Most players are at least awarded a full season in the minors (and especially pitchers), before making their way to the big leagues.  Yet Gausman has a total of 60. 4 innings logged between Low A, High A and AA ball, with the team.  He has only amassed over seven innings twice in that span; a situation the Orioles are hoping to generate on a regular basis with him.

There is only a select few pitchers to make a major impact with such little seasoning in the minors, namely Stephen Strasburg; who was arguably the greatest pitching prospect to ever enter the majors.  Since his 2010 debut as starter, he had Tommy John surgery, had his innings limited so much he did not appear in the Nationals first playoff appearance and is performing well under expectations in 2013 (2-5 W/L record).

Gausman is nowhere near that type of talent and has not dominated the minor leagues, to think he could ever get to that level.   His most recent start has been the best of his professional career, going six innings, with ten strikeouts, one walk and one earned run.  But before that, he only went 4.2 innings with three walks and three hits on April 5^th.

The Orioles knee-jerk reaction to one good start, a stretch of six straight losses for the big league club and a depleted pitching staff, have led to Gausman’s debut on Thursday night in Toronto.  They will say there were no other options, but they recently sent down Steve Johnson and Jair Jurrjens, after one underwhelming start.  Both should get another shot with the club, but the team seems  insistent on generating some buzz during their low point of the season.

This move is in direct correlation with the Orioles lack of production in the offseason.  With key subtractions to the rotation and bullpen, a once deep pitching core lacks arms to fill in.  Thrusting Gausman into action early could have been avoided with keeping their playoff team intact or making price-effective pitching options that flooded the market before the season started.

The argument that Manny Machado was successful in his early call-up last year is a moot point, because most of his success in 2012 came because of his fielding prowess, not his ability at the plate.  If he were a below-average fielder, people would have questioned the move to risk their future franchise player.  Machado also spent over a full season in the minors before his call-up, just like other phenoms like, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.

Gausman has yet to face failure in his baseball career, like most high prospects, which is an attribute every player must learn to adjust to before becoming successful.  How will he react after getting hit up for more than two runs or having to get out of inning with RISP and one out?  If he is not mentally ready to take on those daunting tasks, which even great pitchers face on a regular basis, his development could be set back drastically.

In Baltimore, they should be all too familiar with these situations, watching pitchers like Zach Britton and Brian Matusz display early success, to only be demoted after not handling adversity.  Will the Orioles have to send Gausman back down after a few starts?

Gausman could help the Orioles get back on pace but the odds are against him.  The Orioles are putting a player, they are dependent on for their long-term future, in a bad spot and risking his career over a bad week of baseball.

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The 2012 Baltimore Ravens, who won Super Bowl 2012, in case you forgot, went on a three-game losing streak during their regular season. The Ravens lost to two backup quarterbacks and Baltimore’s offensive performances ultimately cost Cam Cameron his offensive coordinator position. Plus, a slew of Washington Redskins fans pegged their squad as “Maryland’s team,” as if we needed to hear that again. Joe Flacco went “Flaccoing” after throwing an interception at the end of the first half against the Denver Broncos. All seemed bleak in Baltimore.

“The Ravens were done.”

“9-7 to finish the season.”

“Backing into the playoffs… once again.”

“Flacco isn’t good enough.”

You know the drill by now… and look what happened.

Can I say the same for the Orioles? Not so much.

This is a completely different monster than what the Ravens had to deal with during their late-season rut. This is a question not necessarily of just the team per say, but can they get lucky again?

Heading into the season, perceptions around the Orioles were mixed in that either the team had some spending to do to further themselves as a contender or that they had to stand pat with what they had and maintain a consistent, and now playoff-experienced, roster.

Personally, I felt as if the Orioles wanted to take the next step as an organization, they would have gone after a free agent like an Adam LaRoche to replace Mark Reynolds at first base. Michael Morse to play left field every day. Kyle Lohse to become the actual “ace” of this starting rotation that features No. 3 and No. 4 starters.

But they didn’t because it isn’t their style.

The Orioles have taken an approach to build from within their own organization and it frustrates the fanbase incessantly.

Cost-effective additions, like starting pitcher Jair Jurrjens and infielders Alex Casilla and Danny Valencia, aren’t enough to satisfy fans, who have been craving a consistent, contending baseball team for 14 years.

We all know that statistics of last year’s Orioles team. The 2012 season remains regarded as somewhat of an anomaly. The roster has largely remained intact from last season.

Have they been figured out?

While the answer to that question remains uncertain at this early stage of the 2013 season, there are some actualities this team is facing:

1. Chris Davis and Manny Machado are damn good baseball players and they are only improving.

2. J.J. Hardy is swinging a hot bat and keeps proving the Orioles that his worth as a long-term shortstop is higher than expected, even at age 30.

3. Chris Tillman has quietly been the best pitcher in the starting rotation.

4. Brian Matusz, Tommy Hunter and Darren O’Day have been superb out of the bullpen for the most part, especially Matusz with a WHIP of 0.60.

5. Jim Johnson has shown flashes of brilliance, but has also shown his vulnerability in non-save situations and if he can’t keep his pitches down, blown saves will follow.

6. The Orioles have used 10 different starting pitchers in a rotation that was never fully solidified to five starters at any point during the offseason. 

7. The second base position looks to remain a bleak spot in the Orioles lineup all season long.

8. There is no everyday left fielder nor designated hitter, due to inconsistency at the plate, with the glove and manager Buck Showalter playing the matchups.

9. Teams deal with injuries, but the Orioles can’t afford too many to any position as their lack of depth shows in a team built more for the regular season, than a postseason run.

10. The AL East is still a great division. The New York Yankees are getting healthy. The Boston Red Sox have signs of tapering off, but the Tampa Bay Rays are starting to hit. 

A four-game losing streak isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but early-season observations point to this team as one that may need luck once again to have an orange October.

Facing the best pitcher in the American League in Matt Moore today isn’t exactly something to get too excited about.

There have been positives from this club early on, but still a lot of questions are left to be answered throughout the rest of the Major League season.

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One group, which I’ll refer to as “Group Optimistic,” argued that the Orioles didn’t really need to make that many additions. After all, Manny Machado would be on the roster for the entire year, as would Nate McLouth. Nick Markakis would return after being injured during the stretch run in 2012, and both Brian Roberts and Nolan Reimold would, once again, attempt to get through the season unscathed.

On the pitching front, it was contested that the O’s could reasonably expect improvement from Chris Tillman, Miguel Gonzalez, and at least a few of their young but still unproven starters in Jake Arrieta, Zach Britton, and Steve Johnson. Plus, Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman were waiting in the wings, ready to have a Machado-like impact in 2013.

Oh, and the best bullpen in baseball in 2012 would continue to be the best bullpen in baseball in 2013, so why bother making any additions to that group?

In other words, Group Optimistic believed everything was dandy in Birdland, and that the Orioles were already set as a legitimate World Series contender heading into the 2013 season.

The other group, which I’ll refer to as “Group Pessimistic,” believed this team still needed some help. Yes, Manny Machado would be playing for a full season, but he still couldn’t even legally walk into a bar. Could he really be counted on to provide above average production over 162 games? Was Nick McClouth reliable enough to be handed a starting spot after playing well for all of two  months in 2012?

How could the O’s count on Brian Roberts giving this team anything of value when he hadn’t been healthy for any decent stretch of games since 2010? Same goes for Nolan Reimold, who coming into 2013, hadn’t been a good player for more than a month since 2009 (or year one of Barack Obama’s first term as president).

Group Pessimistic didn’t understand how Dan Duquette and Buck Showlater could rely on Jason Hammel to be their ace, when he’s had exactly one season with an ERA under 4.0 (last year in 20 starts), and only two with an ERA under 4.6. Wei-Yen Chen was consistently good last season, but would the hitters adjust to him in his sophomore season? Would Miguel Gonzalez continue to make a seamless transition from the Mexican League to the best division in the world? Did Chris Tillman really turn the corner, or did he just take a detour on the Daniel Cabrera/Matt Riley path of self destruction?

Last but not least, the members of Group Pessimistic pointed to the stats that will forever be ingrained in the lore of 2012. 16-2 in extra inning games, and 29-9 in one run games. How in the world were they going to repeat anything close to that?

Seems to me that Group Pessimistic had lots of unanswered questions heading into 2013. You know what? That’s okay. Every team in major professional sports has question marks going into any given season.

The problem with the 2013 Orioles, which I’ve pointed to several times between then and now, was the fact that the overwhelming majority of those questions needed to be answered with positives for this team to be a legitimate World Series contender. Because of the lack of help from the front office, this wasn’t a situation where if 50 percent of these questions go the O’s way and 50% go the other way, that “luck” would break even and the Orioles would contend again. That’s not how it was ever going to work with this team. The Orioles were too lucky last season for that to be the case. They needed nearly everything to go right again.

The Baltimore Orioles needed lighting to strike two seasons in a row.

Thus far, not all has been lost. Through May 18th, Chris Davis and Manny Machado are both MVP candidates. Adam Jones has picked up right where he left off in 2012, establishing himself as a legitimate star in today’s MLB. Wei-Yen Chen continues to pitch like a very reliable #2-#3 starter, even as he currently sits on the DL with an oblique issue. Chris Tillman seems to have really turned that corner and looks poised to have a very nice career ahead of him. Brian Matusz has continued to excel in the bullpen, and Jim Johnson, aside from two blown saves this week, has remained one of the best closers in the game. Darren O’Day still looks to be a gem of a pickup by Dan Duquette.

But again, unfortunately for the Orioles, scoring 50 percent on this list of questions wasn’t going to cut it. Not when the other 50 percent includes Jason Hammel reverting back to his pre-Orioles form of mediocrity surrounded by maddening talent that he just can’t harness. Miguel Gonzalez is no longer the hunter. Rather, he’s the hunted, to the tune of a 4.58 ERA, averaging less than six innings per start. Jake Arrieta was a total disaster, yet again showing no real growth or improvement since his debut in 2010. Pedro Strop, not surprisingly, has been a cross between Mariano Rivera in his prime and Terry Matthews in his, umm, prime.

Shockingly, Brian Roberts couldn’t stay healthy. In fact, he couldn’t even make it three games to the home opener without injuring himself, and he won’t be back anytime soon. In the mean time, the Orioles are throwing out a combination of ineptitude featuring Ryan Flaherty, Alexi Casilla, and Yamaico Navarro. Nolan Reimold has been relatively ineffective and now has a seat next to Brian Roberts on the all too familiar disabled list.

And the Dan Duquette scrap heap specials of 2013 in Freddy Garcia and Jair Jurrjens have yet to help the O’s win any baseball games.

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He took the job that no one else wanted.

For those that are still shedding tears or pointing fingers over the way the Orioles handled this most recent off-season, just try and recall what the one that preceded it was like.

There are only 32 Major League GM jobs in the world, and arguably hundreds of pseudo qualified and hungry executives envisioning the opportunity to get one. Still, as the Orioles were searching for someone to take that opportunity with their club prior to the 2012 season they were rebuked, rebuffed, leveraged and otherwise used but never, it seems, seriously considered by a serious candidate. Enter Dan Duquette.

Duquette’s credentials were actually better than his 9-year hiatus/exile from Major League Baseball would have suggested but he had somehow slipped through the cracks for nearly a decade. To the Orioles’ credit, they found him. And to Duquette’s credit he not only accepted the job, but he arguably approached it like none of the other candidates would have, he approached it like none of his immediate predecessors had; Duquette approached the Orioles job like a winner, like a guy who expected to make the Orioles winners; and Duquette has made the Orioles just that.

If nothing else, Duquette should have earned our trust; he deserves our confidence. His reputation still isn’t quite in the stratosphere of Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome and no one is ready to utter “In Dan We Trust” just yet, but he’s getting close.

It hasn’t all been Dan’s doing. The situation that Duquette inherited was probably better than most were ready to understand, but that shouldn’t diminish the job that he’s done. Through a series of moves and machinations, decisions and deliberations, Duquette teamed with Buck Showalter to create magic in the 2012 Orioles. Not all of his decisions have been good ones, but no one’s are. Duquette has at the very least been more hit than miss; more right than wrong, and more successful than anyone could have reasonably thought possible.

Now that we’re fully immersed in the Duquette era Orioles however, a couple of sad realizations have come to light. Foremost among them is that the Orioles are, and seemingly will be for as long as Peter Angelos is running the show, committed to winning on a budget; and it would seem that the budget part holds unquestionable precedence over the winning part. This doesn’t preclude them from winning, but does make it substantially more difficult.

The decisions where monetary considerations have trumped on-field considerations have already become evident. And last year Duquette not only proved that he could win despite them, but perhaps also began to develop and refine the blueprint by which he intended to get it done.

Throughout last season, the flexibility of the roster and the options available on players (particularly pitchers) allowed Duquette to creatively overcome a problem that had been at the heart of the Orioles biggest issues over the 14 futile years that preceded 2012. The inability of Orioles pitchers to work deep into games and the absence of a true innings eater at the back of the rotation has been a running theme for the Orioles for over a decade. More often than not it was just one in a long list ailments that the team had to overcome, but even in the seasons where the Orioles offense was high level and even in the seasons where they began the year competitively, the inability of starters to get deep into games and the resultant taxing of the bullpen has been an ongoing issue. Last year the Orioles used an active revolving door to overcome that.

This year, with fewer options available, and less opportunity to shuffle the deck day-by-day, that issue seems to be back. And while the Orioles are off to another encouraging start, it seems only a matter of time before the bullpen collapses, run differential begins trending the other way and the Orioles begin sliding down the AL East standings. This makes the presence of TJ McFarland difficult to fathom.

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