Now that Patrick has shared with you a glorious vision of the future wherein Baltimore repeats as AL East champions, I’ve been tasked to come in and rain on the parade a little bit. I don’t think Baltimore will be quite as bad as I make them out to be here — and I certainly don’t think the Red Sox or Yankees will step in to fill the gap this season — but I could easily see any one of these bulletpointed doomsayings coming to pass this year without it being much of a stretch in logic. And if all of them come to pass — without any counterbalancing diamonds in the rough like last year’s seasons from Caleb Joseph, Zack Britton, and Steve Pearce — Orioles fans could be in for some misery.
(You can discuss this on the BSL boards here.)
- Chris Davis doesn’t turn back into Crush. With Nelson Cruz gone to Seattle, the O’s have lost a substantial amount of power production in the middle of the lineup…unless 2013 MVP runner-up Chris Davis returns to the conversation. There’s reasons to think he’s on track — his medication issues have been sorted out and he’s had a decent, if unspectacular, Spring Training so far — but if Chris Davis continues to be a high-strikeout, low-average guy with problems translating his massive raw power into game power like he did in 2014, the Orioles are going to be scrambling to find a way to replace Nelson Cruz’s bat in the lineup. Speaking of…
- Steve Pearce turns back into Steve Pearce. This is the second part of that conversation. Steve Pearce spent seven years being a part time platoon player who only saw action against lefthanded pitching before exploding onto the scene last year. If he falls back into being a specialist player — and the odds are fairly good he’ll do just that — then not only will the Orioles be left without the power production in the middle of the lineup they need, they’ll be left with a thoroughly uninspiring 1B/DH combo in Pearce and Davis to go with a thoroughly uninspiring COF batch in De Aza, Snider, and Young. At least if Pearce regresses to a platoon bat the Orioles will be able to platoon him with Young at DH and keep Young from getting his playing time in out in the field.
- Kevin Gausman doesn’t develop. Baltimore’s infuriating refusal to keep Kevin Gausman in one place filling one role for more than two weeks at a time or so shows every sign of continuing in 2015, and Gausman likely will not make the Opening Day rotation so that the team can continue to try to salvage the Ubaldo Jimenez contract. Maybe this works out and he is able to transition smoothly from reliever/spot starter to full-time starter next year. Or maybe his command and third pitch never fully develop, and he’s stuck as another pitcher that could have found great success somewhere else, but was drafted by Baltimore instead.
- We’ve seen Jonathan Schoop’s best. The Orioles need more offense from somewhere in 2015, and part of the plan is that somewhere is the developing bat of Jonathan Schoop. But there’s nothing that says a young player actually must get better as he ages into MLB. It’s entirely possible Schoop just never learns the plate discipline necessary to translate his tools into consistent MLB success. The good news is, unlike with Gausman, the Orioles seem content to give him support and stability at the big league level to figure things out. The bad news is, 500 PA of .600 OPS baseball is bad for people besides the guy hitting if it happens at MLB instead of AAA.
- JJ Hardy’s injury woes return. From 2009 to 2011, JJ Hardy missed games for the Twins and the Orioles in clumps: a couple games here, a couple there, a DL stint in this month, another one in that month. He still played over 100 games each of those seasons, but he’s a cornerstone of the Baltimore defense at the most important position in the field, and the Orioles relying on that defense to make their pitchers look better than they arguably are — if you’re not going to have an ace, you can’t have your premiere defensive shortstop getting hurt. And JJ Hardy is starting the 2015 season hurt.
- Ubaldo Jimenez remains Ubaldo Jimenez. The O’s are paying Jimenez too much money to simply banish him from the rotation without him showing them good cause for it, and there’s no way another team is going to bite on that contract for another year or two. It’s possible that Ubaldo’s bad enough that by the time the Orioles send him to the pen, he’s already done more than enough damage to help sink the season.
- J.P. Arencibia ends up as the team’s primary catcher. Matt Wieters still isn’t back behind the plate, with elbow tendinitis slowing his rehab, and with Wieters on the shelf and Caleb Joseph, Ryan Lavarnway, and Steve Clevinger all lacking the experience of catching a full season behind the plate, it’s not impossible to dream up a world where J.P. Arencibia becomes the Orioles’ primary catcher for 2015. Especially if Wieters’ elbow never really returns to the point where he can be throwing and the team declares him healthy as a bench bat/DH, which would be the worst of both worlds. Is that likely? No. Possible? You bet.
- More trade deadline nonsense. Remember when the Orioles traded Nicky Delmonico for K-Rod? Imagine a deadline with more fringe housekeeping moves like that — no huge impact acquisitions like Andrew Miller last year, just more nothing prospects for MLB players that won’t make an impact. Something like acquiring Nori Aoki from the San Francisco Giants to try and help fix the outfield might fit. Or trading for Carlos Quentin to try and shore up DH.
- The Red Sox are just as good as they say they are. The biggest thing that can hurt a team that hasn’t made many changes like the Orioles is everyone around them getting better. The Red Sox’ offseason signings of Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval, and Rusney Castillo are worrying, but only if their rotation — now anchored by Clay Buchholz and featuring the likes of Wade Miley and Justin Masterson — doesn’t fall apart at the seams. All indications are that the rotation isn’t good enough to do more than tread water, but if the Red Sox know something everyone else doesn’t — or they fall backwards into career years from two or three of those guys — Baltimore could be in serious trouble.
- The Yankees stay healthy. If Masahiro Tanaka, Michael Pineda, and CC Sabathia all stay healthy and pitch like they’ve shown they can pitch in the past — and Ivan Nova returns strong from Tommy John surgery and Nathan Eovaldi steps up — the Yankees could easily have the best rotation in the AL East. Combine that with a good defense and a more than decent offense and, if the Red Sox bounce back too, by midsummer we could be left with an AL East that not only has the O’s on the outside looking in, but is truly the worst of all possible worlds: another Yankees/Red Sox two-team race to the finish line, with the Orioles, Jays, and Rays all fighting for third and fourth place. Again.
Jonathan Bernhardt
Jonathan is a contributing writer for VICE Sports. His work has previously appeared in Sports on Earth, Baseball Prospectus, The Classical, and ESPN’s SweetSpot Network. Born in central Maryland, Bernhardt currently lives in the New York metropolitan area.