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.

Duquette on Defense - Part II

In the last post, we looked at the Orioles infield defense in terms of John Dewan's Defensive Runs Saved (DRS).  In this post, we'll examine their outfield defense.  The idea spurned from comments made by Dan Duquette on Clubhouse Confidential.  The projected outfield for the O's this year is Nolan Reimold, Adam Jones, and Nick Markakis.

We'll start with Reimold.  Though this will be his 4th season in the major leagues, due to injuries and management decisions he has only received a little more than a season's worth of innings in the outfield.  Starting with 2009, his DRS by season are -3, 1 and 2.  UZR disagrees with his defense in 2009, giving Reimold a -7.9 UZR and a -13.9 UZR/150.  2010 and  2011 are fairly similar under both systems.  I'm not sure how to determine which system was better in 2009, so we'll just say that he didn't have a great year in the field in 2009 but he's been about average in 2010 and 2011.  There's nothing wrong with having average defense in left field as it's considered more of an offensive position.  Though the Brett Gardner's of the world would maybe like to change that perception.

Adam Jones is the most controversial player on the team in terms of measuring defense.  None of the systems seem to agree on the quality of Jones' defense.  The gold glove recipient in 2009, he has been all over the place in the defensive metrics.  The best way to look at it may be in a simple graph detailing his defense since he became the O's starter in 2008.

  

	DRS	UZR
2008	11	5.8
2009	5	-7.6
2010	1	-4.3
2011	-9	-8.7

The only time that there is any agreement on his defense is from last year when both systems agreed that he was really terrible.  DRS says Jones was a great defender in 2008 and progressively got worse each season.  2011 was the only year that DRS says he was a below average defender.  On the other hand, UZR thinks Jones was a poor defender going back to his gold glove year of 2009.  My opinion from having watched him over the years is that while he has really good range in going after balls because he's a good athlete, he doesn't take the best routes to balls or get the best jumps.  Both of these things would hurt him in the metrics since they both measure the number of balls he does or doesn't get to.

In right field, the hope is that Nick Markakis will be ready for opening day after his offseason abdominal surgery.  Assuming that he's ready or that he's ready shortly thereafter, let's see how he's done on defense.  Nick put up a +20 in 2008, but then put up lesser marks of -4, -2 and -4 the last 3 years.  +20 is incredible; he should have won the gold glove in 2008, not in 2011.  Maybe it was a makeup call. Nick seems to have turned into a slightly below average fielder.  Already 28 years old, we probaby don't have a lot of improvement to look forward to.

This was a fun look at the DRS statistics of the projected starting Orioles defense this year.  It seems that some of the O's are overrated on defense such as Jones and Markakis.  But maybe Wieters is even better than we thought and Reynolds may not be as terrible as everyone thinks.  I'd be interested in looking at how Duquette uses DRS to acquire or get rid of players.  That's a little hard to look at considering the Orioles didn't pick up any hitters of note in the offseason.  We'll save that one for sometime down the road.