FanHouse Dave Trembley

In a surprising move, the Orioles announced this afternoon that they will pick up manager Dave Trembley's option for the 2010 season. The Orioles are currently in danger of losing 100 games with their 61-98 record and it's their 21-50 record since the All-Star break that made this news particularly unexpected.

It's true that much of the O's talent (particularly their pitching talent) is very young and that this year was going to be a difficult year for any manager. Team president Andy MacPhail acknowledged as much in his statement on the move, saying that record wasn't the only thing he used to evaluate his manager. Even with that knowledge, however, Trembley seemed to be a sure candidate for Monday's chopping block.

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's weekly look at some aspect of America's pastime.

Instead of handing our hardware to Joe Girardi, Joe Torre, Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer, Zack Greinke and Chris Carpenter (yes, those would be my votes), I thought we'd mix it up a bit. Plus, being a Cubs fan, I'm plenty filled with negativity at this time of the year -- which, really, is normal. So these are the Bizarro World Awards. The Suck Awards, if you will. The envelopes, please ...

BALTIMORE -- Sheila Dixon ought to dig up Bill Bavasi's address and send him a long, well thought out thank you note. Someone in the Charm City ought to show some appreciation for the former Mariners general manager for doing his best to get the Orioles turned around, it might as well be the mayor of Baltimore.

It was two winters ago that Bavasi sent Adam Jones, Chris Tillman and George Sherrill to the O's in exchange for Erik Bedard. For the first time since that deal, all three appeared on the same major league field together.

Jones homered and had four RBI in Baltimore's 7-3 win. Sherrill was in line to get the save, warming up in the bullpen in the bottom of the eighth inning before getting the night off when the Orioles tacked two runs onto their lead. And Tillman, making his major league debut, got a no decision after allowing three runs in 4 2/3 innings. Not bad for a start.

"We can hit, it's a matter of good pitching," Jones said after the win.

Tuesday night, Orioles skipper Dave Trembley tried to do the great Earl Weaver proud. He locked horns with home plate umpire Tom Hallion during the first inning of the Orioles game in Seattle. Once he was ejected, he threw his hat and got a little nuts (don't let the picture fool you, it got way better), only to follow it up with a nice little post-game press conference.

Friday, Major League Baseball disciplined Trembley in the form of a two-game suspension and an undisclosed fine. Funnily enough, though, he wasn't necessarily in trouble with the league office for the antics we saw on the field. No, it was actually what happened after he was ejected, and he admitted to it.

SEATTLE -- Erik Bedard faced Baltimore for the first time Tuesday since the Orioles dealt him to the Mariners to be the final piece of their American League West championship puzzle. Only it has hardly worked out that way. The Mariners, along with Bedard, have struggled mightily since the deal, while the Orioles revamped their farm system and added two productive major leaguers in the deal.

A deal hasn't helped a team more since the Dallas Cowboys practically won three Super Bowls by trading Herschel Walker to Minnesota 20 years ago. Bedard was able to exact a semblance of revenge and some pride for bruised Seattle with 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball. He struck out seven and walked three in an 8-2 Mariners win.

This was dominant Bedard with his curveball snapping and fastball crisp. This Bedard hasn't been seen much in Seattle. And the question is whether the Mariners will ever get any real value out of Bedard, a free agent at season's end and likely to bolt elsewhere.

BALTIMORE -- Everyone loves 'em. The Baltimore Orioles simply want to be like 'em.

Them, in this case, being the reigning American League champion Tampa Bay Rays, who breezed into the Charm City Friday night and provided a glaring reminder of Baltimore's shortcomings over the last decade.

BALTIMORE -- He did not arrive with the same fanfare as Daisuke Matsuzaka. He does not carry the hype or mystique of phenom Yu Darvish. And he has not left an indelible mark on American baseball fans like Ichiro Suzuki, at least not yet.

But Koji Uehara has arrived in the big leagues, nonetheless, and just for good measure, he's 1-0.

"It was a big night," said Orioles manager Dave Trembley. "For Koji, the Orioles, people in Japan and Major League Baseball in general, a real big night."

FanHouse continues its 2009 MLB Preview with a look at the Baltimore Orioles.

The Charm City hasn't had much to feel good about when it comes to its baseball team lately. In this case, lately means more than a decade. The last time the Orioles ended the season with a winning record "Honey" by Mariah Carey was the No. 1 song in America and Bill Clinton was in the first year of his second term as president. The year was 1997.

Our MLB editor files dispatches from this year's Winter Meetings in Las Vegas in Notes From Sin City.

Three managers of AL East teams spoke with the media this afternoon/evening (for a more extended look at the Rays, try this), and with very little actually happening on the first day in Las Vegas, it's a good time to look at baseball's most imposing division.

The standard for excellence in the other divisions in baseball is roughly 90-92 wins. That's not the case in the East, where 95 wins are almost always required to guarantee a spot in the postseason.

For a team like the Orioles, that can be awfully intimidating. While the Yankees have their hand in virtually every free-agent pie, Baltimore is relegated to building slowly, to nurturing the farm system and hoping its young players pay off big in the near future.

"It's a great time to be an up and coming prospect in our organization," said manager Dave Trembley. But even with a collection of impressive young talent -- names like Matt Wieters, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Nolan Reimold -- the O's are facing long odds and Trembley has no pie-in-the-sky aspirations, merely repeating the mantra "we have to get better."

Well, yeah, but the rub is just how much better they actually have to get.

Orioles manager Dave Trembley seems like a genuine fellow. His rise to Major League manager included a really, really long stop in the minors, something that might have caused other managers – or players, or umpires – to forget about their crazy dreams. But not Dave. He stuck it out. And for all his work, he got to manage ... the Baltimore Orioles. A job has never been more thankless.

Given his history and the talent level at Baltimore this year, it would have been a Tom-Nieto-at-Radio-Shack-level shame if Trembley would have lost his job so quickly. Fortunately, Dave's not going anywhere – the Orioles announced today that they'll exercise his option for 2009.

Good on 'ya, Dave! Now you can walk into the locker room blaring one of the great forgotten classics of the post-Bad Boy era. Dave Trembley's the definition of ... half man, half thug ...