Matt Albers decided yesterday against surgery on his shoulder, which matters to the Orioles only in terms of how long he'll be out. Torn labrums on one of your most pleasant surprises of a surprising season are generally bad news, surgery or not.
Except that as Albers exits, Adam Loewen enters. The way he threw in his first game back Tuesday night at Camden Yards greatly eased the pain, figuratively speaking. His injury was supposed to be bad news, but he came back earlier than expected. Because the Orioles are in no mood to rush him back and will resist the temptation to start him this season, Loewen might have ended up solving the Albers problem practically as soon as it came up.
That's the kind of charmed life the Orioles bullpen is leading this year. Something good happens to counteract something bad. Question marks miraculously turn into exclamation points. Their slumps don't even last all that long, as the hero of that very same Tuesday night game against Kansas City, George Sherrill, has proved.
Everything the `pen touches in 2008 seems to turn to gold. No longer does it touch leads and turn them into ashes. You know, the way it did ... well, you know.
"We don't talk about last year," Dave Trembley reminded reporters before last night's game against the Royals. Looking at this year's team through the filter of the immediate or recent past is generally frowned upon and, if done too often, touches an obvious nerve around this team.
But you can't hide from the truth. A lot of new faces, a lot of increased production, a lot of the right buttons pushed and, it has become apparent, a little luck, mean the comparison is too obvious to ignore. So Trembley didn't.
"Those of us that endured some of that suffering at a particular point in time late in the season last year, I think, [know] our bullpen was less than major-league quality," the manager said, diplomatically. "And that's not telling you anything other than the fact. We have better arms from the bullpen this year, and we have better arms in the system that are coming that are very close to making it very not only interesting in our starting rotation but also finding their way into that bullpen."
