The Baltimore Orioles entered play yesterday with a four game lead over the Yankees and Red Sox, and many baseball observers are waiting for them to fold. Their best pitcher, Erik Bedard, is on the disabled list with a knee injury. Javy Lopez, who has been the best-hitting catcher in the game for three years, is out with a knee injury. Future Hall of Famers Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro are having downright bad seasons; Sosa, with a weak .252 AVG/.310 OBA/.405 SLG batting line, has been their best outfielder. Two of their starting pitchers have ERAs over 5.00. Despite all that, they’re not a fluke, and they’re not going away.

The Orioles’ strengths are pretty obvious, starting with their middle infield. Miguel Tejada, arguably the best player in the American League, is having perhaps his finest season, batting .322/.364/.595. Say what you will about the RBI statistic, but the man drove in 150 runs last year and is on pace to do so again this year. Brian Roberts, before this year a solid second baseman, is hitting a Rogers Hornsby-like .370/.452/.650.

The back end of the bullpen has also been superb – with B.J. Ryan (1.38 ERA) and Jorge Julio (2.48), the team has two closer-quality relievers. Add in contributions from Jay Gibbons and the grossly underappreciated Melvin Mora, and you have a team that, while not particularly deep, has star power to match any contender in the league.

Yet it is a philosophy as old as baseball that has keyed the Orioles’ season thus far: “Work fast. Throw strikes. Change speeds.” That’s what pitching coach Ray Miller has always preached, and the results show up in the stats of the team’s five starters.

Miller is one of the more interesting characters in the game, a fine pitching coach who made a really lousy manager. Upon joining the Orioles in 1978, he helped maintain the team’s legacy of great starting pitching under manager Earl Weaver by counseling his pitchers to throw fastballs and changeups and let the defense do its job. He was something like the Leo Mazzone of the late ’70s and early ’80s – whoever the team put on the mound became successful. Prospects like Dennis Martinez and Storm Davis thrived alongside an aging Jim Palmer. Sore armed veteran Steve Stone won a Cy Young award after Miller and Weaver fiddled with his curveball.The team was a powerhouse, and won 90 games every year.

In 1985, Miller left Baltimore to manage in Minnesota, only to be fired during the 1986 season; the following year, the Twins won the World Series. Miller caught on as a coach with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had talented young pitchers like Doug Drabek and John Smiley, and molded the staff that would win three consecutive division titles. In 1997, he returned to Baltimore as a coach under Davey Johnson, took over after Johnson was fired, and ended up taking the fall when an old, bad team fell apart.

Last June 26, Miller began his third stint with the Orioles, who were then floundering in their usual mediocrity. The change in the team’s starters was immediate and noticeable. Sidney Ponson, who had posted a 6.22 ERA through June, had a 4.39 ERA the rest of the season as his K/BB ratio went from 1.29 to 1.76. Bedard, a top prospect recovering from ligament replacement surgery, saw his ERA rise by nearly a run and a half, but his K/BB ratio rose from 1.33 to 2.09, auguring this year’s breakout.

Rodrigo Lopez’s ERA stayed precisely the same, but his K/BB ratio went from 1.85 to 2.60. A final piece of this year’s success came as Bruce Chen, whose reputation for being uncoachable sent him to eight major league teams by age 28, was brought in and finally started pitching as everyone had always suspected he could, running up a 3.02 ERA in eight games late in the season.

This year, the Orioles’ rotation sports a 4.01 ERA, good for fourth in the league. Every pitcher save Ponson is in his way a success story. Bedard (2.08 ERA; 3.71 K/BB) has broken out as one of the finest young starters in the game, throwing the fastball and hard curve of a classic lefty power pitcher. Chen (3.46 ERA; 2.56 K/BB) and Lopez (3.91; 1.76) have finally established themselves as quality starters. Daniel Cabrera has had no great success, but before last season he had only made five starts above A-ball. Despite his 5.30 ERA, the 24-year-old has shown great promise and is striking out twice as many batters as he walks this year, an enormous improvement over last year, when he walked 13 more than he struck out.

What all of these pitchers have in common is an increasing commitment to throwing strikes, working quickly, and changing speeds. This has been the formula for pitching success since the 19th century, and will continue to be so for as long as the game is played. When a pitcher does these things, he keeps the hitters off balance, lets the defense work for him, and minimizes the big inning.

It’s a credit to Miller that the Orioles’ staff has bought into his approach; aside from Bedard, none of these pitchers are blessed with great velocity, movement, or command. What they are accomplishing this year is simply what happens when pitchers with reasonable fastballs make a commitment to strike one.

As for the Orioles’ chances over the rest of this year, I think they’re excellent. So long as the pitchers buy into Miller’s common-sense approach, they’ll be decent, and so long as Tejada, Roberts, and Lopez fill the up-the-middle spots, they’re not going to have too much trouble scoring runs. What might really scare Yankee fans is that this team has serious cash to spend and no bad contracts standing in the way of filling holes in the outfield and the bullpen. Should the O’s manage to lay hands on solid players of the sort made available every summer, they could prove even more dangerous than they already are.