The 2004 Ally Awards

Yes. it's time for the last Belfry award of the season, the Ally, named in honor of the light-hitting, noodle-thin television attorney, honoring the Orioles offensive player whose season most resembled one that would have been turned in by our favorite wisp of a barrister. This award is a mere sprout compared to the Piñata award; this will only be it's fourth presentation.

In 2001, the first winner was Cal Ripken. We were grateful for the opportunity to present Cal with one last award to cap his career. In 2002, the winner was Geronimo Gil. in 2003, Tony Batista took home the honor.

Over the past few years, there have been a number of terrible offensive performances on the Orioles, as the team has been pretty anemic offensively since 1997 or so. Although the Orioles were still offensively challenged this year, there were actually some solid offensive performers. Still, we all had our own favorites to bring home the Ally at the season progressed. Luis Matos reverted back to his good-field-no-hit label as he did his best Gary Matthews imitation; Jay Gibbons spent the year either injured, ineffective, or both; Rafael Palmeiro was but a shell of his previously formidable self; Larry Bigbie took a big step backwards. Still, when it was all over, there was a performance that could not be overlooked...and so this season's award goes one up on Kerry's tie for the Pinata several years ago.

We're awarding the 2004 Ally McBeal Award to....

The Orioles Bench.

It's true that the Orioles have a recent history of horrible benches, but the 2004 edition surpassed even our wildest anticipations. Excepting David Newhan, who was in the lineup playing somewhere nearly every day after his acquisition, the players the front office chose to support and augment the starting eight were uniformly disastrous. Let's take a look at our Rogue's Gallery:

Tim Raines...hit .255 in 94 AB, which actually made him the high man for reserves with over 50 AB. He walked 4 times while striking out 16, and had an OBP of .293, while managing four doubles, no triples, and no homers.

Luis Lopez....the Leader of the Placque, Luis even managed to get some ABs at DH, making Orioles fans everywhere wonder if Lee Mazzilli had totally lost his mind. He would have been better off letting the pitchers bat. Lopez hit .182 in 88 AB, with three walks and twenty strikeouts. His OBP was .211, and his OPS a whopping .428.

Robert Merchado...One of the Fearsome Foursome the Orioles trotted out as backup catchers this year, Merchado displayed a decent bat at Ottawa, but hit not a whit in the bigs. A .151 BA in 73 AB, with a .195 OBP after 4 walks and 18 Ks. One home run.

Karim Garcia...hit about as well for the Orioles this time as he did in the cup of coffee that began his career. He hit .212 in 66 AB, but did manage 3 homers, though he struck out 15 times to get them, while walking only 4, for an OBP of .247.

Jose Leon was another guy who hit the ball well in AAA only to hit nothing but a wall uptown with the big club. He hit .182 in 66 AB, with 2 HR, 19 strikeouts, and 2 BB, an OBP of .203.

David Segui hit when he was with the club, all 59 AB. Even David seemed bitten by the K/BB bug, though. He hit .339, but had no power, and walked only 5 times while striking out 13.

Darnell McDonald hit .156 in 32 AB, with no power. He walked twice and struck out six times.

Geronimo Gil was the bright spot of the whole group, though The Chief was in the organizational doghouse all year. He actually hit .281 in his 32 AB.

Keith Osik and Ken Huckaby were the other tandem in the backup catching foursome this year. Osik proved to be aptly named as he hit .080 in 25 AB. He did not walk even once, and struck out 7 times. Huckaby was picked up off the junk pile to replace him, and hit .167 in his 12 AB.

Chad Mattola came in for a couple of weeks, and chipped right in. Though he did hit a home run in his first game, he quickly proved an able contributor to the Ally, as he finished his cup of coffee with a .143 BA in 14 AB.

Val Majewski came up for a brief cup o' coffee, too, and managed a .154 BA and a .385 OPS in his handful of at-bats.

The Bench managed a .191 batting average (585 AB, 112 hits, 24 2B, 0 3B, 9 HR, 51 RBI), while walking only 30 times and striking out 126. That's hard to beat, and as poorly as a couple of guys performed, impossible to overlook. So, congratulations to the Orioles' 2004 bench, for a job poorly done!