[Droford]

When the week began, 18 of baseball’s 30 teams either had a hold on a playoff spot or were within 4 1/2 games of one, meaning the final two weeks could provide as much entertainment for fans as last season’s exciting finish—and maybe more. And yet here I am tangled up in a world of justice and rationality and reason, searching for balance between my head and my heart. It comes down to this: I don’t know what to root for. There are the things that the fan in me wants to see happen. Then there are the things I think ought to happen. Part of me loves what the Baltimore Orioles have been able to do in giving their passionate fan base reason to care for the first time in 14 years. But another part of me sees the way their season has unfolded and considers it patently unfair that they’re in the hunt for a playoff spot. It’s nothing against the Orioles, Buck Showalter, or Dan Duquette. It’s just that following the game closely—and spending much of the year talking with like-minded people in the industry—I want to see not only the best teams win, but the ones that have gone about it the right way. So, as nerdy as this might sound, I guess I’m rooting for positive run differentials and good process. I’m not sure the Orioles have either. Some of this craziness, of course, is bound to happen. It’s what we love about baseball. Every year a group of scouts and writers I know try to revel in the unpredictability by making what we call No (Effing) Way predictions—or NFWs, for short. Players and teams come out of nowhere every year—Ben Zobrist OPSing .948 in 2009, Jose Bautista launching 54 home runs in 2010, etc.—and what we do is try to get a jump on them. It goes like this: you make a call on something you think might happen, and it counts as your NFW pick so long as everyone else decides there’s “No effing way” it happens. If someone would have said the Orioles would be outscored by their opponents by 20-something runs, and that not one of their trio of young starters—Zach Britton, Brian Matusz, and Jake Arrieta—would have a breakout season, that wouldn’t have counted as a NFW. Too believable. But if you’d said all that would happen, plus they’d be a game behind the Yankees atop the AL East on Sept. 17, you’d have heard a chorus of NFWs as well as concerns about your sanity. That part of their story is kind of neat, but what about the organizations that might deserve it more? Don’t the smartly run Rays, with their shoestring budget, their shrewd deal-making, and their plus-74 run differential seem more deserving? Or, for that matter, don’t the Blue Jays, another well-run organization that was struck by a storm of injuries and/or inexplicable ineffectiveness (yes, you, Ricky Romero)? What have the Orioles done other than fire a front office that laid the groundwork for this season? The 2012 Orioles aren’t much different from the 2007 Diamondbacks, the 2010 Padres, or even the 2012 Athletics. These out-of-nowhere teams generally have a few distinct characteristics: they have lights-out bullpens. They are good at hitting with runners in scoring position. They are good in what Baseball-Reference defines as high-leverage situations. And, as a result, they win a lot of one-run games. But the thing I find frustrating—perhaps irrationally (or overly rationally?)—is the unpredictability and unrepeatability of all of this. Bullpen construction is notoriously difficult, with luck figuring in as a major component of success. Just look at the Orioles. They went into the year with Kevin Gregg expected to fill a prominent late-inning role. He was released last week. And let’s not even get into the whole clutchness thing. “I was watching our team win,” said a front-office executive of a recent surprise team, “and it made me question everything. ‘Do I even know anything about baseball?’” I’m not the only one who finds myself confused about whom to root for this time of year. “We feel like we need to understand this game and feel like we get it,” a scout said last week. “And then the amazing thing about it is it confirms what we believe at times, and then at times it surprises us. If it never surprised us, it would be boring. We don’t want it to be Tic-tac-toe. There needs to be some degree of that. But I share your sentiment. I don’t want the Orioles to do well. I don’t want this nonsense to continue.

Oh no, nerds from baseball prospectus hate the orioles!