The Future Starts Now!

Expectations Are High For Young O’s Outfielders Larry Bigbie, Jay Gibbons and Luis Matos

It’s here, folks!

At long, long last, after half a dozen agonizing years of promises, promotions, ballyhooing and blustering, deception and disillusion, exultation and exaggeration, prognostication and prophecy, the Orioles’ youth movement genuinely has arrived.

When they trot out onto the Camden Yards greenery on Opening Night to take their positions on the field, six of the nine Orioles’ starters will be 27 or younger. And four of those six will have been signed, nurtured and promoted entirely within the Orioles’ system.

“This is not a rebuilding team,” proclaims rookie manager Lee Mazzilli.

No, it’s a legitimate major league baseball team, constructed upon a foundation of homegrown talent and imported stars.

Nowhere is the youth movement more apparent or more impressive than in the Orioles outfield: Jay Gibbons, 27, in right; Luis Matos, 25, in center; and Larry Bigbie, 26, in left.

One has to go back four decades, to 1964, to find a younger Opening Day outfield, when Jackie Brandt, Sam Bowens and a 22-year-old Boog Powell patrolled the vast Memorial Stadium garden. The only other younger starting outfield in the Orioles’ 50 year history played in 1962, when the two-years-younger Brandt and Powell were joined by Earl Robinson, who was 25.

The gray beard of the 2004 Orioles outfield, Gibbons, will begin his fourth year on the team and his third as a starter, after Baltimore squirreled him away from Toronto as a Rule-5 draftee in 2001.

“It just tells you the kind of talent we have, me — at 27 — ‘being the oldest guy’,” says the left-handed slugger. “It’s funny to feel somewhat old on this team, after being here only three years. Traditionally the Orioles went with the older players, and even though we have veteran players on the team, it’s turning around. Even [Miguel] Tejada’s not that old. We have a very young team.”

The turnaround is indeed significant, not only in the relative youth of the players, but in the culture of the team.

Former manager Mike Hargrove had a self-acknowledged preference for veterans. All things being equal, he would go with experience. Last spring in Ft. Lauderdale, Bigbie was arguably the most impressive of any player in training camp. Yet when the season began, he was dispatched to Triple-A Ottawa so that the 38-year-old B.J. Surhoff could play in left field.

But the old culture preceded Hargrove. It actually was a remnant of the Cal Ripken era. The Baltimore clubhouse belonged to Ripken, and he had a coterie of followers who set the tone on the team. Ripken himself was not divisive, but his mere presence, his incredible star power in his latter years, intimidated younger players. The great shortstop has been gone two years now, and it has taken that long for his imprint to be erased and replaced by a more youthful, less stressful, and more comfortable environment inside the Orioles clubhouse.

New peer groups are being formed by players like Gibbons, Bigbie, Matos, Brian Roberts and Jerry Hairston. The clubhouse is more cohesive and less cliquish than it was just a few years ago.

The old shibboleth from the early days of Eddie Murray — ‘It’s great to be young and a Baltimore Oriole’ — once again has resonance on thhis team.

“It’s great that we could play together in the minors and now in the big leagues,” says Matos. “It’s good to have people of young age on the team here. And the veterans will help us to mature as players. We’re trying to become a winning team. We want to make it to the playoffs.”

One never can feel secure about predicting how young players might develop or progress during their big league careers, yet Bigbie, Gibbons and Matos all appear poised on the cusp of stardom.

The 2003 season was pivotal for Matos and Bigbie. They both shed the tag of ‘prospect’ to earn the badge of big league ballplayer. This is the first year they will open the season in Baltimore rather than in the minor leagues.

Last year Bigbie hit .303 with nine home runs and 31 RBIs in half a season in Baltimore. Matos also batted .303, adding 13 homers and 45 RBIs in 109 games. While neither is a pure home run hitter, their power numbers should escalate appreciably. When Matos and Bigbie were signed by the club, Matos in 1996 and Bigbie in 1999, they were scrawny kids who exhibited little home run pop in their early minor league careers. But each season over the past several years, they’ve bulked up in arm and body strength, and the home runs have begun to fly off their bats with increasing frequency. Major league experience will only help to augment their power swings.

“Every year you mature and get stronger,” says Matos. “I don’t consider myself a home run hitter, but I’m going to hit a couple. I’m going to help the team by doing that, but also by getting on base, and by scoring runs.” Matos and Bigbie both play outstanding outfield and run the bases well. Their speed should help make the Orioles a base-stealing threat against opposing pitchers.

Gibbons is a natural first baseman who was shifted to the outfield two years ago. He has worked incredibly hard to improve his skills in right, and while he’ll never be a Willie Mays, he has become more than an adequate fielder. But it’s his bat that has always excited the Orioles. Last year he led the club in RBIs, with 100, as well as in runs and hits. He was second on the team in home runs, with 23. With more established hitters like Tejada, Rafael Palmeiro and Javy Lopez joining the lineup this year, Gibbons should feel less pressure to carry the club with his bat and be afforded more protection by having other sluggers hitting around him.

Still, no one can say what will happen to the outfield triumvirate this year, despite their obviously awesome potential.

Baseball is a game of twists and turns, of happenstance and serendipity.

And notwithstanding their relative youth, all three outfielders have shown some brittleness in their fledgling careers. Two years in a row, Matos broke a collarbone in spring training. Gibbons has had wrist problems ever since he’s been with the Orioles. And Bigbie spent over two months on the disabled list last season after straining his right shoulder diving for a ball in the outfield. Yet all claim to be healthy this spring and raring to go.

Gibbons acknowledges that his wrist will probably never be 100% perfect, following his surgery of two years ago. Yet he says it’s the strongest it’s been since he joined the Orioles in 2001, when he initially felt pain in the wrist on his first day with the team. A consummate weight lifter, Gibbons says he’s in the best playing shape he’s been in as an Oriole. “I’m 15 pounds lighter than in my rookie year, but I feel stronger,” he proclaims. And with his wrist feeling better than at any time in his major league career, who knows what Gibbons is capable of doing with the bat.

Matos is trying to put his misfortunes of past spring trainings behind him. “I’m not thinking about that,” he insists. “I just want to stay healthy.”

Bigbie not only claims to be in perfect health, he also says he feels less pressure this spring, knowing that he has the left field job sewn up and does not need to battle for a berth on the team.

“All off-season,” he says, “I didn’t hear anything about them trying to find someone else to play left field. So coming in this spring, there’s not as much pressure on me. I can go in and work on things. Last year, I had to do everything right, because I was trying to make the team. But now, for example, I can work on stealing bases, and I don’t have to care if I’m thrown out.”

Not only is he secure about his position on the team, Bigbie already is being looked at as a future Orioles star. In the early days of spring training, he was being sought out for TV interviews as frequently as veteran luminaries like Palmeiro, Tejada and Lopez.

Yet he, Matos and Gibbons have kept on an even keel. They are not enamored of themselves, which is one of the characteristics that Orioles management loves about them — that, and their committed work ethic. “I haven’t changed my attitude at all,” says Matos. “I’m going to be the same — working hard all the time. To establish a real major league career, you’ve got to keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

The three outfielders all relish each others’ success and enjoy strong camaraderie.

“The younger guys on the team kind of click together,” says Bigbie. “Luis and I have a great relationship. We played together three years in the minor leagues. And now that we’re playing side-by-side in Baltimore, we’re kind of pulling for each other. And Jay and I are great friends. We took a cruise together. It’s fun when you have a good outfield with two other young guys.”

He acknowledges, though, that it wasn’t easy for him last year, when he was hurt and sent to rehab, only to see Matos come up to Baltimore to replace him and go on an immediate hitting tear.

“You always like to see your buddies succeed, but not at your own expense,” he reminisces. But now, he says, with he and Matos both on the team, they spend a lot of time talking together, especially about baseball, in the team clubhouse.

Gibbons might be the veteran among the three outfielders, but he considers himself to be their peer. “Luis and I are always kidding around and razzing each other,” he says. “I always tell him that I should be playing center field, even though he can cover three times as much ground as I can. And Larry I hang out together off the field.”

That type of youthful enthusiasm and team togetherness is just what Orioles management likes to see.

And club officials hope the three outfielders can flourish together in Baltimore, not just in 2004, but for years to come.

“It’s great that we have a young outfield,” says Mazzilli. “And hopefully, it’s going to play together for five or six years. You don’t find that very often.”