Last year, our friends over at Bird’s Eye View held their inaugural BEVy awards. Some of the great categories included Biggest Regression to the Norm, Best Announcer Call, Best Mustache in Baseball, Taylor Teagarden Captain Clutch Award, the 2013 Brady Anderson’s ’96 Season Memorial Award for Power That We Hope Isn’t Too Good to Be True, and many others.
Our own contributions were the Randy Wolf Memorial Forgotten Man (won by Alex Burnett with 27% of the vote) and the Best O’s Jersey to Wear Outside Baltimore (Chris Davis…sigh…won with 46% of the vote).
Our first category this year will revive one of last year’s; however, since Mr. Wolf has rejoined the organization, we’ll do him the honor of taking his name off the dubious award. Instead, the 2014 version will be called…
The Alex Burnett Memorial Forgotten Man
This award is for the player that has played for the squad so far in 2014 who you are LEAST LIKELY to remember at all when you reminisce about what will hopefully become the season the O’s win their first AL East crown since 1997.
The nominees…
Jemile Weeks – Weeks has played in three games for the Birds this season, and went 3/11 with a triple. While he’s done quite well in Norfolk, it looks like the bats of both Ryan Flaherty and Jonathan Schoop might be heating up here as the All-Star break approaches. Barring injury, it’s not likely we see much more of Weeks in Baltimore. So yeah, those folks who wanted the O’s to sell high on Jim Johnson…you were probably right.
Preston Guilmet – Guilmet has pitched 9.1 innings in nine appearances, with a 5.79 ERA. He was the 26th man for Saturday’s doubleheader in Boston, but has not appeared in a game for the Birds since June 5.
Josh Stinson – Stinny was gangbusters in Spring Training for the Birds, but unfortunately couldn’t carry that success over to the regular season. He’s pitched in eight games, totaling 13 innings while racking up a fat 6.23 ERA. He last appeared on June 13. He’s been even worse for Norfolk sporting a 7.91 ERA at the moment.
Ramon Ramirez – Ramirez pitched a scoreless inning against Texas in his O’s debut on June 30. He was designated for assignment on July 6 to make room for Kevin Gausman. Huh…I didn’t know that. I think it’s safe to say who the winner of this BEVy will be. Ramirez’s 1 inning of work is 0.1 less than last year’s winner, Burnett.
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Our next category:
The Jim Johnson “Why Are You Breaking My Heart Like This, JUST LET ME LOVE YOU!” Award
Jim Johnson was one of my favorite Orioles for a long time. Every time he blew a save last year, it crushed me not just because I wanted the team to win, but because I loved when JJ personally succeeded. As the tide of fan sentiment turned against “Nails,” it just hurt me that much worse.
Though Johnson is gone – and, failing miserably somewhere else – there are still plenty of O’s who I want to embrace, but who just can’t seem to get it together. While I hate that they’re hurting the team, like Johnson, I also root for them on an individual level.
The nominees…
Chris Davis – My oh my how the mighty Crush has fallen. He went from winning last year’s Best O’s Jersey to Wear Outside Baltimore Award to now being the subject of “bench him!” calls from much of Birdland. Here at ESR, we’ve taken to calling him Chris Mendozavis, as he flirts dangerously with the ol’ Mendoza Line. Slashing just .201/.319/.386 with 13 home runs, Davis looks nothing like “Crush.” At this point, Birds fans have mostly given up hope that he’ll return to his first-half 2013 form. A return to even 2012 form would be more than welcomed. Davis seems like a great guy who genuinely wants to help his club. He has a great sense of humor and keeps his teammates and fans alike in stitches. It really sucks to watch him struggle like this.
Ubaldo Jimenez – Dan Duquette and Buck Showalter finally convinced Peter Angelos to spend money on a free agent pitcher, as the Birds signed Jimenez to a four-year $50 million contract. Ubaldo – or UBBaldo/UBALLdo, as O’s fans have donned him – has been quite a disappointment. While he’s often fairly unhittable, he also has no idea where his pitches are going far too often. He leads the AL in walks allowed (60 in 99.0 IP) and much of his inflated 4.52 ERA is due to problems throwing strikes. Hopefully he turns into the pitcher he was in the second half of 2013, or who knows when O’s fans will get another (big-ish name) free agent pitcher?
Nolan Reimold – Most won’t agree with me here, but I’ve always really liked Nolan Reimold. I had him pegged to be the starting left fielder this year, and then – of course – he went and got hurt again. Now he finds himself DFA’d and picked up by the Toronto Blue Jays? Ugh. I just wanted to love you, Nol. Why couldn’t you have stayed healthy? Now I have to despise you.
Tommy Hunter – How cool would it have been to have a dominant closer nicknamed “Big Game Hunter?” Tommy looked poised to slide into that role this season after his dominating 2013 out of the bullpen and the trade of Jim Johnson to Oakland. The guy who gave us the term “respect the fart” couldn’t get a 1-2-3 inning to save his life though, and lost his job to Zach Britton after blowing three saves (and giving O’s fans heart attacks in several other “successful” chances). Hunter looks more comfortable in his earlier-inning role though, and has lowered his ERA to 4.15 from its high of 6.60 following his third blown save to Detroit on May 13.
Matt Wieters – Wieters is on the nominee list not because of poor performance – quite the contrary, actually – but because of injury. Wieters looked to finally be showing the stick that we were promised all these years, hitting .308/.339/.500 before going down with elbow soreness that eventually turned into Tommy John Surgery and his being lost for the rest of the season. Matt Wieters, you break our hearts because you’re not here helping us right now. It’s not your fault…but it sucks.
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