Earl Weaver Rules

Miguel Tejada things he’ll be back in the Orioles lineup after the minimum 15 days on the disabled list.  Will Carroll thinks otherwise and I tend to agree with his assessment.  You don’t see someone come back from a broken anything in two weeks and he compares the fracture to what happened to Derek Lee last year with the Cubs and that injury lingered all season.  This also makes the chances of trading him this year tat much tougher so it’ll probably be something that happens in the offseason.

The Andy MacPhail era has begun in Baltimore and I don’t know if he waved a magic wand or something but the Orioles aren’t doing all that bad.  Yeah, they dropped their last two but prior to that was a three game winning streak.  So since Perlozzo was fired, the Orioles are 3-3 and .500 ain’t all that bad when you’re an Orioles fan.

Probably the most impressive win was on Friday when Danny Cabrera took care of the Diamondbacks while the hitters took the wood to Brandon Webb.  Cabrera struck out six and while he still has two wins to go just to get up to .500, it’s something to build on.  He also got his ERA back under 5.00.  This was after six straight starts where he gave up at least three runs so not seeing any crooked numbers was a nice thing.

Brian Roberts has continued to rake and he now has an impressive six game hitting streak. In five of those games he had more then one hit and he’s seen his batting average climb from .305 to .324.   And he’s hit two of his four homeruns in his past three games.

Tonight, the Orioles start a three game set against the Yankees.  Tomorrow’s matchup of Roger Clemens versus Erik Bedard would make a great ESPN game but it looks like they’re showing the Mets/Cardinals game instead. 

I’d really like to see someone a site like this for the Orioles minor league affliates.  The Minor League Blogs network is looking for writers so if this is something you’d be interested in, drop me a line.  I’ve been told there’s even a little bit of money in it for the writer (yes, it’s hard to believe I get paid to write on this blog).

What more can you say then, this team stinks.  Yeah, they have some good players, and yes as Orioles fans we should be used to this, but it’s still a drag.  Nothing seems to quite go right for the Orioles.  Bruce Chen?  Danny Cabrera?  Heck, even Chris Ray have all been hyped but none of them ever lived up to expectations.  Chen is gone, Cabrera looks like a back end starter and Ray looks like a guy who’d be headed for middle relief if we had someone to replace him.

Of course all of that should be fixed right?  Sam Perlozzo is now gone and he must have the been problem.  Yes, I’m being saracastic.  I’m going to defend Perlozzo because he was hardly awesome out there but firing the manager probably isn’t going to bring this team back from the depths it’s sunk to.

It looks like Joe Girardi is the name being thrown around and I’m a little skeptical.  Yeah, he got a lot out of that Marlins team last year but you wonder if Peter Angelos wants the headache.  It’d be nice if we got him, but it also wouldn’t surprise me of the the Orioles picked up more of a company man.

What about Brian Roberts though.  That power thing he had going a few years ago is gone but he leads the team in just about everything.  Nick Markakis is also a guy who looks like he’s finding his own and he very well could drive in 100 runs on a pretty bad team which is impressive in it’s own right.  And Miguel Tejada is quietly having a nice season despite not belting a bunch of homeruns.

So this team has some parts, they just have to be put together.  You wonder if a front office move is next.  I’d hate to completely break down this team because I like a lot of the players but something, anything has to be done.  Sigh.

And it doesn’t get an easier as the Orioles roll into San Diego for three against the best of the National League.  Tonight we’ll see Steve Trachsel take on Jake Peavy.  Mr. Peavy is the early fav. for the Cy Young in the NL so I’m not holding my breath in this one.  In fact I might not even stay up past the third inning with it being on the West Coast.