Season Preview: Orioles



Photo by Steve Nesius/Reuters



I don't think anyone will be surprised that the Orioles are projected to come in 5th place in the AL East this season by my method or by anyone else's method of projecting team records this season.  The AL East has 3 of the best teams in baseball in the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays and another in the Blue Jays that is quickly taking the steps to get to their level.  Unfortunately, that leaves the Orioles in last place for the foreseeable future.  With a terribly tough division, the Orioles just don't have enough talent to seriously compete.  But let's see what they project to bring to the table this year.  The fielding component is from the Fangraphs fan projections, so it has the least amount of reliability of all the projections.  The hitting projections are from Dan Szymborski's ZIPS system.  To see how I compiled these projections and analysis, see my introduction to the series here.

Catcher

Role	Player	Bats	PA	ZIPS BA	ZIPS OBP	ZIPS SLG	Fielding	WAR
Starter	Matt Wieters	S	600	0.268	0.334	0.429	5	4.5
Reserve	Taylor Teagarden	R	100	0.197	0.264	0.345	0	0

Wieters is projected to have a very strong season at catcher for the Orioles this year with 4.5 WAR, which is actually a little bit lower than last season's 5.0 WAR.  The hitting projections are similar to his season last year, while the defense projects him to be closer to human after being other worldly last year.  I think this projection could actually underrate Wieters for the upcoming season as he could easily improve further in what will be his age 26 season.  The power really started to emerge towards the end of 2011, as he hit 12 home runs in August and September combined. If he carries his power surge over into 2012, Wieters could actually come close to all of the crazy expectations he had when he was coming up through the minors. 

As long as Teagarden's back injury doesn't sideline him too long, he should see about 100 pretty dull plate appearances.  If he misses time, odds are Ronny Paulino will fill in as Matt Wieters' caddy and provide similar nondescript performance.  This is the only position where the Orioles are projected to get the most WAR in the division. 

First Base

Role	Player	Bats	PA	ZIPs BA	ZIPs OBP	ZIPs SLG	Fielding	WAR
Starter	Chris Davis	L	450	0.250	0.299	0.440	0	0.5
3B Relief	Mark Reynolds	R	220	0.218	0.320	0.361	0	0.5
C Relief	Matt Wieters	B	10	0.268	0.334	0.429	0	0
Depth	Nick Johnson	L	20	0.223	0.350	0.318	0	0
Prospect	Joe Mahoney	L	20	0.254	0.299	0.380	0	0

The team is only projected to get 1.0 WAR out of first base this season.  Largely, that is the result of a poor season being projected for Chris Davis.  ZIPS does project him to hit 23 home runs with 72 RBI's so the projection isn't all terrible.  However, he'll really have to bring his thunder stick to the plate if he wants to make up for his projected .299 OBP.  The playing time projections imply that Davis loses his job at some point to Mark Reynolds, likely in August or so.  The only way that happens is if the O's find someone else to play 3B.  Maybe they could move Betemit to 3B and find someone else to DH, whether that's Reimold, Davis himself or maybe even Nick Johnson.  That is providing that Johnson makes it to August in one piece; realizing with his history that's pretty unlikely.

Second Base

Role	Player	Bats	PA	ZIPS BA	ZIPS OBP	ZIPS SLG	Fielding	WAR
Starter	Robert Andino	R	500	0.249	0.301	0.358	3	1.5
Reserve	Brian Roberts	S	150	0.265	0.332	0.411	-1	0.5
Prospect	Ryan Adams	R	50	0.260	0.307	0.381	-1	0

Brian Roberts is still recovering from his concussion problems, though he recently began taking batting practice and fielding ground balls. Still, there isn't a time frame for him to return to action so 150 plate appearances is all we can reasonably project at this point and even that is just a guess. The projected starter at the position, Robert Andino is projected to be slightly below average and accumulate 1.5 WAR. As the Orioles second baseman, his triple slash is projected to be .249/.301/.358 with a positive fielding number. The 28 year old is more than adequate as a back up infielder at 3 positions, but he's stretched a little bit in a full time role. Though his game winning hit to end the season against the Red Sox last season was a sublime moment for Orioles fans.

Dan Duquette on Defense

This is my first post ladies and gentlemen.  I will be primarily focusing on the Orioles but I may write about general baseball from time to time.  Everything I write about will have a sabermetric slant to it. I hope you enjoy my writing.

During this offseason, the show Clubhouse Confidential hosted by the great Brian Kenny on the MLB Network has quickly become a favorite of the sabermetrically inclined baseball fan.  Earlier this week, Dan Duquette, the GM of the Orioles was on the show to discuss the O's offseason and in particular his approach to advanced stats.  While the whole interview was extremely interesting for any fan and I'd recommend watching the whole thing here, the part that interested me the most was when Kenny asked Duquette what he thought was the biggest change in statistical analysis since his time as GM with the Expos in the early 1990's.  Duquette responded by saying the biggest change was in quantifying defensive statistics, and that he specifically likes John Dewan's Defensive  Runs Saved.

Defensive Runs Saved measures how many more or fewer plays a defender makes than league average and uses the compilation of the player's statistics to come to a final number of how many runs each player saves over the course of the season.  It is generally referred to as the plus/minus system.  After all of the plays are added up, a players's contributions are summarized in a nice round number.  Please follow the link for a more detailed explanation than I can provide here.

Since the General Manager of the Orioles claims to use the system, I figured I'd take a look at how the Orioles players fare to get a better idea of how the front office sees the players in terms of their defensive value.  The 3 O's players who are generally considered the best defenders are Adam Jones, Matt Wieters and J.J. Hardy.  Let's see if that holds up using DRS while looking at 3 years of data where possible.  Even the folks who created the various defensive statistics state that you can't make a determination on defense with less than 3 years of data.  The chart below gives some context to the numbers.

Defensive Ability	DRS
Gold Glove Caliber	+15
Great	+10
Above Average	+5
Average	0
Below Average	-5
Poor	-10
Awful	-15

Matt Wieters had a fantastic year with the glove behind the plate in 2011.  Donning the tools of ignorance, Wieters compiled a DRS of +14, which led the league for catchers by a considerable margin.  That total added about 1.5 wins of value to the team on defense alone.  And he's gotten better each year in the majors, starting with a -1 in 2009, following that with a +5 in 2010 and finally ending with the +14 we just talked about from last year. Wieters has also gotten better each year at throwing out runners.  Check out his percentage of runners caught stealing since his rookie year of 2009; it's pretty impressive.

2009 - 32%

2010 - 45%

2011 - 59%

Last summer, the Orioles traded Koji Uehara for Tommy Hunter and Chris Davis.  Since Chris Davis is projected to start at 1B this year, let's see how he fares in terms of DRS.  I'm only going to look at how he did at 1B since that is where he's projected to play this year, but it's safe to say he plays a below average 3B as well.  The last three years, the 26 year old has put up the following marks: -5, +1, -4.  Keep in mind that he hasn't been playing full seasons at 1B in the Texas Rangers loaded organization.  I think it's fair to say the Orioles projected first sacker this year is average to slightly below average at 1B.  If he's hitting for power, that's fine.  If not, he doesn't have his defense to rely on to provide value.  So he'll have to hit in order to keep his job.

It's impossible to know what the team is going to get out of Brian Roberts this year because of the concussion issues, but let's take a look at his defense if he does play.  Mired with injuries over the past 3 seasons, Brian compiled marks of -4, 0 and 1 over the last 3 years.  The 34 year old put up some great defensive seasons way back in 2003 and 2005, but it's safe to say his days of great defense are over.  The best we can hope for is average defense from the keystone position this year.

Shortstop J.J. Hardy was known for his good defense before he exploded for 30 homers last year.  In terms of DRS, he compiled a mark of +3 in 2011.  The two prior years were very similar.  It's safe to say that J.J. is still an above average shortstop but is no longer the gold glove caliber shortstop he was early in his career.  While he's hitting the way he did last year, he's an extremely valuable player.

Much has been made of Mark Reynolds' miserable defense at 3B last season.  According to DRS, the negative reaction was warranted.  He cost the team 29 runs more than an average third baseman.  That figure was more than twice the next worst third baseman.  However, there is a theory that players have off years in the field just like they have off years at the plate.  If there was ever a player who had a chance to test that theory, it would be Reynolds.  The two years prior, he was worth -3 and -6 runs below average.  Still not great, but not nearly the disaster we saw last season.  For the Orioles sake, let's hope that he had an off year and won't be this bad going forward.  If he is, I see a permanent move to 1B in his future.

Next time, we'll take a look at the outfielders.