Felix Pie May Be Out for 3 Months

The only bright side to this is the outfield depth the O's have...

Roch Kubatko is reporting that Felix Pie has a back injury and could miss up to three months:

Pie went on the disabled list April 16 with an injury classified as a strained muscle in his upper back, but further examination today revealed a more serious problem.

There's been no talk of surgery, and Pie is debating whether to stay here or report to Sarasota to rehab after an extended period of rest.

President of baseball operations Andy MacPhail confirmed the injury a few minutes ago and compared it to the one suffered by reliever Jim Miller a few years ago.

"Left alone, I'm told - and they have significant medical information on this - the thing will heal itself as quickly or more quickly than if you did something on a surgical basis," MacPhail said. "But it's going to take some time to go through the process that it has to go through."

Not great news given that Pie looked to be a much improved player at the plate in 2010 and certainly looked better in the field than he did at the beginning of 2009.

I suppose the bright side is that Nolan Reimold and Luke Scott will be playing nearly every day.

Lou Montanez, your time has come. You wanted an opportunity and this is it.

Anatomy of a Streak-Breaker

Courtesy of FanGraphs.com:




As you would expect, Ty Wigginton was the offensive hero with .252 WPA for the game, a total that will rank among the best of the year. Nick Markakis chipped in with a .092 WPA. Brian Matusz had .108 WPA with 6.1 IP and Jim Johnson, a recent goat, kicked in .062 WPA in 2 innings of relief.

Can the winning continue? Maybe. But the injuries hurt, pun unintended.

OF Felix Pie, 2B Brian Roberts and likely 3B Miguel Tejada will miss the series with Seattle. That hurts the struggling offense. But if there's one offense on the level of Baltimore's, it's the Mariners.

Seattle has only scored 3 more runs than the O's and that's good news for Brad Bergesen. If he can't get back on track in a pitcher's park (Safeco) against a punchless lineup (only 5 homers all season), then he may never get it back.

The bottom line is that the O's have a puncher's chance in this series.

As a bonus, you'll get to see 2B Justin Turner (perhaps a player in the middle infield for Baltimore in 2011) and OF Lou Montanez (who has been buried in Norfolk by Baltimore's infield depth). Yeah, that won't help the W-L ledger but I've been curious to see how Turner will handle big league pitching and all those "Sweet Lou" worshippers should come out of the woodwork to hope that Lou shows enough to at least be trade fodder in July.

I'm sure you're all sick of my sunny optimism by now but...Let's Go O's!