First off, what a great win for the Orioles last night! Coming into the game the O's were stuck in the midst of a four-game losing streak, which at various points appeared ready to go to five. However in one of those classic MLB grind it out kind of games, the Orioles ultimately prevailed. Matt Wieters now leads the team in RBI (20) for the year, and the O's got their first win of the year in which they trailed after the seventh inning. This is the kind of game that Buck Showalter and Andy MacPhail envisioned when they assembled this roster.
One thing that stuck out for me last night was that on two separate occasions during the extra frames, Seattle pitchers walked someone to get to Mark Reynolds. When you look at the stats sheet going into tonight's game, Reynolds is hitting .177 with 3 HR's and 36 strikeouts on the season. Over the course of his career, Reynolds has seemingly hit 30 HR's or so per season. So why the power outage now? The bigger question I suppose is whether or not the power outage is really coming now. Reynolds only hit .198 in 2010 with Arizona (but he still slugged 32 HR's). In the three seasons previous, he hit .279, .239, and .260. Reynolds seems to have a difficult time picking up fastballs from changeups, which means that in essence he's guessing. That isn't good for bat speed; he's either out in front of the ball, or he's trying to catch up.
Last season's version of Reynolds was Garrett Atkins, who the Orioles signed to play first base in the offseason. Before being released (after 44 games) Atkins hit .214, and in doing so looked lost virtually everytime he was at the plate. However for his career, he had better numbers than Reynolds in that he was a career .285 hitter. So why do these guys come to the Orioles and strike out (literally and figuretively). In the case of both players, they're coming from the NL. Experts say that it does take some players awhile to get going when they switch leagues. But in Reynolds' case, this seems to be a continuation of the trials of 2010. So was the Reynolds trade a bad one?
My opinion is that I really don't know. The Orioles needed a third baseman one way or another. Reynolds has made some great plays in the field, which is something that Atkins didn't really do. However, Josh Bell could just as well be up with the Orioles and hitting .177, however at least that would show a dedication to progressing Bell as the third baseman of the future. Reynolds is hitting much worse than Atkins was a this point, however I firmly believe that a guy's going to stay true to his overall career numbers for the most part. In other words, Reynolds has hit lots of homers (and struck out a lot) over the course of his career. He's not suddenly going to hit only ten here with the Orioles. I suppose it's just a matter of dedicating yourself to grabbing the bull by the horns and getting the job done.
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