It looks like another meaningless second half of baseball for Orioles fans. At least sort of. There’s the hollow goals, like staying out of last place and not losing 100 games but probably more then any other year, Orioles fans have to be disappointed with how things are going. At eleven gaves below .500, the Orioles sit a distant 15 games back of first and they’re closer to the Devil Rays in last place then they are the Yankees in third.
Still, a strong second half would be something to build on for 2008. And a nice trade or two would also go along way. The Orioles should be sellers to a point, but you don’t want to lose your base that could be used to build on next year.
The pitching staff has been surprisingly good and that’s something you can never have too much of. Erik Bedard, even without the awesome performance he had last weekend, has established himself as a bonafide ace and then guys like Jeremy Guthrie have gotten it done as well. Danny Cabrera has been the biggest disappointment but even he still has that potential tag attached to him.
Nick Markakis, while not having an awesome year, has shown that his pedigree was legit. He has a chance to drive in 100 and hit 20 homeruns, and while that’s not terribly impressive, for this team, it is. Brian Roberts has also emerged as one of the better second basemen in the league.
The strange this is, the Orioles don’t have a ton of trade bait. Their biggest chip, Miguel Tejada, is on the shelf and they don’t have many guys who will be free agents next year. Erik Bedard has one more year of arbitration so he’s going nowhere (and he should get locked up long term if people are smart in the front office). So we’ll see how active the Orioles are in late July.
The Orioles open up against the struggling White Sox beginning tomorrow. Jeremy Guthrie gets the start and he’ll face Jon Garland. The White Sox are in a similar situtation to the Orioles although they’re two years removed from winning a World Series so a lot of their fans are probably in denial right now. And Orioles series win would probably knock that denial out of them.
