Kuzul

Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Jake Arrieta has thrown just one good game over the course of the last month and a week.

Considering that Arrieta was the Orioles’ Opening Day starter, and that the young man was supposed to step up and take on the role of being the club’s ace this year, that’s pretty pathetic.

It’s getting to the point where Arrieta goes out there and even the fans expect him to get shelled. Heck, he may even expect that of himself right now.

I like Arrieta. He’s got great stuff, and I honestly believe he can turn into a great pitcher. And because I like him so much, I want to see him go down to Triple-A.

Staying in the majors is doing him absolutely no good right now. Over the course of his last three outings, he’s thrown 13 innings and given up a whopping 19 earned runs. During that time, his ERA has jumped from 4.72 to 6.32. Wow, just plain wow.

But the strange thing is, he’s still showing the ability to get guys out and over power them, as evidenced by his June 3 start where he no-hit the Tampa Bay Rays through three before giving up four runs over the course of the next inning and two-thirds.

Or even yesterday’s start against the Phillies, where he went four innings and gave up an insane nine earned runs. Somehow, in between all of those 11 hits against him, Arrieta managed to strike out five batters. Five K’s over the course of four innings is nothing to scoff at.

Basically, Arrieta has the stuff and he has the skill. All he needs to do is harness that talent and become consistent with it. But we all know that that’s a lot easier said than done.

A return to Triple-A would benefit Arrieta greatly right now. After last night’s game, Arrieta was quoted as saying: “I’m just kind of lost right now,” and that this was easily the toughest stretch of his career. MASN blogger Roch Kubatko also stated how Arrieta “has exuded confidence from the first day that he stepped inside a major league clubhouse in spring training.”

Not anymore.

Clearly, Arrieta needs a confidence booster because the game of baseball is as much mental as it is physical. Being in a bad place mentally will almost certainly mean a poor showing on the field.

For that reason, Arrieta needs to return to Triple-A for at least a good four or five starts in order for him to regain his confidence and learn to better locate his fastball. Good pitching starts with good fastball command, and if Arrieta can figure that out and build up his confidence by dominating Triple-A competition, he can return to the bigs with a new air about himself.

Arrieta needs to return to the minors, for the good of the team, and for the good of himself.

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Josh Hamilton hit for the “cycle” Tuesday night against the Baltimore Orioles. But when the ball flies out of the park, they don’t let you stop at first, second or third.

Hamilton hit four two-run home runs against the shell-shocked Orioles. He finished a perfect five-for-five with eight RBIs.  He now sits at 14 homers on the year with 36 RBI and appears to be steam-rolling toward another MVP award.

The first two long balls came at the expense of Orioles starter Jake Arrieta, who was coming off eight shutout innings against the New York Yankees in his last start. Hamilton’s third came off Zach Phillips and the fourth off of Darren O’Day. 

It’s somewhat surprising the O’s lost by a final tally of only 10-3.

Hamilton also set a new American League record with 18 total bases in one game and he set a personal best with those eight driven in. He also doubled in the fifth inning as he was perhaps pacing himself, taking a moment to rest at second.

The Rangers are now 20-10 and have tied the St. Louis Cardinals for the best run-differential in baseball at +65 (going into the Cardinals late game against Arizona).

He is the first player to have a four-homer game since Carlos Delgado did nine years ago with Toronto.

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Any success the Baltimore Orioles have this year depends heavily on the performance of several young players trying to prove that they belong in the MLB.

If all of these players improve and have solid seasons, the Orioles will win.

If all of these players regress and have bad seasons, the Orioles will lose.

In all likelihood some of these young players will meet expectations and others will fall short.

Here is a look at five of these players and whether they will step up to the challenge or fall flat on their face. 

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Just as it was last year, the Baltimore Orioles have everything riding on the shoulders of one very fragile piece of the team:

The young pitching.

We all saw how that turned out last season. But again, we look towards a season with our team banking everything on the young arms in the system—Jake Arrieta, Zach Britton, Brian Matusz and Chis Tillman.

Arrieta and Britton pretty much have starting jobs to lose in spring training. Matusz will need to prove he’s healthy and in shape after an historically bad season in 2011. Tillman, well… The O’s would be lucky to get even a serviceable starter out of him at this point.

Even if Arrieta and Britton secure their big league rotation spots, they still need to take steps forward. And Matusz needs to return to the form he showed in late 2010, after Buck Showalter took over as manager of the team.

If those things can happen, the O’s will have an honest shot at topping .500 this season and, if they’re lucky, an outside chance at securing the Wild Card.

Looking at their lineup, it isn’t the greatest, but it isn’t terrible either. There’s plenty of teams who have had success with a lineup that isn’t nearly as productive as the Orioles’ is. The Tampa Bay Rays are one team that comes to mind. The San Francisco Giants that won the 2010 World Series is another.

Want to know why they had success?

Pitching. Young pitching. Lots of good, young pitching.

The Orioles’ defense isn’t terrible either. It could improve and it’d be nice to see it improve, but it’s okay right now, especially if we have another losing season approaching.

The offense could hold it’s own as a winning team and the defense would be acceptable. It’s the pitching, it’s always the pitching.

Everyone knows how the team performed in late 2010. That happened because the pitchers were pitching at a high level.

The O’s hovered around .500 for the first couple months of the 2011 season because the pitchers were pitching alright. They weren’t pitching wonderfully, but better than us fans had been used to seeing.

When a team’s pitching falls apart, the team falls apart. Everyone knows that.

But strong pitching can carry a team to a winning season, the playoffs and even a title.

If the young pitching decides to grow this season, the O’s could be in good shape.

If not, brace yourselves for another long season, Orioles fans.

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Apparently, the Baltimore Orioles front office is leaving next season all up to the young starters again.

Gee, that sure as heck fared well during the 2011 season.

But on a serious note, it appears as though the success of the Orioles will depend on how the group of young pitchers, particularly Jake Arrieta and Zach Britton, grow and blossom.

The two pitchers mentioned above definitely weren’t terrible last year. Britton put up a nice season for any rookie pitcher, but he isn’t content with it. Arrieta had his faults, but was astronomically better than either Chris Tillman or Brian Matusz were.

(Matusz put up the worst single-season earned run average of any starting pitcher in history with at least 10 starts during the season.)

Ideally, Britton will only improve, Arrieta will come back from bone spur surgery and continue to grow and Matusz will return to the form he showed in late 2010. If that happens—and that’s a huge if—then that puts the Orioles in a great position to make a run at a winning record, and maybe a Wild Card contender if they’re lucky.

After all, good young pitching is a big key to winning. Just ask the Tampa Bay Rays, or the 2010 World Series champion San Francisco Giants. The Orioles offense is better than either of those teams’ offenses, but their league-worst pitching is what kills them.

At least this coming season, there’s going to be a lot more pitching depth to take the pressure off the youngsters and staff veteran Jeremy Guthrie. Orioles general manager Dan Duquette has added to the major-league ready starting pitching depth with the additions of Dana Eveland and Japanese imports Tsuyoshi Wada and Wei-Yin Chen.

Of the three, Chen seems to be the only sure thing for next season’s rotation out of spring training, and the pitcher with the most upside.

However, all three present better options than what former GM Andy MacPhail brought in last season to provide depth: an oft-injured Justin Duchscherer who was a low-risk, high-reward option, but only ended up throwing two innings for the Orioles in spring training, and never donned the O’s uniform in another game.

And there’s also Alfredo Simon, who can step in and make some starts if another starter becomes injured or is ineffective.

The outlook for the pitching staff currently looks a bit better for this year than it was in 2011. However, the Orioles will not compete unless the pitching staff is improved and/or the young starters make huge strides during the season. The most realistic optimistic expectation is to hope for the pitchers to improve and the Orioles to have a 70- to 80-win season.

This team needs a lot of work, on every front of the game. But if the pitching improves greatly, then so would the team’s record. The offense and defense are good enough to help the pitching win, if the pitching can help the offense and defense.

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