With another Belfry Week in the rearview mirror, it's time to make some observations on--what else?--the state of the Orioles.  I find it quite helpful to actually observe the team play over the span of a number of consecutive days since I very seldom see the club play on TV.  This past week allowed me to observe six straight games--we mercifully skipped the Sunday marathon--shortly after viewing at least parts of all three games the Orioles played against the Cubs the previous week.

So what I did learn after all of this concentrated Bird watching?  In no particular order...

1. The O's starting rotation remains a creaky, unreliable entity that is putting extreme pressure on the bullpen.  Daniel Cabrera and Jeremy Guthrie remain capable of giving the team decent starts over six-plus innings, but it goes downhill in a hurry from that point.  Brian Burres, basically, isn't a major league starting pitcher, a fact that is demonstrated with increasing certitude with each passing start.  Radhames Liz remains very much a work in progress; he's going to have to become far more comfortable with his offspeed pitches if he's ever going to have a chance to become a consistent, effective big league starter.  Garrett Olson is going to have to figure out a means to put hitters away at the big league level if he's ever to reach a point beyond being a backend starter on a mediocre club.

2. The Orioles understand the above, but they have essentially run out of rotation alternatives within the organization.  Adam Loewen is out, probably for the year, with a recurrence of the stress fracture in his elbow.  Steve Trachsel flopped.  Olson and Liz have been recalled.  Matt Albers, a possible rotation replacement, is now out for the year with a torn labrum.  Troy Patton has missed the entire year with the same injury.  Hayden Penn has spent the season either hurt or pitching poorly at Triple-A Norfolk.  Former minor league starter Jim Johnson has filled a critically important role in the major league bullpen.  The club has shown a (welcome, I think) reticence to promote players from AA ball and the remaining starters at Norfolk are journeymen--Quad-A types at best--who are stinking up the International League.   The Orioles are more or less stuck with the current set of options unless they go outside the organization and the options there are of either limited (or non-existent) utility or are simply out of the question for a team at the present developmental level of the O's.

3. The bullpen itself is starting to sag significantly, partly a function of overwork because of the aforementioned unreliability of most of the rotation, partly a function of injury creep.  Albers, Randor Bierd and Jamie Walker (who never pitched well on a consistent basis this season) are all out; now Loewen, Walker's replacement as the pen's sole non-closer lefty, is gone as well.  Ryan Bukvich failed miserably as a replacement for Albers and the club is now dealing with a second Greg Aquino stint, along with Fernando Cabrera and Lance Cormier, having already exiled Bob McCrory much earlier this season after two miserable performances.  The Birds recently recalled Alberto Castillo, a 33-year-old left-hander who spent seven years playing in independent leagues and was originally drafted as a position player.  The only relievers who broke camp with the Orioles and have been on the 25-man roster all year are Chad Bradford, Dennis Sarfate and George Sherrill; those three have made a combined 119 appearances to date and all are on pace to appear in at least 70 games this season.

4. Despite the occasional remark from a sports squawk radio miscreant, there is no sentiment to arrest the rebuilding plan. How quickly the Orioles can move that plan along, and how successfully they can implement it remains to be seen, of course, but there doesn't appear to be any hesitation about going forward.  This doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a flurry of trades of veterans for prospects prior to the July 31 trading deadline.  The potential to work out specific trades likely to benefit the team, rather than a half-baked, margin call-style transfer will either emerge in the next three weeks or it won't, but I think it would be a mistake to regard a lack of moves in the next few weeks as an indication that the Orioles have altered the team's basic long-term strategy.

5. Good thing re point #4 immediately above, because if there was any doubt in my mind (there wasn't, but still...) as to whether the Orioles were particularly close to assembling a contending team it was erased this past week.  We saw the Orioles play six games at Camden Yards--splitting them evenly--against the Royals and Rangers.  The Orioles could have won all six, and arguably should have won five of the six games and yet there was no mistaking the team's overall shortcomings and lack of alternatives.  Despite the better-than-expected performance by the team to date thus far this season, none of the broader pre-season concerns have really been allayed this year.  Questions about the lack of experienced pitchers and a rotation anchor, for instance, or the palpable absence of depth organizationally remain significant concerns.  Nothing we saw last week fundamentally altered anyone's perceptions.  In fact, if anything, the increasingly obvious inability of 60% of the team's starting rotation to regularly work through the fifth inning--among numerous other things--ought to cement the notion that there's still a long way to go before the Orioles are ready for prime time.  We're talking years here--plural.  This shouldn't be surprising or, for that matter, disappointing when in a cogent moment we remember that the legitimate rebuilding process began, slowly and in earnest, only a year ago and was faced with a series of stumbling blocks, many of which have yet to be overcome.

6. One worrisome sign about the pitching staff in general--and a broad number of pitchers in particular--is a very poor strikeout/walk ratio and the obvious difficulty Orioles starters have striking out batters.  In the six games we saw at Camden Yards, O's starters fanned a grand total of 19 batters.  For the season to date, the Orioles rank 12th in the American League in strikeouts per nine innings and 13th in walks per nine innings--not a confidence building set of measures.

7. While the Orioles measurably improved their offensive performance in June--and this viability carried over to early July and was in evidence during Belfry Week--there's the sense that the team could be no more than a couple of significant position player injuries away from a complete collapse.  The reemergence of Aubrey Huff--who was completely dialed in during Belfry Week--as a legitimately dangerous power hitter to complement the more widely expected performances of Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis has obviously made the Orioles' lineup more dangerous, particularly at the top.  But the club is paper thin with regard to position player depth and the Orioles have been very lucky that not a single key position player has been placed on the disabled list this entire season to date.  (I can't count a player who didn't have a job with a major league organization on opening day--think Cintron, Alex--as "key.")

8. Even though the team has exceeded the expectations of most by a wide margin, fans aren't exactly flocking back to the ballpark in huge numbers.  The draws--Kansas City and Texas--weren't particularly attractive, but during a week with essentially good weather (the only rain delay took place prior to the first pitch of Monday's game, and it only lasted for 30 minutes) during a time when school is out, I doubt the the Orioles sold 125,000 tickets in total for the six games we attended.  The upper deck was never more than 1/3 full for any of the games and we had no problem getting tickets in the 300-level section that we wanted less than an hour before first pitch, even on Friday or Saturday.  Unless the team ultimately tries to make some kind of big free agent splash--something I don't see MacPhail and Co. doing until the team looks far more poised to do lasting damage than is presently the case--it seems clear at this point that it's going to take some sustained winning before there's a significant turnstile uptick in the O's future. 

9. The cost of concessions at major league sporting events--this is certainly not specific to MLB generally or the Orioles in particular--is now officially completely out of hand.  For the second straight year during Belfry Week I purchased absolutely no food or beverages at the ballpark and avoided a second mortgage as a result.  A favorite activity between batters was estimating how much some poor sap of a fan carrying a large tray of ballpark fare back to his or her seat had dropped in the process.  The amount was often in the $50 range.  From a $5 bucket of whipped sugar (i.e. cotton candy) to Dippin' Dots (The Overpriced Ice Cream of the Present) to $4.75 for an order of heat lamp-preserved french fries to a $6 cup of foam (i.e. beer, allegedly), the pro sports concession racket is nauseating--in more ways than one.

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