Grover: Orioles Manager Mike Hargrove Remains Optimistic Despite Team's Late-Season Collapse

Despite a lost season and a future that offers little hope, Mike Hargrove remains positive about his baseball club.

The Orioles lost 32 of their last 36 games, the worst stretch of futility in franchise history. Yet the team's manager prefers to dwell on the earlier, halcyon days prior to the great collapse of 2002, when his minions were a respectable and surprising 63-63. For the fifth consecutive year the Orioles compiled a losing record, another club mark for failure. They finished in fourth place for the fifth straight year, with only the hapless Devil Rays depriving them of a home in the cellar. Yet Hargrove sees signs for optimism and believes that the first 126 games of the season were more reflective of the quality of his team than the final 36.

And he is resolute in insisting that his players did not simply pack it in when they finally reached the .500 mark on August 23, then went on to win only four games over the final five weeks. “I can see how that assumption could be made from the outside looking in,” says Hargrove, “but there was never a sense of accomplishment or relief when we reached .500. If our ultimate goal is to play .500 baseball, then you're never going to go anywhere. And it's wrong to say that everybody just tanked it and bagged it after we reached .500. Those guys played hard. We know there's a lot more work ahead of us. And the goal is to play better than .500. You can't let .500 be your ultimate goal.”

Speaking from his home in Ohio a week after the Orioles' season had ended, Hargrove, who has been the Baltimore skipper for the past three years, says that though the season's dismal coda was frustrating, neither he nor his players felt a sense of relief following the final game. “I think that the way we played the last month and a week, everyone was really tired,” he explains. “But there was no sense of relief at all, just a sense of frustration.”

The 53-year-old manager says the reason for the team's collapse is simple: The hitters went into a cold freeze.

“I've thought about it a lot, and I remember saying back in spring training that our ballclub didn't have a whole lot of margin for error,” he says. “For 80% of the season, we were able to generate enough offense. But then we went into an offensive funk, and we were never able to get out of it. For whatever reason, the offense didn't take hold. Too obviously, we didn't score enough runs.”

In those final 36 games, the Orioles crossed home plate just 103 times, an average of 2.86 runs per game. In the four games they won, they plated 34 runs, meaning that in their 32 losses during the stretch, they averaged just 2.16 runs. In 21 of the 36 games, the scored two runs or less. They ended the season with the lowest batting average in the American League.

Hargrove, the Orioles' fifth manager in the 10 years Peter Angelos has owned the club, says the Orioles eventually began to expect the worst to happen as the losses built up in the final weeks. “After a while, you get hit over the head with a hammer,” he explains. “That's the situation we were in the last two weeks of the season. We'd score four or five runs and wait for the hammer to come down. We looked for the hammer too often. It's tough to break that. And probably the most frustrating part was that we couldn't effect a change.”

Hargrove attributes some of the team's offensive malaise to the absence of Gary Matthews during the final five weeks. The outfielder injured his wrist on the day the Orioles reached .500, then did not get another at-bat the rest of the season. “The loss of Gary Matthews had a greater effect than any of us would have admitted,” acknowledges Hargrove.

Matthews, picked up during the first week of the season in a trade with the Mets for pitcher John Bale, was one of the team's few pleasant surprises during the season. He hit .275 and became a sparkplug for the offense with his aggressive, National League-style play. Hargrove batted him in the third position most of the season, perhaps a sign of the team's lack of strong hitters more than of Matthews' own offensive abilities.

Hargrove also lists the performances of right-handers Rodrigo Lopez and Sidney Ponson and the play of second baseman Jerry Hairston as his most pleasant surprises of the season. Lopez went 15-9 and was the Orioles' only consistent starter, after spending the previous season in San Diego's minor league system. The enigmatic Ponson “had some outstanding starts,” according to Hargrove, and finally showed signs that he is beginning to mature after four years of failing to fulfill his potential as a member of the Orioles' rotation. “I think Sidney had a better year than his numbers indicate,” says Hargrove, referring to Ponson's 7-9, 4.09, record. “There are still some things he needs to do. But in his last six or seven starts, he pitched better than he ever has before, at least since I've seen him. His pitch selection was much better. He wasn't just trying to throw 95-miles-per-hour fastballs. The only caution that I have is that he doesn't go completely in the other direction, trying to rely on his other [breaking] stuff too much. A 95-miles-per-hour fastball is a very potent weapon. But he's shown he knows better now how to set hitters up.”

Hairston also gave indication, Hargrove says, that he has become a more mature player, especially at the plate. “One of the more pleasant surprises is that Jerry Hairston showed signs that he recognized what kind of a hitter he has to be,” says the manager, who previously had been frustrated by Hairston's impatience at the plate and his apparent infatuation with trying to knock balls over the fence.

Overall, Hargrove believes too many of the Orioles' relatively young hitters are overexuberant when they get into the batter's box. “We swung at a lot of first pitches, bad first pitches,” he says. “Our team in general is impatient at the plate. Being a patient hitter is more of a mental thing than anything else. A lot of young hitters haven't learned this.”

Asked how he can impress upon his young hitters how to be less aggressive at the plate, Hargrove says, “I don't know of any drill you can use to make a hitter more patient. It's a mental thing you have to learn.”

Hargrove also was disappointed, he says, that the team's starting pitchers were more inconsistent than he had expected. Lopez was the only starter with better than a .500 won-loss record. Scott Erickson and Jason Johnson went a dismal 5-12 and 5-14, respectively. Erickson, coming off ligament replacement surgery, was so ineffective in the second half of the season that Hargrove shut him down completely the last month. The manager takes solace in the fact, though, that right-hander Pat Hentgen was able to bounce back from ligament replacement surgery and start four games in September. “It was encouraging that Pat could come back,” says Hargrove. “Though he wasn't successful [Hentgen went 0-4, 7.77], we saw flashes of the way he used to pitch.”

Just as Hargrove didn't think it was beneficial for Hairston to shoot for home runs, he also believes Melvin Mora may have been bitten by the homer bug this season—to the outfielder's detriment. Mora's 199 home runs more than doubled his previous season-high, but Hargrove thinks he sacrificed average by going for power shots. “I was surprised Melvin Mora hit .233 for the season,” Hargrove says. “I think Melvin is a better average hitter than that. But it was the first full season he played. He's really not a veteran, though he plays like a veteran.” Hargrove says he has talked with Mora, who played more than any other Oriole other besides Tony Batista in 2002, about cutting down his swing.

The Orioles' minor league system has come in for heavy criticism this year. The top three affiliates mirrored the parent club by finishing a combined 92 games under .500. Most of the team's top pitching prospects had bum arms, and there's a dearth of talented hitting prospects in the system. Hargrove, though, sees the system more as a glass half full than half empty. “There's nothing I can do personally about it,” he concedes. “But a lot of times in the minor leagues, the work that's done to make a player better is not readily apparent. Some times they become apparent the next year. A lot of times a team's success or failure at the minor league level has no bearing on the individual development that's there. It means a team didn't play well, but I've seen bad minor league teams have two or three very good players come out of those situations.”

He also sees hope for young pitchers in the system to help the Orioles. “The strength or our organization has been our good young arms,” observes Hargrove. “If you have six good young arms, and you get one or two out of those six, that's good. It's a case of people maturing and developing, and others falling by the wayside. If there still are a number of arms that are very viable, we still have to wait and see. Some could come real quickly, and others might take time. I still think we have a lot of good young arms.” Atop Hargrove's wish list for next year is the same item that he hoped for—but didn't get last year—an impact hitter with power.

“The needs we have are obvious,” he says. “We need a guy who can hit in the middle of the lineup, so we can move Batista and [Jeff] Conine in the order and give them a better chance to shine. If we make a trade or sign a free agent, that's the obvious thing we need to get. And, to be honest, it wouldn't be bad for us to get a couple of guys, one who can hit in the middle of the lineup and another hitter as well.” He adds that it will help to give the perennially injured David Segui back into the lineup, even though there is no certainty that the brittle Segui will be able to be productive all season. In the two years since he's returned to the Orioles, the 36-year-old Segui has played a total of just 108 games and has fewer than 400 at-bats. Hargrove couldn't discuss whether he would like to see the Orioles pursue slugging free-agent Jim Thome, who played for Hargrove in Cleveland, because it would have been considered tampering for him to mention a player was still under contract to another club at the time, the manager explains.

Despite all the negatives of last season, and the continued inability of the farm system to produce major league-caliber players, Hargrove sees light somewhere at the end of the tunnel.

“There are reasons for optimism,” he says. “It's not a large black hole we're staring into. Teams that go through a rebuilding process go through periods like this. It's not as bleak as the last month would lead you to believe. Were we as good as we seemed to be in April through August? I don't know. But we dang sure weren't as bad as we were the last month.”