Brady Anderson, 1996 Pinnacle Summit Above and Beyond #118

Among the several dozens reasons that it's been tough to be an Orioles fan in recent years, there's the team-wide power outage. As Matthew Taylor pointed out earlier this week on his Roar from 34 blog, the O's have only had three 30-home run hitters in the past decade. There haven't been two Birds with 30 homers in the same season since Brady Anderson went out of his gourd in 1996 and left the yard 50 times. He was of course joined by Rafael Palmeiro, who had 39.

I still have serious misgivings about newest Oriole Vladimir Guerrero (who celebrates his 36th birthday today), but I can't deny that it'll be fun watching him tomahawk pitches into the left field seats in Camden Yards. With Vlad, Mark Reynolds (32 HR in 2010, 44 HR in 2009), and Luke Scott (27 HR in 131 G in 2010), the Orioles at least have a fighting chance at a 30-homer tandem. At any rate, they should certainly improve upon last year's piddly total of 133, the most anemic output by an O's team since 1990.  Unless of course everyone gets hurt and Buck has to field a lineup including Cesar Izturis, Nick Green, and Randy Winn. Everybody start making your offerings to Jobu now.