Orioles-Royals Open Thread
First thing: Jamie Walker has been sent to the DL, and Adam Loewen is up to take his place — in the bullpen.
Second: if you missed it (AooR mentioned it in the comments), the O’s have a great promotion running this Sunday. Called “We Win, You Win,” the deal is this that if you buy a ticket for Sunday’s game and the Orioles manage to win, you’ll get a free ticket to any non-prime game left in the season. It’s pretty brilliant, actually. Stay tuned on this one because I might have something for you later in the week.
As for tonight, the less-bad-than-I-expected Kansas City Royals are in town for the start of a four game set. Brian Burres is scheduled to start against Zach Greinke.
Nick Markakis owns Greinke — he’s 1-1 with a homer. Not much else to report other than 3-4 should be very doable here.
And…you have got to be fucking kidding me.
ok…I NEED to stop jinxing the Os…FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK
Somebody tell FlatBrim to STOP THROWING THE CURVE WITH 2 STRIKES.
We’re officially back into “this is the Lost Season and it’s critical that we avoid meltdowns” mode. These guys have to settle down.
It’s all good, Fahey is going to hit the Bromo Tower and get us the win.
I have a troubled feeling about these Orioles, a sense of the gathering storm. A feeling like I should start now — however early — on a post explaining how wonderful it was that they gave us a half-season or so of Hope, but that it is time to remember the Lost Season and give ourselves more fully to the notion that this will all take time.
I would like to be swayed, somehow, that this is not the case.
Well a slew of injuries don’t help. Neither does Brandon Fahey. Neither does Bukvich.
I hear you, Neal, on feeling like things are starting to take that July turn. But let’s keep in mind a couple of things. 1) We thought they were tanking earlier this year and they pulled through and 2) This year has continued to surprise us again and again so it’s hard to predict anything.
Still – it doesn’t look good and we could really use that All Star break.
Come on damnit let’s end this fucking thing.
If we win it, great. Disaster avoided.
If we lose it, it’s two heart break losses in a row at the hands of the Nats and the Royals. That’s definitely worthy of meltdown talk.
Roch’s latest post sums it up pretty well.
Fuck this shit… intentionally walking people never seems to work out for us, but yet Ramon GIDPs in the same situation.
God, what a shameful meltdown. Hurts more when it hasn’t been happening the whole season.
George Sherrill gets the strikeout one home run too late. Chad Bradford gets the GIDP one single too late. Man o man o man.
It’s just like the late inning comeback magic isn’t there anymore. This reeks of 2007 so much. Nice 5-1 lead blown to shit by the bullpen.
I don’t know, man, there are bad signs everywhere. I realize this is just two games (assuming we lose this one) but it’s two absolutely heartbreaking losses, compounded by the fact that the injuries are starting to mount.
Annnnnnd it’s over.
Scott Williamson is still a free agent if I’m not mistaken.
We’re still OK, if only barely. I’m going to choose optimism here. Two tough losses in a row, it happens. Every team goes through stretches where the closer blows a few games in a row. Most teams, anyway. We’ll feel a lot better if they come out and hang a 7-2 win on KC tomorrow. Deep breaths.
But…I still feel that gathering storm.
Yup. /sigh
Albers really screwed us. Who do we have in his place? F-Cab: Can’t throw strikes. Bukvich: Throw meatballs. Sarfate: Can’t throw strikes. Loewen: Can’t throw strikes. I mean… it’s ’07 all over again.
Tomorrow is an absolute must win. They have to win tomorrow.
Meanwhile the Rays are in first place. No meltdowns there. Fuckers. So jealous.
Yeah,
Sarfate is unpredictable and is a walk per inning
Bradford is somewhat unreliable
Cormier is mostly unreliable
Bukvich is AAA trash
Albers is done
Walker is hurt and mostly unreliable anyway
Bierd is somewhere, hurt
Loewen is…. Loewen
Sherrill can’t save EVERY game, and he sure as good at putting guys on
Johnson is remarkable
This bullpen was bound to implode at some point. And it really just goes to show that the Orioles didn’t have enough pitching, as I’m sure MacPhail mentioned somewhere (only maybe about a million times I think).
Live by the pen die by the pen I guess.
Just gotta forget about it and go to bed.
Just gotta forget about it and go to bed.
You might wanna call FlatBrim and let him know. Then call the rest of the team and tell them to be ahead by more than three runs heading into the ninth tomorrow.
Couple of quick thoughts before bed, because that fucking exhausted me:
1) Sherril’ll be okay…heard him postgame and he seemed to have passed catharsis, which is pretty important. That said, he was genuinely as angry as I’ve ever seen him, chucking his glove into the row (only like 5 seats away from me! Holy Cow!)
2) If you ever have a chance to get seats on the field between dugouts you have to do it…that was fantastic, I could literally see the veins in Fahey’s arms.
3) The following players look done in their careers, absolutely done: Melvin Mora, Kevin Millar. Seriously, they looked over aggressive at the wrong times and unable to hit the breaking ball or the fastball. Overmatched.
4) What’s being lost in everything is that the offensive approach after the 8th was basically try to hit a dong. What a terrible way to go about your business. Get on base, let the next guy hit you in.
5) They still look hungover from the Cubs victory and the letdown under the Nats. It really seems like they figured that they had proven who they were and then got caught unawares by these two teams.
6) When they put the tarp on the field, we turned around and went into the concourse, and who do I bump into on my way to get a brew? Why, Jeremy Guthrie, of course. Very cool of him to come out and entertain everyone during the rain delay.
7) They need to change the rules for balks. Dropping the ball is embarrassing and stupid, but it is in no way misleading the runner. In fact, it’s just dropping the ball and being unable to do anything to the runner.
8)FUCK
What can ya’ do? Hopefully they all pull together tonight for Flat-Brim’s shirt night and clean the rest of this series up.
Bynum’s back. Haha.. this is getting ridiculous. Pretty soon we’ll be seeing Luis Hernandez again. Thing is, there’s just nobody out there to trade for.
Worrisome is the offseason shortstop problem…there is just no way we can go without a shortstop for the next 3 years, which is how long it’ll take to draft and develop our own guy, considering there’s no one in the system who can do it (outside of possibly the ’08 draft class). There’s only 2 decent free agents and they’re both getting old and have other issues (Furcal and Cabrera). Sigh.