Mark Reynolds Fails To Join Club

Mark Reynolds really let me down this year. When he was sent to the Orioles before the 2011 season, I had grandiose dreams of a 400 strikeout performance against the power pitching of the American League East. At 196 K's, he still led the AL in striking out but, for once, that wasn't the source of my obsession. If you follow me on Twitter, you already know where I'm going with this.

Thanks to Reynolds playing third base like a fawn wondering onto the interstate for the first time, he had a pretty good chance to hit 30+ home runs and produce no value. By no value, I mean a 0.0 Wins Above Replacement (WAR). Using Baseball-References version of WAR, only eight (8!) players have ever hit 30+ homers with an rWAR equal to or less than goose egg...

Rk		Yrs	From	To	Age
1	Dave Kingman	2	1982	1986	33-37	Ind. Seasons
2	Mike Jacobs	1	2008	2008	27-27	Ind. Seasons
3	Tony Batista	1	2004	2004	30-30	Ind. Seasons
4	Dante Bichette	1	1999	1999	35-35	Ind. Seasons
5	Joe Carter	1	1996	1996	36-36	Ind. Seasons
6	Cecil Fielder	1	1995	1995	31-31	Ind. Seasons
7	Cory Snyder	1	1987	1987	24-24	Ind. Seasons
8	Tony Armas	1	1983	1983	29-29	Ind. Seasons

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 9/29/2011.

In 1999, Dante Bichette was secretly replaced in the outfield with a can of Folgers coffee and nobody could tell the difference.

In 620 plate appearances, Reynolds hit 37 home runs and a .221/.323/.483 line. It's a pretty accurate picture of the player he has been over his five year career. But in 2011, his defense was off the charts poor and that gave him a chance to become the ninth player to join the club.

The Orioles, afraid of my Twitter campaign, moved Reynolds to first base. So, much to my chagrin, he finished the season with a 0.5 rWAR. He flirted with the zero mark several times down the stretch but, alas, it was not to be.

We were so close, people. So close.

What The Hell, Mark Reynolds?

I've always had a soft spot for Mark Reynolds because he swings and misses with great vengeance and furious anger. But something strange has happened during Reynolds' move from the NL West to the AL East. He's cutting back on the whiffs. Thirty-five games in to the 2011 season and Reynolds has a mere two three-strikeout games and nary a Golden Sombrero. And I'm starting to panic.

While Reynolds has cut his strikeout rate from 42.3% in 2010 to 32.2% this season, the rest of his stats are just as terrible as usual and he's stopped hitting for power. His .174/.287/.313 is the worst of his career as is his .139 ISO. Even his .221 BABIP is a career low, so hopefully he's been a little unlucky this year. But almost half way through May and only 37 strikeouts to his name, Reynolds looks doubtful to reach the 200 K plateau that he's hit each of the past three seasons. I mean last year he even had more strikeouts (211) than batting average points (.198).

Of course, Reynolds could still achieve that feat again because he might hit .160 this season. Without the thrill of the big home runs and strikeouts, Reynolds is just a below replacement level third baseman and a player even the Orioles shouldn't be penciling into the line-up. So please, Mark, for the sake of everyone, start closing your eyes and taking monstrous hacks again. We miss you.

Can Robert Andino Be An Everyday Shortstop?

Occasionally, MTD will swing by and answer questions posed by beat writers who have too much time on their hands.

Matt Vensel of The Baltimore Sun was recently wondering if Robert Andino can be an everyday MLB short stop after the Orioles were left with Andino and Cesar Izturis as the only available options after JJ Hardy went down with the, oh so popular, oblique injury...

Andino has made the most of his opportunity, validating manager Buck Showalter's decision to put him on the Opening Day roster as a utility infielder.

In eight games, Andino is batting .318 and he has a .400 on-base percentage. Both marks are tops on the team. He has also shown flashes of brilliance defensively.

After shaking the Magic 8 Ball, and subsequently waiting later to ask again because it's a jerk, MTD's answer is no. He cannot be an everyday shortstop. In 465 career plate appearances, Andino has recorded a .231/.281/.318 line. He might be above average with his glove but at, in a few days, 27-years-old he's unlikely to get to second base more than you did when you were fourteen and then again when you were eighteen.

PECOTA agrees that Andino doesn't have much of a major league career projecting him with another sub .300 OBP for 2011. This might be some very disheartening news to several of Andino's friends and family.

Buck Showalter Gets The Interwebs

The Baltimore Orioles snapped an 8 game losing streak Tuesday night exploding for 11 runs while shutting out the Twins. The Buck Showalter Express has been quite streaky this season after opening the year 6-1 before the aforementioned 8 game losing streak. Prior to last night's victory, Showalter was asked if his hitters were pressing. Now watch me blockquote an entire article from The Baltimore Sun...

Last night, after the Orioles dropped their eighth consecutive game, manager Buck Showalter admitted that his players were pressing. "Of course they are," he said. He then turned the attention to the reporter who asked the question and made an analogy about him pressing to produce stories with new-fangled technology.

“You’re pressing to come up with a great … whatever you call it," Showalter said at the post-game press conference. "I mean, that’s what you’re assigned to do. You know, whatever. Blog or blip, or whatever they call them. Or Tweets or Twocks. I don’t know. That’s what you’re paid to do. I got it. I got it.”

I assume he followed that with,"In my day, we used to have to call the bullpen with two cans attached by a piece of string and we had to carve our own bats from hobo carcasses we found on trains." Wow, it got a bit dark at the end of that made up quote.

Anyway, I'm glad that Buck "gets" that blipping and twocking are the future of sports media and isn't afraid that his iPhone will eventually enslave him. I tried to teach my grandpa to use a Wii and now he hides in his room all day from the "robot TV."

Buck Showalter Tries To Downplay Comments

Buck Showalter is awesome. From what I remember, he took over the Orioles half way through last season and managed them to the Maryland state little league championship. But he's become more famous for a recent article published by Men's Journal where he made some comments about Derek Jeter and Theo Epstein which he may or may not remember. I missed that article because I was under the assumption that stuff wasn't printed on paper anymore. So here's a summary from a website...

In the article, titled "Is This Man Too Smart for Baseball?" the magazine quotes Showalter as saying about Jeter: "The first time we went to Yankee Stadium, I screamed at Derek Jeter from the dugout. Our guys are thinking, 'Wow, he's screaming at Derek Jeter.' Well, he's always jumping back from balls just off the plate. I know how many calls that team gets — and yes, he [ticks] me off."

About Epstein, Showalter told the magazine: "I'd like to see how smart Theo Epstein is with the Tampa Bay payroll. You got Carl Crawford 'cause you paid more than anyone else, and that's what makes you smarter? That's why I like whipping their [butts]. It's great, knowing those guys with the $205 million payroll are saying, 'How the hell are they beating us?'"

Showalter goes on to say that he respects both Jeter and the Red Sox organization but I prefer to imagine that he had too many lunch cocktails during that interview and threw a wine glass at a bus boy wearing a Yankees hat.

Brady Anderson Teaching Mark Reynolds To Not Strikeout

Well, well. It looks like former Orioles star outfielder Brady Anderson has found a nice secondary career as a trainer/hitting instructor in Southern California. Working out in the sun all day sounds like a nightmare to me but I'm Irish and the most extensive lifting I do is moving a laptop around. I do some solid reps with six ounce adult beverages but that's just for tone not bulk.

Anyway, Anderson recently had a little Q&A with The Arizona Republic's Nick Piecoro and he spoke specifically about one of my favorite players...

Q: What have you been working on with Reynolds?

A: He gets himself in a situation where he's late, he waits until the last second and swings as hard as he can. That's a mechanical flaw - not him being stubborn. When you're late and you don't have proper rhythm and timing, you chase high fastballs with two strikes, you check swing and strike out on sliders in the dirt. ... It doesn't really matter that he strikes out. Sure, you'd like to eliminate them. You don't have to take them from 200 down to 100. Ideally with him, the difference in a tiny little incremental improvement, if he went from 215 (strikeouts) to 185 ... then the whole season changes.

I love Mark Reynolds but this is scary news for me. I spend way too much time during the season watching Reynolds' box scores awaiting just one more strikeout to crown him with another Golden Sombrero. He even won our first annual Golden Sombrero of the Year Award but, for some reason, still has not contacted me for his Off Base t-shirt prize.

Now, Reynolds is taking his Ks to Baltimore and has turned to Anderson for help. This is very disconcerting for me as I was fully expecting a 437 strikeout season against the power arms in the AL East. I'm no scout but in the 30 seconds that I took to skim this interview, it sounds like Anderson knows what he's talking about. Rhythm, timing and not striking out all sound like keys to not striking out.

I'm sure I've thrown around some perfectly unfounded opinions on Anderson's silly (steroidy?) 50 home run season but he only struck out over 100 times in just five seasons and his watermark was 111. Anderson was a 18.3% strikeout rate guy compared to Reynolds' fantastic (for me) 38.7% rate.

I'm not happy about this and will be monitoring the situation closely.

Mark Reynolds Moves Golden Sombreros To Baltimore

Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers dealt his free swinging third baseman to Baltimore for a pair of relievers to kick of the Winter Meetings. Mark Reynolds, still just 27-years-old, will provide some pop from the corner infield position as he's hit 32 and 44 home runs over the past two seasons. Unfortunately, the one thing he does better, much better, than hit home runs is striking out. Reynolds has struck out over 200 times in each of the last three seasons and is a good bet to continue that streak considering the quantity of quality power pitchers in the AL East. He could be looking at record shattering strikeout numbers in the near future. Of course, Reynolds already owns the records he'd be shattering but still...

Reynolds signed a fresh three-year, $14.5 million deal at the beginning of last season. But new GM Towers, seemed to be non too pleased with Reynolds' .198/.320/.433 line and 211 strikeouts. So Towers shipped Reynolds off to Baltimore for relievers David Hernandez and Kam Mickolio.

I have a special connection with Mark Reynolds because I document the great moments in plate futility here at Off Base. Reynolds won our first ever Golden Sombrero of the Year Award thanks to his four Golden Sombreros in 2010. He's a strikeout machine and a pure joy to cover. I'm looking forward to big swings and misses next year. The good news for Orioles fans is that I'll be covering your team more closely in 2011 and almost every post about Mark Reynolds will be accompanied by this picture of a drunk donkey wearing a sombrero.

Brian Roberts Concussed Himself?

Baseball has a long and grueling 162 game regular season. It's not unusual for a player to take a trip or two to the 15-day DL. How they get injured, well that's the fun part. Sammy Sosa hit the DL after a sneeze destroyed his back. Clint Barmes, and this might be my favorite, spent some time on the disabled list after falling down a flight of stairs while carrying deer meat. While Brian Roberts didn't make it to the DL to close the season, he's pretty sure he delivered the blow that led to his concussion-esque symptoms...

“I don’t know 100 percent sure, but it was Monday night. In frustration (after a strikeout), I whacked myself on the head with my bat in the ninth. I had my helmet on,” Roberts said. “It’s something I’ve done a million times, but I still can’t tell you for sure if that was it. But that’s the only thing that I can point to because that night and the next morning, I just didn’t feel good. So it’s been going on since then.”

Bo Jackson disapproves of Brian Roberts technique. I just spent a good 10 minutes trying to find a video of Bo Jackson breaking a bat over his head and came up empty. What's up Internet? Are we not cool anymore? Roberts will undergo a CT scan today in hopes to reveal the cause of his head pain. Roberts missed most of the first half with a herniated disk and only made 261 plate appearances. He posted a .278/.354/.391 line which wasn't too far below his career averages.

We hope Brian has a speedy recovery since concussions are all the new medical rage in sports nowadays. And I also bet my retirement fund on the Buck Showalter Express (34-23 this season) finishing above .500 next season. I'm not a wise investor.

Unrelated note: Brian Roberts' wife is hot.

Showalter Expected to be Next Fired Orioles Manager

The Baltimore Orioles announced the hiring of Buck Showalter as their new manager Thursday, meaning we can begin the countdown to his firing. Let's set it at 750 days.

Showalter is certainly known for turning clubs around. He helped build the Yankees to what they are today, and for that I thank him. After guiding the Yanks to their first post-season appearance in 15 years in 1995, Showalter moved on to manage the expansion Diamondbacks. During Arizona's first season, Showalter once walked Barry Bonds intentionally with the bases loaded, which is one of the stupidest decisions in the history of organized sport. In 1999, the franchise's second season, William Nathaniel won 100 games and a division title, but perhaps because of the Bonds' decision, or because AZ was afraid he would do it again, Showalter was let go following the 2000 campaign. After taking two years off to recommit himself to the bleach-blonde-hair lifestyle, Showalter took over in Texas, where the Rangers had finished in last place the previous three seasons. They finished last in Nathaniel's first season as well (Orioles parallel!), but Showalter finished third in each of his final three seasons in Arlington. If he can do that in Baltimore, they'll make him mayor.

The Orioles are on their third manager of the year after Dave Trembley and Juan Samuel combined to go 32-70. Showalter is expected to get win No. 33 sometime this season.