The last Orioles sweep happened last May. They’ll try to have this still be true after today’s game.
Hello, friends.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads of Birdland. I hope you get to spend it however you’d like.
All of us in Birdland, dads or otherwise, will be hoping that the Orioles can do something to honor their dads today by playing better than they’ve done in the first two games of this weekend’s series against the Cubs. Four runs scored in the first two games is a sad performance. Check out Stacey’s recap of yesterday’s 3-2 loss for the not-so-lovely totals.
On some level, these are the ebbs and flows of things that happen, even to a great team, during the course of a baseball season. Just within the last week, the best-in-MLB Rays only split a four-game series against the then-worst-in-MLB Athletics. These things happen. It is not good to overreact to that. Some problems are month-long or even season long.
The soft part of the Orioles bullpen has been especially vulnerable all year – as seen on Friday afternoon. Infielders who are not named Ryan O’Hearn and Gunnar Henderson have been slumping over the last 30 days. If you want to count catcher in the infield, then obviously Adley Rutschman isn’t slumping either. It does not feel like random chance or bad luck if games are lost due to James McCann and Jorge Mateo not doing anything at the plate, or if Cionel Pérez is brought into a close game that suddenly turns not so close.
Here is the silver lining of all of this: The Orioles lost no ground to AL East rivals on Saturday. The Rays were beaten by the Padres, the Blue Jays by the Rangers, and the Yankees-Red Sox game was rained out. Okay, fine, so the Orioles lost a half game to those last two teams until the game is played today. The 43-27 O’s are six games back of the Rays and four ahead of the Yankees. This is now a 99-win pace.
The Orioles will try to continue their streak of series without getting swept by beating the Cubs here on Sunday afternoon. It’s one of those Peacock games, so sorry to anyone who will not be able to watch as a result. On the bright side, you can still listen on the radio. Also, it’s not a weird start time to those of us on the east coast: 1:05. It’s not even morning in Chicago.
One more bit of good news, if this series’s sad Orioles offense is able to take advantage of it, is that today’s Cubs starter, Jameson Taillon, has a 6.75 ERA this season. That’s pretty bad! However, Orioles starter Dean Kremer has also had some clunkers this season, if not quite as many as Taillon, so we could have the unpleasant combination of the O’s hitters finally breaking out and the pitching staff still not doing well enough for the team to win.
Around the blogO’sphere
Orioles recall Watkins, option Garrett (School of Roch)
In the flailing around for a reliever who doesn’t completely suck and preferably can reliably pitch three innings in times of need, the Orioles have yet to settle on an answer.
Mancini on Orioles: ‘I feel like I saw the turnaround happen’ (Baltimore Baseball)
A great point from Trey, who was around long enough to see things improve. Now let’s hope he hasn’t just witnessed a turnaround going the other way this weekend as a member of the Cubs.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 2007, the Orioles fired manager Sam Perlozzo. He was replaced on an interim basis by Dave Trembley, who later in that season was confirmed as the fully hired manager in the afternoon before the Orioles lost the 30-3 game.
There are a pair of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2014-18 catcher Caleb Joseph, and 2003 infielder Carlos Méndez.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: mountaineer George Mallory (1886), Russian princess Anastasia (1901), baseball Hall of Famer Lou Brock (1939), film critic Roger Ebert (1942), The Beatles’ Paul McCartney (1942), and actor Richard Madden (1986).
On this day in history…
In 1178, several monks in Canterbury observed and recorded an event that’s now believed to be what formed the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon, a 14-mile crater. It’s also now believed that this event caused the amount of oscillation within the lunar orbit that’s still present today.
In 1812, President James Madison signed the declaration of war against Great Britain, beginning the War of 1812.
In 1815, Napoleon was defeated in the Battle of Waterloo, leading to his final abdication after the first exile didn’t stick, and an end to the Napoleonic Wars. It took until the War of the Seventh Coalition to finally beat him for good.
In 1983, astronaut Sally Ride, on board the STS-7 mission on Challenger, became the first American woman in space.
**
And that’s the way it is in Birdland on June 18. Have a safe Sunday. Go O’s!
Read more