Trembley's got jokes

After a poor performance earlier today in a spring training game against the Florida Marlins, Jeremy Guthrie received a little bit of Dave Trembley-style humor:

Jeremy Guthrie allowed six runs in the first inning, returned to the dugout and was congratulated by manager Dave Trembley.

"He told me, 'Nice job. We blocked the extra point after the touchdown.'"

Guthrie didn't have one of his best performances, but that's fine because it's spring training. And, according to this box score, Guthrie apparently walked 22 batters. Somewhere Daniel Cabrera is confused that this is possible (it's not).

But looking at the rest of the box score, which I'm assuming is actually correct, I get the feeling that the Orioles are going to be in a lot of games like this during the season. Obviously that's no huge revelation, and a potential rotation of Guthrie, Koji Uehara, Adam Eaton, and two of Mark Hendrickson, Rich Hill, Alfredo Simon, and Hayden Penn could very well end up being the worst rotation in the majors. Nonetheless, there's a lot of young and exciting talent both on the major league club and in the organization, so no matter how poorly certain pitchers perform this year, things are still getting better.

But for this season, a lot of high-scoring games certainly appear to be on the horizon.

On a different, and much lighter, note, I'd like to commend Roch Kubatko, who is covering the Orioles in spring training right now, for going to work every single day and providing tremendous coverage of the team. Even while battling a cold today, Kubatko did a great job, as usual, and still offered some solid insight throughout the day.

O's bullpen blows game

After Jim Johnson gave up two runs in the eighth and George Sherrill blew the save tonight against the Blue Jays, I took a look at some of their stats. They've both been pretty good, especially Johnson, but I found one potential bad sign. I posted the following on Roch Kubatko's "Roch Around the Clock" blog a little while earlier:

Jim Johnson and George Sherrill, for the most part, have been pretty good for the first half of the season. But they may not pitch nearly as well in the second half -- just take a look at both of their BABIPs (batting average on balls in play).

The average BABIP in MLB for pitchers is around .300; Johnson's is .111 and Sherrill's is .167 -- both are well below that mark.

Just look at tonight as an example, primarily for Sherrill. Sherrill didn't necessarily make a bad pitch to Rolen, but Rolen's blooper found a spot where no one could catch it. Was it luck? Sure -- but Sherrill's been pretty lucky so far this season (although not lately).

One more thing: I don't really agree with the get-me-over curveball that Sherrill threw to Lind. The batter before Lind, Overbay, who tied the game with the sacrifice fly, was sitting on the pitch. Lind was obviously paying attention and did the same.

I hope the numbers are wrong in this case, but if both Johnson and Sherrill are destined to come down to earth after the All-Star Break, the O's bullpen could be in serious trouble.