It's deja vu all over again.  In last year's position-by-position analysis I wrote the following:

"The Orioles are doing just fine offensively (better than fine, actually) at most of the traditionally difficult to fill positions on the field.  It's the lion's share of spots that are ordinarily the easiest to populate that the club continues to have problems plugging."

The more some things change, the more they stay the same.

Other conclusions, however, can be gleaned from this year's numbers, so read on.  If you're familiar with the concept of Offensive Winning Percentage, feel free to skip the boilerplate explanation immediately below.

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In the final analysis, an offense is essentially the sum of its conjoined parts, and a glance at those parts--relative to the rest of Major League Baseball--provides a fairly intuitive recipe for diagnosing the problems and identifying possible solutions.

What follows is a position-by-position breakdown of players (minimum 300 plate appearances) from both leagues sorted by Offensive Winning Percentage.  OWP is a great stat to use when accompanied by a plate appearance (PA) minimum because it's park, league and era adjusted and because its definition is so forthcoming.  A .700 OWP means that a team with a full lineup of hypothetical Player Xs would win 70% of its games with an average pitching/defense in a neutral park.  In other words, Player X is a pretty valuable commodity.

The analysis is performed on a position-by-position basis because this all-encompassing measure of offensive production is most robust when a player can be compared with the immediately available alternatives.

(Note: AL and NL averages at each position are represented by an amalgam of all players who played at that position--not merely those displayed in the table of qualifiers.)

Orioles players are highlighted in orange. The AL average is shown in red. The NL average is displayed in green.

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Before proceeding with the positional breakdown, let's examine the overall team OWP numbers for 2006:

The Orioles ranked 19th in baseball and 10th in the American League in Offensive Winning Percentage in 2006.  This is more or less consistent with the Orioles' runs scored ranking (also 10th in the AL).  To translate, with an average pitching staff and an average defense in an average park, the Orioles could have expected a 79-83 season in 2006 on the basis of their offensive performance as a club.  That they finished nine games worse than that can largely be attributed to a far less than average pitching staff and defensive unit.  Still, the implication is that this was a less than .500 team based purely on its offensive output.  For the Orioles to contend with an offense like the one they put out on the field last season, they would have to have a Detroit Tigers-like (2006 edition) pitching performance (i.e. the best in the league).

Let's examine the components.

CATCHER

The catcher's position is never a source of deep offensive accomplishment, so when you have someone who not only finished more than 100 OWP points above the major league positional average but also nearly 50 points higher than the overall big league average (regardless of position) and was durable enough to qualify for the batting title, you're doing pretty well.

Ramon Hernandez finished a solid fourth among qualifying AL catchers, and fourth among all ML catchers with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title.  Hernandez also ranked second among all Orioles players with at least 300 plate appearances; actually he ranked second among all Oriole players, period.  More on the significance of that later.  Regardless, Hernandez certainly was not a source of the team's offensive woes; quite the contrary, in fact.  He ranked far above the league positional average and substantially better than luminaries such as Ivan Rodriguez and Jason Varitek.  If there's a warning sign here, the .546 mark posted by Hernandez in 2006 was the best of his career, though he's had several previous seasons that were close to being this good.

Varitek's performance--his worst since 2000--has to have the Red Sox worried.  The veteran will turn 35 next season and there must be at least some concern that it represents the beginning of the end of a multi-year stretch of better than expected play by the switch hitter.  The age-34 season marked a substantial downturn for Johnny Bench a quarter of a century ago and Varitek--despite a fine three-year stretch (2003-05) is no Johnny Bench.  Here's one you can impress your friends with:  in the modern (i.e. post-1900) history of major league baseball, how many times has a catcher, age 35 or greater, posted a single season OWP above .500 and qualified for the batting title in the same year?  Answer:  four.  How many times has a catcher not named "Fisk" done it?  Once.  (Elston Howard in 1964.)  Fisk did it three times including an incredible .648 mark in 521 plate appearances at age 42 in 1990--surely one of the greatest accomplishments in baseball history.  Perhaps the PA requirement is too high.  After all, only 10 catchers qualified for the batting title in 2006 regardless of age.  Let's drop that PA criterion to 300.  In that case, the feat has been accomplished a grand total of 38 times in modern major league history.  Given the relative paucity of the criteria (.500 OWP, 300 PA), that's not a very comforting thought for anyone with a catcher 35 or older from whom they expect some offense.  Mike Piazza and Gregg Zaun both pulled it off last year (and Piazza also did it in 2005).  Piazza, Zaun and Greg Myers (2003) are the only three to have managed this accomplishment since 1990 and Piazza (both times) was the only one of the three to accumulate as many as 400 plate appearances.  Varitek is going to have to buck some serious historical trends to return to a role as a mere offensive contributor, to say nothing of the likelihood of him resuming his status as a major cog in Boston's offensive wheel.  (Not incidentally, the Orioles certainly understood what they were doing when they told Javy Lopez that he wasn't going to be the every day catcher anymore...just as he was entering his age 35 season.)

The AL positional average is better than that of the National League--which was dragged down badly by the bottom of the list (Yadier Molina and Brad Ausmus--Ausmus, it's worth noting, was 37 last year and is now tied for fourth as the oldest catcher ever to qualify for a batting title...with utterly putrid results--whose offensive performance would have been mediocre at best at the AAA level in 2006).

Brian McCann's .701 season mark ranks 27th all-time (since 1900) among catchers with at least 490 plate appearances.  The all-time leader on that list?  Mike Piazza's .814 in 1997.  Piazza--who ranks sixth on the 2006 list--is the only catcher to meet the 490 PA qualifier who has eclipsed the .800 OWP mark.

FIRST BASE

Jeff Conine's inclusion on this list is somewhat misleading; Conine, due to his frequent late-inning defensive moves to first to spell the glove-challenged Kevin Millar, played more games at first base than in left field in 2006.  Before his trade to the Phillies, however, Conine played more innings in left than at first.  Still, it's worth examining Conine's would-be status on both the first base and left field lists.

Millar had the bulk of the starts for the Orioles at first base and finished 17th among big leaguers who qualified for the list; his rank was 8th in the American League.  Conine was a disaster, ranking second from the bottom.  For the umpteenth consecutive year, the Orioles failed to get substantially better than league average performance from the first base position and, in fact, the truth is arguably somewhat worse than what you see here.  (The last time an Oriole first baseman with at least 100 games at the position managed an OWP of at least .600 was  in 1998 when Rafael Palmeiro turned the trick.)  First base was a decidedly less than impacting position in the AL in 2006; the NL almost always ranks higher than the AL (it did again this year) due to the absence of the designated hitter in the National League.  The American League is littered with big impact hitters at the DH spot (see below)--players who would certainly be playing first base if the designated hitter role wasn't available.  Four players on the DH list would outrank the top listed American League first baseman (Justin Morneau).  Folding DH performance into the first base metric would leave Millar well below the AL positional average.

As unremarkable as Millar's season was overall--he was more more or less an average big league first baseman offensively in 2006 (though, as mentioned, certainly below average when AL designated hitters are added into the equation)--the modest offensive performance from first basemen has become commonplace for the Orioles over the past few years.  The players who have put up superior offensive numbers at first since Palmeiro's full season in 1998 have been half-season entrees (Will Clark in 2000; David Segui in 2001).  Over the past five seasons, no Oriole first baseman--regardless of playing time--has managed an OWP of .570.  And, unfortunately, as we'll see in the DH section of this article, the slack hasn't been taken up by Orioles designated hitters over that span of time.

One last note on Kevin Millar.  He had what amounted to two different seasons in 2006.  Before the All-Star break, Millar posted an OPS of .732; afterwards he was.899, topped off by a truly outstanding September (1.000).  Millar hasn't put up full season numbers resembling his 2006 second half since 2001-02 when he was with the Marlins.  With Millar set to return to the Orioles in 2007, the club can only hope that the back end of last season represents his fountain of youth.

SECOND BASE

Across the majors, the second base position continues to be among the least productive offensive slots on the field, scarcely more prolific than the catching spot.  It was particularly pitiful in the American League; Esteban German (for crying out loud) ranked second among listed AL second baseman (though the limited number of plate appearances must be noted).  And so we see that Brian Roberts ranked a solid fifth among AL second sackers (12th overall) and third among Junior Circuit 2B's with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title.  All this despite an OWP a smidge below .500.

For those of us who didn't expect Roberts to come anywhere near duplicating that 2005 OWP of .718, well, we were right.  Despite virtually replicating the number of opportunities (Roberts had only 11 fewer plate appearances in 2006 than in 2005) the Orioles second baseman showed a substantial decline in every significant offensive statistic other than stolen bases/caught stealing (where he improved to 36/7 from 27/10): 11 fewer doubles, three fewer triples, eight fewer home runs, 28 fewer BA points, 40 fewer OBP points, 105 fewer SLG points, 10 more double play grounders.

While a notable decline was to be expected, the magnitude of Roberts' dive had to be a bit on the disappointing side.  I think the hope was that he would settle in somewhere in the mid to upper .500s (OWP-wise) and plainly establish himself among baseball's elite second basemen.  That didn't happen.  And yet, Roberts still finished well in the upper half of listed big league second sackers with his second highest single season OWP.  This, of course, says more about the status of the position than it does about Roberts.

Only eight times in the last ten seasons has a qualifying (i.e. 300 PA) major league second baseman managed a single season OWP mark of .700 or better--including Roberts' 2005 season.  In fact, the last person other than Roberts to accomplish this feat was Roberto Alomar in 2001 as a member of the Cleveland Indians.  The high water mark on the 1997-2006 second base list is Craig Biggio's .753 in 1997.

Only two AL second basemen on the 2006 list exceeded the .500 OWP mark and qualified for the batting title (Robinson Cano--just barely, with 508 PAs--and Tadahito Iguchi--just barely on a different dimension with a .507 OWP mark).  The NL had only three such players: Chase Utley--by far the most productive second baseman in the majors in 2006--Ray Durham (long given up for dead) and Dan Uggla. 

Sidebar:  How on earth does Neifi Perez keep finding work?  2006 was his seventh career sub.-300 OWP season with at least 300 plate appearances (five with 400+ PAs, four with 500+).  That's tied for third in modern (post-1900) big league history with Leo Durocher, Tommy Thevenow and Tim Foli.  The only players with more--and eight is the all-time record--are Doug Flynn and Bobby Wine.  One more and Neifi can have a piece of history; two more and he's immortal (in a sense).  One record Neifi has an even better shot at is worst career OWP (minimum 5000 plate appearances).  He's at .285 lifetime.  The only qualifying player with a worse career OWP is the illustrious Ski Melillo (a second baseman in the 1920s and '30s with the Browns and Red Sox).  Melillo's career mark is .284, making his lead paper thin.  One more stink bomb of a season for Perez and he's got the lead...or whatever you want to call it.

SHORTSTOP

The overall averages for the shortstop position don't differ all that much from those at second base, but the ceiling is higher and the floor is lower; there's more variance in the 2006 performance of shortstops than second basemen.

Miguel Tejada can still hit, particularly relative to those at his position--as long as he stays at short.  Tejada ranked a solid third among AL qualifiers (Julio Lugo had fewer than 200 plate appearances before being traded to the National League); he was, in fact, much closer to second place (Carlos Guillen) than fourth (Michael Young).  The fall off in the American League after Derek Jeter, Guillen and Tejada is remarkable.  It's fairly obvious why, when looking at this list, the Orioles are inclined to demand the moon in any trade involving Tejada.  A glance at the third base list (see below) will show why teams pondering acquiring Tejada and shifting him to the hot corner are somewhat reluctant to part with a huge amount.  This could be a reason why Tejada appears unlikely to go anywhere.

Tejada's 2006 OWP actually slipped a bit compared to 2005--from .621 to .605.  Despite raising his batting average 26 points to a career high .330, Tejada's OWP dropped largely because of a decline in extra base hits by 20 (when you increase your BA by 26 points you don't expect your slugging percentage to fall 17 points) and a jump in the Camden Yards run index from 88 to 98.  Still, the .605 OWP posted by Tejada was the second best mark of his career and well above his career composite .553.  In fact, Tejada's three best single season OWP marks have all come as a member of the Orioles.  For all the occasional griping about him, the Orioles have received at least as much production as they had any right to expect from Tejada in the first three years of his contract.  The question is whether the Orioles' expectations were--and are--realistic.  There's a sense that the team has more or less tried to build its offense around Tejada's bat.  Later on we'll take a closer look at this apparent strategy.

This is the fourth positional list thus far and it's worth noting that the New York Yankees have had the top rated AL player on three of them.  The only exception is first base where, for a variety of technical reasons, they really didn't have a qualifying player.  (Jason Giambi will appear on the DH list; Giambi started 64 games at first base in 2006 and were he to appear on that list he'd rank first among American Leaguers.)  As the club OWP list at the head of this article suggests, the Yankees had by far the best offensive team in baseball last season.  

One really has to wonder how much the Boston Red Sox are going to end up regretting the trade that sent Hanley Ramirez to Florida.  One of the reasons for the desultory performance of the Red Sox's offense in 2006 was the miserable play from the team's middle infielders.  Ramirez, who doesn't turn 23 for more than three weeks, is coming off a season far superior to anything Boston's seen from a shortstop since Nomar Garciaparra's heyday.

Which is the real Jhonny Peralta?  The 2005 version (.666 OWP) or this year's model (.395 OWP)?  And why doesn't someone fix the spelling of Peralta's first name already?

I've always liked Bill Hall and now I know why.  The Brewers have quietly developed a nice keystone combo with Hall and Rickie Weeks (sixth among listed NL second basemen).

Kansas City's Angel Berroa's .172 OWP is the 12th worst OWP among batting title qualifiers in modern big league history and the worst since...get ready...yes, that's right, since Neifi Perez managed a .170 mark in 585 plate appearances for the Royals in 2002.  (That mark is 10th worst all-time, by the way.)  Anyone still wondering why the Royals stink year after year?

Last year Clint Barmes was.220/.264/.335 while playing his home games in Coors Field.  Coors Field was less of a hitter's park than ever before (the humidor must be having a real impact; the run index at Coors over the last four seasons (2003-06) averages about 122 with a high of 129...the previous four seasons (1999-2002) the run index averaged 155 with a high of 166) the but the run index for 2006 was still 115.  What would Barmes' raw numbers look like if he was playing his home games at Safeco Field (88) or PETCO Park (86)?

THIRD BASE

That giant crash you heard this past baseball season was Melvin Mora's bat hitting the ground.  A surge in the performance of National League third basemen along with the decline in Mora's performance leaves the Orioles third sacker well below the major league average at his position for the first time since he moved there full-time in 2004.  This was Mora's worst OWP since 2001 and the third consecutive year of declining numbers--just in time for Mora's new contract and his upcoming 35th birthday (Feb. 2).  The Orioles have to be concerned about Mora; if they're not, they certainly should be.  

Mora has some company on the AL Third Baseman Declining Performance Bandwagon.  Oakland's Eric Chavez suffered his third consecutive season of decline and his worst year since becoming a full-time player in 2000.  Toronto's Troy Glaus had his worst season since his rookie year in 1999.  Boston's Mike Lowell actually perked up somewhat from his dreadful 2005 season, but still suffered through his second worst performance since he became a full-time player in 2000.  Hank Blalock has gotten worse every year since his rookie year in 2003 and now appears to be falling off the map completely.  Aaron Boone followed up what was his worst ever season (Boone broke into the majors in 1997) in 2005 with an even worse 2006.  The overall play of these six third basemen--representing nearly half the starters in the American League--helps to explain the AL's poor composite 3B average; Mora is still technically above the league average but--even more emphatically than was the case with Brian Roberts and the second base grouping--this says more about the state of AL third basemen than it does about Mora.  It's also worth noting that every third baseman mentioned in this paragraph is younger than Mora, including Boone.  Most of these players are significantly younger--four or more years.  In fact, Mora is the oldest AL player on the 3B list.

For all the pissing and moaning by Yankees fans about Alex Rodriguez, he's the fourth Yankees player in five positions to head an AL list.  Rodriguez was, by leaps and bounds, the most productive AL third baseman in 2006.  The next highest ranking player on the list was Kansas City's Mark Teahen who managed only 439 plate appearances.  The next highest batting title qualifier among ALers was Glaus. 

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the Chicago Cubs just threw $75 million at the player listed 11th above.

Chicago White Sox general manager Kenny Williams recently was quoted as saying that he didn't see how he would be able to give Joe Crede a multi-year extension given the realities of today's market.  The White Sox have a hot third base prospect--Josh Fields--waiting in the wings.  Crede's got a fine glove, but there's a buzz around baseball that he'd get Beltre/Ramirez money if he was on the open market (he's not, and won't be free agent eligible until after 2008, I believe).  If the White Sox deal Crede--and the rumors have been swirling--this off-season it will be a clear indication that Williams recognizes the notion of selling high.

The top three players on the above list all play in the National League East.

The entire Mets infield is well in the upper half of all four IF position lists.  Add in catcher Paul LoDuca (ditto re the upper half) and you can see a large part of why the Mets had the NL's best offense last year. 

LEFT FIELD

No Orioles left fielders qualified for this list.  But we're not going to let them off that easily, because left field for the Orioles was a big, fat hole--the biggest, fattest hole on the position player part of the roster.  So let's take a quick look at the action in left field for Orioles players in 2006:

(It should be noted that the listed OWP marks are not limited to performance while playing left field; they are the full-season marks for the associated players.)

Conine's OWP does not include his time with the Phillies.  Markakis spent the clear majority of his season in right field (but played far better offensively after being moved).  Given that Markakis' OWP while he was starting in left field was surely below .400, you can see what a complete and utter disaster the left field position was for the Orioles in 2006.  The major league average for the position was in the neighborhood of .530; not a single Orioles left fielder managed that mark, even including Markakis' merged OWP while playing in right field.  Limited to likely performance while in left, the Orioles' composite team OWP from left field was well below .400.  A very rough, guesswork weighted average puts the mark somewhere in the neighborhood of .350-.360, or modestly worse than the miserable performance the Chicago White Sox got out of Scott Podsednik last season (more on Podsednik below).  (When Podsednik wasn't in left, Pablo Ozuna and his .521 OWP was.  The Orioles had no Pablo Ozuna.)

Left field has been a sore spot for the Orioles for ages.  The team hasn't had a single player who qualified for the batting title post a .600+ OWP in left field since Brady Anderson in 1992 (.674).  The club got plus partial seasons out of Melvin Mora (413 PAs in 54 LF starts) and Larry Bigbie (319 PAs, 74 starts in LF) in 2003, but Mora was moved to third the next year and Bigbie turned into a pumpkin.  But that was the only season since Anderson's 1992 year that the Orioles received substantially better than league average positional performance.  Left field is consistently one of the top performing offensive slots in a major league lineup, trailing (usually) only first base (and designated hitter in the AL).  The composite AL OWP average for the position over the last 15-odd seasons has hovered around .525.  The highest mark for an Orioles left fielder since 1992 (excepting the split Mora-Bigbie performance in 2003) was Brady Anderson's .579 in 1995. Anderson had one other marginally better than average performance as a left fielder (1993) and B.J. Surhoff had three that fell into the category (1997, 1999 and 2000).  All of those seasons ranged between .538 and .567--adequate performances, but not really "plus" in any great sense.  Since 2000, excepting Mora-Bigbie, the marks have been consistently below average, and sometimes far below, culminating with the 2006 nightmare.

The composite performance by the Orioles' left fielders this past season would have been considered poor--and unacceptable--from a catcher or a middle infielder.  From the left field position, it was nothing short of horrific.  Terrero, Rogers (who has never shown the bat to be a AAA infielder) and Tatis (another converted infielder) scarcely played left for the big club in 2006.  Markakis, as was mentioned, ended up in right field.  Conine--who spent by far the most time there prior to his trade--was dealt to the Phillies and performed poorly at the plate until that time--far too poorly to justify starting in left field.  And yet, Conine was apparently the best option after Markakis was moved to the other side of the outfield.  Brandon Fahey was an absolute disaster, and that shouldn't be a complete shock.  Fahey's bat was regarded as marginal, at best, for a big league infielder entering this season.  The notion that he would hit enough to adequately fill a starting corner outfield spot was laughable.  And yet, Fahey started more than 1/4 of the season's games in left field.  David Newhan--whose loss following a serious leg injury early in the year was bemoaned as one of the reasons the Orioles fell apart so quickly--started 15 games in left and was an offensive sieve for the second consecutive season.  Had Newhan not been hurt early on he surely would have seen more starts in left.  (His combined 2005-06 OWP is .326.)  Jeff Fiorentino started 11 games in left and, during his September call up, performed more or less as well as Conine.  Luis Matos started 10 games in left for the Orioles before being foisted off on the Nationals and was an offensive nightmare--though only slightly worse, overall, than Fahey.  On the whole, the crew made up the worst left field position in the major leagues and, in fact, one of the worst team positional groups in all of baseball last year.

It will be interesting to see what the Orioles do in their latest attempt to fill this black hole.

It's hard to believe that the Red Sox are seriously shopping Manny Ramirez.  Boston's offense wasn't all that powerful to begin with and Ramirez had the fourth highest OWP of all qualifying players in baseball in 2006 (highest among non-1B/DHs).  Ramirez's career OWP is .728.  Among modern era players with at least 5000 career plate appearances, that ranks 21st all-time.  If it's possible, I think that Ramirez, along with Frank Thomas (who ranks 12th all-time at .747), is actually underrated.  Even if he stays healthy (not likely), there's no way that J.D. Drew is going to match Ramirez offensively. 

In an injury-filled "down" year, Barry Bonds puts up a .740 OWP.  Incredible.

The only thing that may be more incredible, in fact, is that Chris Duncan is third on this list.

It's worth mentioning that the $100+ million club guys--Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Lee--finished sixth and 13th respectively on this list.  Ramirez and Thomas may be underrated, but Soriano and Lee are grossly overrated.

It doesn't show up on the list, of course, but during the 51 games he played last year, Hideki Matsui posted a .650 OWP, which would have ranked him second in the AL.  Over the previous two full seasons, Matsui averaged better than that, so it's not an unreasonable projection.

Scott Podsednik's .375 mark is the 12th worst for a batting title qualifying left fielder in all of baseball since 1980 and is the worst ever for a White Sox left fielder who qualified for the batting title.

CENTER FIELD

Corey Patterson finished 2006 above the AL and ML positional OWP average.  Saints be praised.

Patterson's only better OWP season was 2003, when he played only slightly more than half the year.  Given Patterson's glove, the fact that the Orioles have tons of other problems and the fact that they have no one else who can really play the position, the club better simply pencil Patterson into center to start the year and let the chips fall where they may.  One more solid season (or even half of one) will drive Patterson's value through the roof, something the Orioles would do well to remember as the Scott Boras-managed Patterson approaches free agent eligibility, because Patterson remains a largely undisciplined player with a world of raw talent.  It's pretty obvious at this point that the speedy center fielder will never reach base with regularity.  His career OBP is .297; last year's mark was .314.  He has 114 career unintentional walks in better than 2800 plate appearances.  It's too bad because if he could achieve even average walk rates, Patterson has star capabilities.  He has solid power and unparalleled speed.  He's not only fast, he's an accomplished base stealer (131/32 career).  He's so quick he didn't ground into a single double play in 2006.  He has fewer GIDPs in his career (26) than Miguel Tejada had last season alone.  And there's his defense, which is outstanding.  But it's all but impossible to be a plus player with a .297 on base percentage.

Carlos Beltran appears to be attempting to live up to that huge contract the Mets gave him.

Grady Sizemore was, by a wide margin, the most productive center fielder in the American League last year.  Who was second?  Johnny Damon.

When you consider how little the White Sox got out of center (Brian Anderson) and left (Scott Podsednik) last year, it's a wonder that they were as effective offensively in 2006 as they managed to be.

Coco Crisp was another in a long, long list of disappointing 2006 Boston offensive performances--Varitek, Loretta, Gonzalez, Lowell, Nixon.  Really, without the devastating performances of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz and a decent contributing season from Kevin Youkilis, the Red Sox would have been a worse offensive club than the Orioles.

Ken Griffey, Jr. is looking like he could be all but done.  Last year was the worst offensive season of his career.

Think it made a difference whether Rocco Baldelli (sixth on the above list) or Joey Gathright (30th) was playing center for the Devil Rays?

RIGHT FIELD