It’s September 4th, and the Orioles find themselves one game out of first place in the American League East. That statement, on it’s own, isn’t too ridiculous. It’s when you start looking at the stats that make that statement look ridiculous.

The Orioles are not a good baseball team according to the stats. In fact, if you were to look at the league statistical rankings, before looking at the standings, you would think they stink. They’re currently in the bottom half of teams for offense and defense, and the pitching is in the middle of the pack. It begs fans to question how this team is winning ball games.

I decided to look further into this anomaly, so I skipped over to fangraphs.com to see if there was some sort of statistic that could explain why the Orioles were winning so many games this year. I found a statistic that, according to the sabremetric community, is supposed to provide the the most complete, and overall best analysis of both a player and the team. That statistic is Wins Above Replacement (WAR). I’m not going to go into detail about what WAR is, but if you would like an explanation of this statistical category, click here .

Finally, I thought to myself, I will find the answer I am looking for as to why the Orioles are playing so well this year. Their WAR must be off the charts, and that will explain everything. Boy was I wrong. Very, very wrong. The Orioles WAR isn’t just bad, it ranks in the bottom of the league. The only two teams with lower WAR, are the Cleveland Indians, and Houston Astros. So now the Orioles have not only defied our traditional baseball statistics, but also flipped the bird (no pun intended) to the sabermetric community.

What are we going to do about the Orioles? They’re defying baseball logic! They’re like Maximus Decimus Meridius defying the emperor in Gladiator. Something has to be done!

The Baltimore Orioles have their eyes set on the post-season. Statistics are supposed to give us a glimpse into why a team is successful or not. The Orioles laugh at that notion. Throw statistics out the window in the case of the 2012 Baltimore Orioles, they are irrelevant. However, the odds are that those statistics will catch up to them, most likely in the post-season, when playing against a superior opponent. With everything at stake, the post-season is generally the place where fairy tales end. The post-season is usually where these unlikely teams’ weaknesses get exposed. Then the baseball traditionalists smile and say I told you so.

The Orioles have the great baseball minds scratching their heads. They have fans of other MLB teams jealous that the Orioles are doing something that their team can’t – win. And the Orioles are throwing their hands up shouting are you not entertained?! Yes Baltimore, very entertaining. The baseball gods are smiling on you. There is no explanation for what the Orioles are doing this year except that’s baseball for you. The inexplicable things that happen are what makes this game great. We try to make sense of it all with statistics, but there are situations when not even statistics can help. That is the case with the 2012 Baltimore Orioles. And with the playoffs right around the corner, they better make a call to Jeffrey Maier and see if he’s available.

Jenrry Mejia returns this September

As much as we all hoped the Mets would contend this season, we all had to know in the back of our minds that it was a long shot. They took us on a fun ride through the first half, but showed what they really were around the all-star break. Now it’s time to turn our attention to the September call-ups and the playoff chases down the stretch.

In September the pennant races begin to heat up, and all across baseball you get to see a glimspe into the future. It’s a time to get a look at some of the potential young players who might be competing for a roster spot come Spring.

The second wild card will has added a whole new element to the races this fall, it’s just too bad we aren’t even close enough to be mentioned in the discussion. As a baseball fan I am intrigued to see if the Baltimore Orioles can overtake the Yankees, and if the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates can make it to the playoffs. I’m not even going to bore you with the potential scenarios that we might get back in this thing. It’s over, done, and gone. We are now looking to next season and are in full evaluation mode.

Sandy has a ton of work to do as the off-season approaches, but for now let’s enjoy the month we have left of Mets baseball. Let’s enjoy watching Mejia make a few starts, and Harvey’s final 1-2 outings. Let’s enjoy Dickey’s chase for 20 wins. Let’s look at Valdespin, Duda, and Shoppach to see if they can leave a mark for potential spots in 2013.  Let’s just enjoy the game over the next month, because the Mets season is almost over.

The main culprit of the Orioles defensive woes was second baseman Brian Roberts. Roberts was charged with an error for blowing an easy ground ball that could’ve been turned into a double play. Instead Roberts muffed the play and the Mets had two on with nobody out. The Mets scored four runs off that error. Later in the game David Wright hit a pop fly down the left field line. According to Keith Hernandez on SNY it was Robert’s ball. Instead first baseman Aubrey Huff ran out for the ball, dropped the ball and the Mets scored two more runs.

Tonight we also saw the rare strike out with the catcher missing the ball and the batter making it to first base. Ryan Church was the batter who struck out. The ball got past the Oriole catcher and Church was safe.

It was nice for a change to be on the receiving end of bad, sloppy play for a change. I’ve said this before, you simply cannot be giving teams extra outs. Tonight the Orioles gave the Mets plenty of chances. It wasn’t a case of the Mets beating the Orioles, it was the Orioles beating the Orioles.

To a lot of fans who are new to baseball, the Baltimore Orioles are known as a team that plays in a pretty cool looking park, but always finishes in the second half the American League’s Eastern Division. It wasn’t always that way.

Back in the middle 1970′s when I first started getting into baseball, I mean really into baseball, recognizing that there were other teams than the Mets and Yankees, it seemed that the Orioles were always near the top of the American League East. It wasn’t until I did some research for this article that I realized just how good the Orioles were.

Everyone reading this blog knows that the Mets beat the Orioles in the 1969 World Series. Most people know that the Orioles second baseman, Davey Johnson made the last out in that World Series. But something we don’t realize is that the Orioles came back to win the World Series in both 1970 and 1971. In 1973 and 1974 the Orioles finished in first place in the A.L. East (losing the ALDS to the A’s both years). From 1975-1977 the Orioles finished in 2nd place (Red Sox won the east in 1975, Yankees 1976 & 1977). In 1979 the Orioles won the AL East again, and from 1980-1982 they finished in 2nd place. !983 the Orioles returned to first place, and 1997 was the last time the O’s won the East. From 1969-1983, the Orioles finished worse than 2nd place only twice, 1972 & 1978! Orioles baseball was a standard with which all other teams were measured by.

When you look at some of the great player who played for the Orioles, its like a who’s who of 1970′s baseball: Boog Powell, Elrod Hendricks, Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Paul Blair, Bobby Grich, Doug Decinces, Eddie Murray, Al Bumbry, Rick Dempsey, Mark Belanger. For pitchers how about Jim Palmer, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan, Dennis Martinez, Tippy Martinez, and Mike Cuellar.

I would be remiss to leave out the Orioles great manager, the one of a kind Earl Weaver.

One last incredible stat about the Orioles. The 1971 Orioles had four twenty game winners in their starting rotation: Palmer, Cuellar, Pat Dobson, and Dave McNally. The Orioles had 101 wins that year, and their starters accounted for 81 of them. Totally unimaginable in today’s game.

At one time, not that long ago the Orioles were a great franchise. True story.