As the hapless Orioles prepare to end what they're now calling "the Felix Pie experiment," here are some numbers to consider:
1. CF/RF, age 24: 364 career plate appearances, 13 doubles, 4 triples, 1 HR, .212 average / .272 OBP / .286 SLG
2. CF/LF, age 24: 348 career plate appearances, 14 doubles, 4 triples, 4 HR, .213 average / .278 OBP/ .315 SLG
No. 2 is Pie, one month into his age 24 season and apparently on his way to the end of the bench, if not to waivers. No. 1 is Brady Anderson.
I should note here that I hated the 24-year-old Brady Anderson. I hated the 25-year-old Anderson (.207 / .324 / .312) even more. By the time he was 26 (.231 / .327 / .308), I loathed him so much I turned my back on a game, staring out over the Memorial Stadium parking lot from the top row, when he came on to pinch-hit against the White Sox in a close game. He tripled.
So I am all too aware of how infuriating it can be to watch a young prospect with a lot of advance praise and no major-league results while he flails away at the plate, game after game, automatic out after automatic out. And Pie's automatic outs have been part of a disaster at the bottom of the order, in which the Orioles' 7 through 9 hitters have been worse than any other team's--including all the National League teams with the pitchers batting.
But I will be more infuriated if they take Pie out of the lineup.
Calling Pie's presence in the lineup an "experiment" is slightly but importantly inaccurate: Pie was not brought on as an experiment; he was brought on as a project. The Chicago Cubs gave up on him, despite his great minor-league numbers and his physical gifts, because he was not ready to hit major-league pitching, and they did not want to play him in a pennant race while he learned. The Orioles, having already announced that they were building for 2010 or 2011, thought they could give Pie the chance to learn on the job.
This is exactly the sort of thing the Orioles should have been doing all along through their last decade of futility, rather than wasting at-bats on mediocre-to-adequate Proven Veterans. Every time Kevin Millar or Jay Payton or Javy Lopez stepped to the plate, the Orioles were missing the chance to see if somewhere there might be someone younger and better waiting to work his way toward major-league success.
Felix Pie has been on the roster and in the lineup because there's a chance that, with enough live at-bats in the majors, he could become a valuable player. But Pie has to keep playing to do it. This is one case where paying attention to sunk costs is not a fallacy: if they give up on Pie now, they'll never see a return on his five dozen plate appearances. If he blossoms into a star somewhere else, the educational value of his unproductive at-bats for Baltimore will only help some other team.
It's also possible that Pie will be a total bust. The only way to find out is to play him.
And there are plenty of other Orioles who should have played their way onto the bench. Cesar Izturis was supposed to be so great defensively that his proven inability to hit could be forgiven. But he's kicking the ball all over the infield.
Gregg Zaun was supposed to scratch out a few hits and provide Veteran Leadership as the starting catcher while waiting to eventually lose his job to superprospect Matt Wieters. Zaun is a beloved Oriole, and his baseball savvy is not in doubt. You can see him work the pitchers, battling until he gets the pitch he wants--and then hammering the ball with all his might, till it dies a few steps inside the warning track. Wieters or no Wieters, he's done.
Last, there's Ty Wigginton. Wigginton has been "anxious," according to his manager. But his terrible April-into-May hitting isn't a psychological mystery. Wigginton is a player with one and only one major-league talent: clobbering left-handed pitching.
Unfortunately, Melvin Mora got hurt, and Aubrey Huff is now a tenured first baseman, rather than a Jeff Conine-style corner utility player. So the fill-in third-base duties went to Wigginton. As a result, he now has 60 at-bats against right-handed pitchers, and is hitting .183 / .210 / .200 in those. Felix Pie, the lefty batter, the guy who is playing too much, has only 48 at-bats against righties.
