairly well, but that does not mean he plays a good left field. Discounting his performance on the road, Manny still isn’t a good fielder at home because of his judgment of balls that don’t hit the Monster. When you take into account his road performance Manny is consistently one of the worst left fielders in baseball.

Chalk this up to Manny being Manny.

*The Gold Gloves are the most ludicrous awards handed out by major league baseball. Sabermetrics have shown that Gold Glove winners are rarely the best fielders at their position, and sometimes the winners are some of the worst fielders.

MoveOn announced the winner of their Obama in 30 seconds advertisement contest, and the winner was a bit of a surprise. The advertisement, “Obamacan”, features a veteran who has been a Republican “since before [he] was allowed to vote” talking about why he voted for Obama.

While, I like this ad, I think that some of the runners-up were much better. I particularly liked “It could happen to you.”

Advertisements created by non-campaign staffs have been one of the major story lines of this campaign. From the Hillary 1984 video making waves to the Mitt Romney Jumpcut Ad contest, this is clearly a phenomenon that is here to stay. For all the worrying of political consultants about message control, it will be interesting to see how campaign managers deal with the growing trend of DIY advertising in the future.

The general consensus of the talking heads is that the drawn out Democratic primary is hurting the party’s chances in November. The argument is that Obama was the clear winner of the primary after Wisconsin and the subsequent 2.5 months of attacks on the “presumptive nominee” have hurt him. Obama’s momentum has clearly slowed since his 10 straight wins and the Clintons have now done much of the Republican’s opposition research for them.

I tended to agree with this line of thinking; that Clinton should have dropped out for the good of the party after Wisconsin. However, a good post by Todd Beeton of MyDD got me thinking that perhaps the elongated primary could be a good thing. Todd argues that the number of new voters the Democrats brought into the party in the primary season will end up helping the party more than the negativity within the party has hurt it.

I’m not sure whether he’s totally correct, but it definitely is a more positive way of looking at the long primary. I strongly believe that  polling data that suggests that a significant number of Clinton primary voters will vote for McCain or stay home in the general election is greatly exaggerated. In the heat of a primary voters will answer this question based on passion, but when the party unifies around Obama and it gets closer to November they will fall back to the party line. However, clearly the poll isn’t completely wrong and it begs the question of how different the numbers would be if the primaries ended in February.

Thanks to Chris Brooks for passing this along to me. I watched it about 5 minutes ago and just was able to stop laughing long enough to write this post.

I give props to Mike Gravel for having a sense of humor and for giving twitter a mention at the end (even if he probably has no idea what twitter is).  But, really any time a politician does the soulja boy dance is enough to have me rolling on the floor laughing.