The Orioles have sent Orber Moreno, John Parrish, and Ryan Keefer down to the minors.
Entering his age 28 season, John Parrish has alternately tantalized fans with his potential and frustrated them with his inability to put the whole package together. His brief 2005 MLB season (before being sent to AA Bowie to harness his control) is a testament to this.
IP H R ER HR BB SO HBP WP ERA
17.3 19 6 6 1 17 25 0 6 3.12
The ERA looks nice and a K/9 rate of 13 is outstanding… unless you walk a batter an inning and throw three wild pitches per 9 innings pitched. Coming off of elbow ligament replacement surgery, Parrish will likely spend the season rehabbing in the minors. For most pitchers, stuff comes back before command when they undergo TJ. With Parrish, I don’t know how we’re supposed to tell.
Orber Moreno has been one of my favorite pick-ups of the off-season. I’d love to see a scouting report on this guy because something has to be limiting him to NRI’s. Of course, someone who follows Venezuelan ball pretty closely once told me Moreno has his own table in his winter league team’s training room. That certainly helps explain why a man with the following career minor league stats, entering his age 28 season, has still not found a home.
IP H R ER HR BB SO WP ERA
470.0 389 196 163 9 145 486 9 3.12
His only real crack at the big leagues was met with similar success. Here are Moreno’s numbers with the Mets in 2004.
IP H R ER HR BB SO WP ERA
34.2 29 17 13 0 11 29 2 3.37
He’s clearly an extreme ground ball pitcher with the ability to miss bats. Although, it could just be that the Orioles feel Moreno needs to shake off some rust after missing 2005 to injuries. Let’s hope he stays healthy in Ottawa. He looks like a keeper.
Ryan Keefer has developed into a pretty decent relief prospect since being drafted in the 13th round in 2000; so much so that he has been added to the 40 man roster. Entering his age 24 season, Keefer was switched to relief two seasons ago and had a dominant season in AA Bowie last year. He kept his K/BB ratio at around 3:1 and his K/9 rate around 10. However, I see no problem with letting him get a full season in at Ottawa. A September cup of coffee seems reasonable.
- I’ve made two changes to the website worth noting. One is the nifty 40 man roster page (in case you paid no heed to the link above). It was a bit of a pain in the ass to make but now that it’s up, I should be able to maintain it with relative ease. From here on out, I will only link a player’s name to their Baseball Cube page if they are not listed there. The other change is that I now have a Feedburner site feed, a WordPress site feed, and a WordPress comments feed. I’m not sure what the difference between the two feed providers are, but now there is an option for those of you having trouble with one of them. Should you have trouble with both providers, please email me or leave a comment and I will be happy to bitch at them about their services (that I don’t pay a dime for).
- Addendum: Playing poker on the internet at 4 in the morning has its advantages. Specifically, I just sat at a table with Billy Ripken. Among the things we talked about: how my grandmother used to call my childhood mullet the Billy Ripken, and that time he ran into Randy Milligan chasing a pop-up and sent the 230+ lb. Moose to the DL. Probably the first time I’ve ever chatted in a poker room text box and I wasn’t bitching about some idiot bluffing a dry side pot.
Orioles Think Tank 
