The Orioles need to move on from certain players and philosophies

By: Corey Johns

If Ubaldo Jimenez ever throws another pitch in an Orioles uniform you can bet it will be under a loud chorus of boos. These past five seasons were supposed to be an era of the Orioles return to greatness, but the entire period has been marred by one of the worst free agent failure in club history. At no point has Jimenez ever lived up to his four-year, $50 million contract that still has him owed a fully guaranteed $13.5 million next season, but Orioles fans should no longer have pay for the club’s bad decision.

For some reason we will never know, Buck Showalter felt it was a better decision to put Jimenez on the hill in the bottom of the 11th inning of a tied Wild Card game to face the top of the Blue Jays dangerous lineup. Jimenez never should have been in that spot, it should have been arguably the league’s best pitcher Zach Britton, who was never even used in the biggest game of the team’s season.

Jimenez threw five pitches, two of them got pen on base and the last one was went out of the park as Edwin Encarnacion hit a walk off three-run home run to give the Blue Jays the 5-2 victory.

There is no reason to be surprised this happened. Maybe Jimenez was one of the team’s top pitchers of late heading into October, but he has proven too many times that he can quickly become the coldest, especially in big games.

If the Orioles have to keep Jimenez on the roster, there is no way they can ever trust him outside of mop up duty in a blowout.

But more than Jimenez’ failure, the loss highlighted how the way the Orioles have been built this past half decade simply does not work. At the end of the day, the Orioles got good enough performances from their other relief pitchers to win the game before they ever had to call on Jimenez. But instead, the Orioles totaled only four hits and were completely shut down over the last five innings.

Mark Trumbo led to the only scores of the game for the Orioles with a two-run home run in the fourth inning.

This offseason, Trumbo will be a free agent. Maybe he led the league in home runs, but the Orioles do not need to lead the league in home runs by nearly 30; they need to get more guys who can come up with clutch contact hits and move guys around the bags. If that means letting Trumbo and fellow pending free agent Pedro Alvarez go, so be it.

Something has to change. It’s great that the Orioles are no longer fighting to even get 70 wins in a season, but at this point their has to be more than just swinging for the fences, disappointing pitching performances and frozen postseasons.

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