Battle of the Beltway: The Orioles Perspective

It is that time of year again, The Battle of the Beltway. Every year the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals play a four-game series against each other, each playing two games at home and two games away.

Whenever a Baltimore team, the Orioles or Ravens, play a Washington team, the Nationals or the Redskins, fans from both cities seem to have this friendly rivalry. Fans go back and forth about which team is better or who has the better fans or even compare certain players who play the same position.

Being a life-long Orioles fan, and every other Baltimore team, I have a certain opinion when it comes to the Baltimore-Washington Rivalry debate. I’ll be sharing my thoughts from an Orioles’ fan point of view. I’ll be going over who I think has the better player, or players, at certain positions and who has the better broadcasters.

I’ll begin with the broadcasters. Gary Thorne and Jim Palmer are the Orioles’ number one broadcast team. Bob Carpenter and F. P. Santangelo are the Nationals’ number one team.

Orioles:

*Note: Gary Thorne is one of my favorite sport broadcasters ever and is one person I want to be like when I go into broadcasting. It was really hard to come up with a negative thing about him.

Pros:

• Gary Thorne is one the most exciting broadcasters in any sport. He makes a routine play so fascinating that even a non-baseball fan would be amused by his call of the game. Thorne also cracks jokes with his broadcasting partner and is just funny in general that you just have to laugh at some of the goofy things he comes up with.
• He also has some of the best calls in the game. “Goodbye Homerun!” is his signature homerun call and future broadcasters, including myself, now have to work even harder to think of a homerun call that will probably not even come close to being that great.
• Hall-of-Fame pitcher Jim Palmer gives some of the best insight on the game any person could ever give. A 20-game winner over 10 times, he can give you an expert opinion on the best pitchers in today’s game and tell you how good they really are.
• Surprisingly enough, with Palmer being an Oriole all his life, Thorne and Palmer give unbiased opinions and calls when it relates to the Orioles. If a player is clearly out on the replay, Jim and Gary will say that he should have been out even if the call would go against the Orioles.

Cons:

• Palmer can be hard to listen to at some points after an extended period of time. For example, if the Orioles go into an extra inning game after a while you get tired of hearing Palmer reference his playing days and some of the great players he played with.
• Thorne sometimes makes one too many mistakes when calling a game. It might be his accent but Gary Thorne seems to mispronounce a player’s name or call one person by another player’s name about three or four times a game. Now he doesn’t always do it but when he does, you will notice it and you will get annoyed.

Nationals:

Pros:

• Bob Carpenter calls the game with tons of enthusiasm, much like Gary Thorne does. Carpenter also makes an exciting play even more exciting by showing excitement in his voice at the right times, not after the play like some broadcasters do.
•  F. P. Santangelo explains to viewers what a player did right or wrong in such a way that a person who knows nothing about baseball could understand. Granted most color analysts should do that, most do not which is why Santangelo is good at his job.

Cons:

• Every time I watch a Nationals game and both Bob Carpenter and F. P. Santangelo are calling the game together, I turn it off a quickly as I turned it on. They are two of the most biased non-ESPN broadcasters, besides Hawk Harrelson, I have ever heard. Every play that does not go in the Nationals’ favor, they criticize the umpire who made the call. If a ball is called against a Nationals’ pitcher are an opposing pitcher gets a strike called, they blow up like it is the worst thing they have ever seen.

Winner: Orioles.

Gary Thorne and Jim Palmer give you a non-bias call of the game and make it enjoyable as you watch. Thorne makes every play incredible to watch and listen to even if it is a routine ground ball.

The Players:

The Orioles and Nationals have some of the best all-around players in the game of baseball. And just about all of them are young.

Of course Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and Manny Machado are already superstars and the oldest one, Strasburg, is only 25-years-old but both teams have players on the major league roster who have the potential to be great ball players in the future.

Take the Orioles’ second baseman Johnathan Schoop and Nationals’ third baseman Anthony Redon. Both are playing every day for their prospective ball clubs and the ceiling is high for both of them. Schoop has the potential to be the next great power hitting second baseman in the game and Redon has the potential to become the Nationals’ everyday third-baseman in the future.

Then you have the Orioles’ Kevin Gausman and Dylan Bundy. Two of the most highly talked about pitching prospects in all of baseball. Many people are saying that both of them have the potential to become, well, the next Stephan Strasburg.

With all this talk of great young players on both teams, who has the better players?

In his first season in the big leagues, Orioles third baseman Manny Machado won a gold glove and was named the best fielder in all of the American League. He was even compared to one of the greatest, if not the greatest, third baseman of all time, Brooks Robinson. Machado was also named an all-star.

Bryce Harper gets compared with fellow outfielder Mike Trout all the time. Both came up to the big leagues around the same time and both have become two of the most exciting and great young players in the game. However, I do not think Bryce Harper is that great.

Do not get me wrong, he is a great fielder and hitter and I would love him to be on my team. However, he is not as good as the player he is compared to all the time, Trout. IF you look at the numbers of each player, Trout blows Harper away.

The last two years Trout has finished second in the MVP voting, losing out to Miguel Cabrera both times. Harper hasn’t even been a finalist for MVP in his league. Though Harper was named Rookie-of-the-year and has been named an all-star two times, Trout has been named an all-star three times; won two silver sluggers and was also rookie of the year.

With Gausman and Bundy not being on a major league roster for an entire season yet and Manny Machado having only played one year in the majors, The Nationals win this one. Strasburg and Harper are two great ballplayers and have proven they can compete with the best longer than Gausman, Bundy and Machado combined.

The Orioles win the catcher battle easily. Matt Wieters is one of the best defensive catchers in all of baseball and this year, before his season was cut short due to injury, started to put up great offensive numbers.

The Nationals pitching staff win by a wide margin. When the Nationals’ added Doug Fister to their rotation this offseason, they became one of the best rotations in baseball. Strasburg is a great pitcher with nasty stuff. Jordan Zimmerman, another great young talented arm, has shown he can be as great, if not better than Strasburg this season.

Doug Fister is a veteran presence who can be a dominating force when his team needs him. Gio Gonzalez is another pitcher who can dominate some of the best lineups. Finally, Tanner Roark is a young arm who is overshadowed by the other starters on the team but is good enough to be in the rotation.

The Orioles pitching staff is good, but not that good. In the tough AL East, they will always have a hard time being dominate forces on the mound when you compare them to a Nationals’ staffs that have the Mets and Marlins in their division. This season however, the starting rotation has been pretty good.

Chris Tilman, the Orioles Opening day starter, has had a bumpy season. He has shown that he can be great at times but when he is off his games, he gives up a lot of runs. A really good part of his season is that he has gone deep into games a bunch of times. He threw a complete game against the Royals and has pitched into the seventh and eighth innings more than a few times as well. So far, he has not had a season as great as last year.

Miguel González and Bud Norris have been good pitchers but they are definitely back of the rotation guys. González has been great in the first three innings in games but then it seems to go downhill from there. Norris has been good and has given the Orioles long starters, going deep into games.

Wei-Yin Chen has been a strong number two guy for the Orioles. He has a good record this season and has also gone deep into games. Chen was proven to be a vital part of the Orioles rotation and have kept them in games against good teams.

Ubaldo Jiménez has been a disappointment. After signing a four-year contract, Jiménez has yet to win four games and has recorded eight losses, one less than his high last season. Jiménez has also failed to pitch four innings in too many starts this year. Disappointing from a fan’s perspective when they know Kevin Gausman is waiting for his opportunity to stay with the major league club for an extended period of time.

\The Orioles win the infield battle. With Manny Machado and JJ Hardy covering on side of the infield, it is hard to beat that. Both players have won Gold Gloves and Hardy has won a Silver Slugger award the past two years. Though the Nationals have Ryan Zimmerman and Ian Desmond, two great ball players, Machado is a far better defender and Hardy is the best short stop in all of baseball.

On the other side of second base, the Orioles have Chris Davis and Johnathan Schoop while the Nationals have Adam LaRoche and Danny Espinosa. Even though Davis is having an off year, he is still one of the most feared hitters in all of baseball and has a pretty good glove to help his fellow infielders win gold gloves.

Danny Espinosa, right now, is the better second baseman between him and Johnathan Schoop. Espinosa is a veteran who has been consistent, both at the plate and in the field, for a number of years. Schoop is in his first year in the majors and still has a lot to work on at the plate but has shown he can be great defensively.

The outfield is won by the Orioles. Adam Jones has won a gold glove and a silver slugger in centerfield the past couple seasons while Nick Markakis has always been a great defender. Markakis has also been clutch at the plate, with a career batting average close to .300.

The left fielder situation for the Orioles is a little tricky. They have had about four different players play the position this season. Nelson Cruz has played the most games there and is putting up career numbers at the plate but is not the best defender.

The Nationals of course have Bryce Harper. A great, young player but as I mentioned there are better players than him. Jayson Werth is also a great outfielder. He can hit for power and can make great plays in the field but I think Markakis is better.

Like the Orioles, the Nationals left field situation has been confusing. Denard Span and Nate McLouth have switched off playing the position but neither has been producing at the plate like Nelson Cruz has.

Overall, I think the two teams are evenly matched. It will be interesting to see which team comes out victorious in the season series.

Tonight should be a really great pitching matchup as well. Both team’s number one pitchers will be facing each other and will continue to fuel the rivalry between the two fan bases. No matter which team wins tonight or the next three games after, the losing team’s fans will not admit the other is better, which makes this rivalry so much fun to be a part of.