One after another, like line drives up the middle, reminders keep coming of what the Orioles' starting rotation could have been and what it has turned out to be.
Saturday afternoon: Adam Loewen's pitching career comes to an abrupt, painful and heartbreaking end. Saturday evening: Daniel Cabrera falls behind the Detroit Tigers 6-0 in the first inning. Yesterday afternoon: Brian Burres struggles through 5 1/3 innings against the Tigers, throwing 108 pitches and giving up three runs - relatively speaking for this staff lately, a gem.
Of course, the Orioles managed to win despite Cabrera's reversion to form - and lost yesterday when the offense managed all of three hits. They also lost on a Sunday, again. But the far bigger issue than where the Orioles would be if they had won roughly half the 15 straight Sunday games they've lost is where would they be if they had the starting pitching they thought they'd have.
Not just what they had projected this season, what they've been projecting the past few seasons, even before new management took over. Remember, when Andy MacPhail, in Saturday's announcement about the injury that's transforming Loewen from potential ace to position player, spoke of losing "40 percent of our rotation that we started with," he was including Steve Trachsel. In an ideal world, the Orioles wouldn't have been relying on Trachsel that way.
Once upon a time, the master plan was hooked to a rotation of Loewen, Cabrera, Erik Bedard and Hayden Penn. Remember that, from the Beattie-Flanagan era? It truly seemed promising; you could slap that regime around for a lot of things, but not necessarily for banking on that foundation.
Now, you could make the case that Bedard produced the most - in what they got back from trading him. (As for Penn, as often as he's injured, you wonder when they hold the same news conference for him and his future.)
When a franchise guesses right and it all falls into place, it has the rest of its competition chasing it. When it goes wrong, it ends up with MacPhail telling reporters, "You never have enough pitching. ... This is just part of the landscape. This is just the way it is. There's nothing more important. You cannot win in this league without pitching well."
The Orioles aren't winning right now. Yesterday's defeat at Camden Yards was their 10th in 14 games - since Cabrera went the distance against the Kansas City
