The offense remains the biggest problem (updated)

By Steve Melewski

Orioles

May 09, 2010, 10:32am

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You can make stats do a lot of things and you can twist them a lot of ways. But if you look at the stats from the Orioles 9-22 start, here's a simple one that tells the biggest story of this season. O's record when scoring four or more: 7-4 O's record when scoring less than four: 2-18 Asking a Major League team to score four runs per game is not a lot, in fact an average offense scores more than that. No one feels the O's offense was great last year. But the 2009 Orioles averaged 4.6 runs per game - and that was 11th best in the AL. That team would look like the '27 Yankees right now. The starting pitching has been good throughout; the bullpen has come around. The offense has shown signs, but has never been very good for very long at any point this year. Right now the O's are plating 3.45 runs per game. They are playing .636 ball when they score four or more per game. That doesn't seem too much to ask from any big league offense, does it? Update: Today, Nick Blackburn has shutout the O's on one hit through four. His ERA is 5.79 on the year and he has allowed 5 ER or more in three of his first five starts. He has allowed 44 hits this year in 32 2/3 and 21 hits in 13 1/3 over his last two starts. Maybe they will get to him later in this game, but so far they have just one single in four at bats and Blackburn has had to throw just 49 pitches to get 12 outs.