Birdwatch 12/11/09

It's the day after the Winter Meetings, and neither Fernando Rodney nor Hideki Matsui are Orioles, something we should all file under the heading "Small Victories."

Otherwise things have been very quiet, other than the commenters at Peter Schmuck's blog losing their shit about how awesome Garrett Atkins is. One guy even busted out the inverted crucifix of sabermetrics: the dreaded Batting Average/Home Run/Runs Batted In offensive split. He thought ".300/20/100" was reasonable, which at first I read as ".300/.200/.100," a projection that struck me as not only slightly pessimistic but mathematically impossible. But then, if anyone's going to do it, it might as well be a guy that's put up a whopping .725 career OPS away from Coors Field and who's moving to the AL East to start everyday at a position where he's got a -5.0 UZR/150 at over six years. Everyone has to have a dream. Maybe Garrett Atkins and Andy MacPhail have the same dream, and maybe that dream centers around breaking my will to live.

Meanwhile, Roch Kubatko is linking another ex-Rockie, Jason Marquis, to the Orioles, I suspect in part just so he can get the "marquee" pun out of the way early. Marquis put up a 4.10 FIP in 2009, a year where the league average was 4.32, and he did it at Coors for the most part. But his career numbers say he's more of a 4.60 FIP guy and also, he's Jason Marquis. I just wasted five minutes of my life writing about Jason Marquis. Don't make me waste more, Andy. I swear to God I'll do it.

Buck Martinez leaves MASN and the Baltimore Orioles for Rogers SportsNet and the Toronto Blue Jays. As this will directly lead to more late-inning, suspiciously drunken-sounding pitching rants from Jim Palmer in 2010, it is by far the best offseason move either franchise has made. Hopefully Jack Daniels will be returning as the sponsor of the seventh inning. The preceding sentence is not a joke.

The "third baseman" "hunt" is more or less down to Joe Crede, Garrett Atkins, and Dan Uggla. Reading that sentence as someone new to Orioles fandom must be vaguely akin to how the Virgin Mary would feel looking up from Christ Jesus's manger and realizing the three wise men were none other than Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, but we're old hands here at Ripken Is 8; we know better. Sure, Crede has a spine made of worn shoe leather, Atkins is the Antichrist and the dip in Uggla's 2009 slugging percentage makes you wonder if he even remembers where third base is, but we'll remain steadfast and true: Miguel Tejada could come back to us now, at the turn of the tide.

Selected news from around the league below the jump.

RHP J.J. Putz goes to the Chicago White Sox for $3 million base plus closer incentives. He would have been an intriguing pickup for the Orioles at that dollar amount, maybe with incentives for strikeouts or something instead of SAVES, but his K/9 going from 10.88 in 2008 to 5.83 in 2009 makes one leery.

Jon Morosi is linking Marcus Thames, lately of the Detroit Tigers, to the Blue Jays and Indians, while simultaneously redefining our modern concepts of damning a man with faint praise: "Could be this year's Russell Branyon."

If Taiwanese righty Chien-Ming Wang is non-tendered by the Yankees, he'll probably go somewhere else; that "somewhere else" will be either the Mariners, the Rays, the Phillies, or the glue factory, sadly, because I doubt the Orioles take a flier on him. Why? Because we hate good things here, that's why. Also, an infield defense that's replacing Melvin Mora with one of Atkins/Crede/Uggla would probably slam Wang with something around a .504 BAbip; if he's smart, he'll go where they can get to those groundballs in the hole.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are still not going to get Roy Halladay from the Jays for Joe Saunders, Erick Aybar, and some centerfielding prospect they neither need nor particularly want. No, I will not bother providing a link.

The St. Louis Dispatch says the Cardinals have made LF Matt Holliday an official offer. He's still going to New York.