Any loss to the Yankees is a bitter loss, but what made today's series-closing defeat particularly depressing was that the Orioles got a not-terrible performance from their starting pitcher, Alfredo Simon. Everyone expects starting pitching to be the worst feature of this team, and it almost certainly will be. This is not because the Orioles are making a necessary sacrifice while they wait for their can't-miss young arms to come up in 2010 or 2011. It's because they refused to pick up any medium-priced stopgapveterans--treating the back three-fifths of the rotation this year the way they treated the shortstop position last year, as a gaping unfilled hole, to symbolize the fact that it's just too tough and expensive to send a full, actual major-league team out to play 162 games every year.
So sooner or later, unless the Orioles get phenomenally lucky, and unless Mark Hendrickson turns into someone other than Mark Hendrickson, they are going to consistently get their brains beaten in, from the first inning on, between 40 and 60 percent of the time. And not long after that happens, the bullpen will be shredded to pulp, the way it was last year. And despite having a solid lineup, a good defense, and an outfield that is better man for man than the Yankees' outfield, they will lose a lot of games.
I hope I am wrong about this. I also hope I win the Powerball next time the jackpot gets big, so I can buy The Sun before it goes out of business.
At any rate, what was disheartening about the Yankees series, despite the two wins, was that if anything, the bullpen seemed to be trying to fall apart before the starters could put any strain on it. Yesterday, Japanese baseball pioneer Koji "Pumpsie" Uehara pitched a decent game, and the hitters provided plenty of run support. Then, when it was all but over, Dennis Sarfate came on. Watching Sarfate pitch--with his plunging curveball, live fastball, and random pitch placement--is like watching a man try to put out a kitchen fire by switching randomly back and forth between using a fire extinguisher and using a propane tank. An easy win turned into a panic-inducing near-collapse.
Today, Alfredo Simon pitched five adequate innings and handed the ball to Brian Bass. And watching Brian Bass pitch? Watching Brian Bass pitch was like watching a man try to put out a kitchen fire using a spray can of Pam.
