For Many Teams, Small-Ball Efforts Are Being Richly Rewarded

If the Orioles can patch together an adequately deep bullpen, which still seemed problematic in spring training, the Birds may finally end their streak of eight straight losing seasons. However, the Orioles may face one persistent problem. It's hard to build a team on a sensible budget that can win lots of 3-2 and 4-3 games if you play in a home park where rival sluggers don't have to "get it all" to get it out of the park. And nobody's going to touch the comfy dimensions of golden-goose Camden Yards.

In Washington, the Nationals are totally committed to the thesis that times have changed. Will the Nats move in the fences at cavernous RFK Stadium? "No way," said General Manager Jim Bowden who has spent the last year retooling his personnel to suit his park. "We want line-drive gap hitters with extra-base power who can have a high average, not fly ball [home run] hitters," said Bowden. "There are a lot of hits out there in our [big] outfield. The long fly balls get run down. The line drives don't."

So, the Nats have signed Jose Guillen and Nick Johnson, two such hitters, to multiyear contracts. Both have proved they can hit around .290 as well as amass plenty of doubles with their 15 to 25 homers. Jose Vidro, when healthy, also fits this style. The Nats' No. 1 draft pick in '05, Ryan Zimmerman, projects as exactly this type of all-fields, line-drive, high-average hitter who may have twice as many doubles and triples as he has home runs. Finally, Alfonso Soriano, who was traded for upper-cut-swinging Brad Wilkerson, is also an all-fields, line-drive hitter. Yes, whether it works or not, there's a method to the madness.

It's no accident that Vinny Castilla, Preston Wilson and Wilkerson -- who all fit the mold of big-fly all-or-nothing sluggers who will never hit close to .300 in a big ballpark -- have left the organization. The Nats don't think they suit the dimensions of RFK or the new Nationals Park, which has been designed at the team's request to be "a pitcher's park."

Conversely, the Nationals have sought pitchers who are available at sensible prices because they have had one bad season or lost their confidence. Will RFK restore them? Ramon Ortiz, who still throws 95 mph, was shell-shocked in tiny Cincinnati last year. Will he find himself again, return to his solid Angels form, much as Esteban Loaiza did last year? Loaiza quickly forgot his half-season of misery with the '04 Yankees and returned to his former self, a steady White Sox starter.

If the Nats play with the team unity and fundamental soundness of the first half of '05, then all these theories may have some meaning. However, if their defense remains as unfocused as it has been in Florida and if their lineup lacks internal chemistry, as it did in '05, then all the Nats' smart talk won't count for much. Why some lineups are combustible and others are inert is still one of the game's mysteries. Who'd have thought obscure Podsednik and Iguchi were the proper table setters for a world champion?

The powerful and entrenched have a knack for derailing democratic uprisings. The Yankees' lineup, for example, once again looks like a king's ransom all-star team. But so did the U.S. team for the WBC, which included Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

Don't count out the power of a buck in any sport, certainly not baseball. But, as Opening Day arrives, at least 20 teams are firmly convinced that their budgets will not prevent them from making the playoffs. Once you reach October, as teams like the '02 Angels, '03 Marlins and '05 White Sox showed, nobody weighs your wallet before handing you the World Series trophy.