First Half Review: Second Half Needs

Having passed the halfway point of the season over the weekend and emerging from a disappointing series loss to Tampa, the O’s returned in action at Camden Yards last night with a resounding thumping of Texas. The O’s scored early and often en route to a 7-1 win over the Rangers. Manny Machado began serving his five game suspension last night and the O’s moved Chris Davis from first to third base. He played well in the field despite a throwing error.

Any objective review of the O’s first half would cause the observer to conclude that this team has a real chance to make the playoffs and perhaps win the World Series. Below is a position by position and player by player review of what the O’s need to not only make the post season but prosper.

Outfielders: The O’s outfield is the brightest spot on the team. Adam Jones has mixed just enough patience and discipline in with his unbridled aggression at the plate to be a consistent contributor. Nelson Cruz is the free agent signee of the year in the AL. Steve Pearce has been on a run that could be a career changer. Delmon Young has been a consistent contributor when called upon. Nick Markakis may arguably be one of the very best leadoff hitters in all of baseball, and along with Adam Jones, he helps the O’s cover plenty of ground in right and center field. The soft spot for the O’s outfield is the inexplicable inclusion of David Lough. Lough needs to be in Norfolk (or Bowie) working on his offensive skills. He is not a professional hitter. And the baseball world already has too many small, medium-speed outfielders, with decent gloves, but propensities for hitting fly balls (or striking out), coupled with warning track power.

At third Manny Machado is steadily regaining the form both offensively and defensively that makes him one of the finest young players in the game. He will be well rested for the second half of the year after serving the five game suspension followed by the fast approaching all-star break.

At short J.J. Hardy has lost his concentration in the field from time to time in the first half and his defense has not been nearly as good as it was last year. That still makes him the best defensive shortstop in the league, but by a smaller margin. He is beginning to show signs of regaining his power despite a tendency to take center cut fast balls for a called strike to start almost every at bat. His batting average remains high.

At second Jonathan Schoop is all upside. He simply needs to keep working at improving every day. He is a great physical specimen and seems to do his best work at the plate when there are runners on base. Maturity should treat him well. His defense is already top shelf. Ryan Flaherty is a useful utility player who can play a number of positions. Unfortunately we cannot recall him every putting any off-speed pitch in play. Opposition pitchers know this.

Chris Davis has become an absolute mess. For a portion of May and June it looked like Davis was regaining his approach as a professional hitter with power to all fields. He has hit a few line drives to left and left center field. Unfortunately Davis is clearly thinking way too much during every at bat. As a result his bat speed has lost several notches. Maybe he is not getting the early recognition he needs to be effective. Or maybe he simply needs to shorten his stroke so he can wait. One thing is for sure, even if his stroke is fine, O’s fans will know he has cleared the mental slate and is ready for a superior second half if Davis stops missing medium quality center cut fastballs. For now, his thought processes and guessing have caused him to descend into the mental funk of hitting which has him stuck in an abyss. From my vantage point the Davis stroke looks fine. What can he do? He can continue to go the other way in the batting cage both off a tee and against the machine. However, when he gets to home plate he really only needs to do two things. 1) See the ball, and 2) hit the ball.

The O's catcher position has been shored up by Caleb Joseph in the absence of all-star catcher Matt Wieters. Todd Hundley contributes to the offense with an occasional hit. This spot suffered mightily with the loss of Wieters, but the O’s pitching has improved noticeably since Joseph got the call up from Norfolk. The pitchers improved performances has to say plenty about his defense in the face of an unproductive season at the plate so far.

Ubaldo Jimenez may have pitched his best game last night. He was consistently down in the strike zone with late life on his once dominating fast ball. He, along with virtually every other O’s starter will need to stay consistently down in the strike zone if they hope to be part of post season. Each and every starter has demonstrated an ability to keep hitters off balance. But each has lost command frequently enough to prevent the O’s from going on the badly needed 8 to 10 game win streak they will need to grab control of the AL East.

The O’s bullpen has a major hole in it. It seems that Buck Showalter is limited in how he can play matchups against left hand hitters late in close games. Brian Matusz has been disappointing (5.16 ERA) and Joe Patton was dealt to the Padres for Hundley after being ineffective. On the plus side, Zac Britton has been a quality closer and Darren O’Day is a trustworthy set up man. Still, Tommy Hunter, T.J. McFarland, and Brad Brach need to improve their command.

If Matusz does not improve soon it may be up to T.J. McFarland to take on the role of left-on-left matchup guy late in games. McFarland has been a solid long relief man for most of the year.

This team has a very good chance to get to the playoffs and go deep. They can score late and almost never seem to be out of a game. They beat the league's best pitchers.

Does the team need Chris Davis to return to form? Last year's production seems unrealistic. However, if Davis commits to seeing the ball and hitting the ball and a few others improve the O's 2014 second half could be great.