O’s-Sox Day Baseball Thread
What can we say here? I still love the team, I’m still paying attention, I still care. I still think the $1 ticket promotion is a fantastic idea, for which the team deserves credit. I still think that DtM’s list of positives from the comments is valid.
But…damn.
Lance Cormier starts today against Matsuzaka. Go O’s and all that.
From B-Rob:
It’s not easy, but you’ve got to find a way to get that out of your mind. I think we’re all frustrated, yeah. … But we’ve still got a month to go. You’ve got to find a way to start plugging away and we’ve got to find some guys to step up. When it gets to this point, you’ve really got to grind it out. That’s why you’re professionals.
Does anyone else feel like Roberts has said this exact same paragraph at this point in the season for the last 5 seasons? It’s sad to hear it yet again, and you gotta feel bad for the guy.
We aren’t at a point yet where the fruits of Joe Jordan’s drafting have come into play yet. I think that will be next year when Bergesen/Berken/Hernandez will be in AAA waiting for the FO to be fed up with Liz/Penn/Burres/Olson. The great thing about next year will be AAA depth for starting pitching, something we haven’t had in a long time.
Perhaps Olson knows this year that even if he sucks he still has a job. That’s about to change soon.
I had a feeling Cormier would do alright today. He’s been about as good as you could have hoped after losing Albers.
I really wish someone would just up and fire every single relief pitcher on this team. How do these pitchers get up in the morning? If I had to go to my job every day knowing that I was completely inadequate to handle the daily tasks at hand, I’d have a frigging breakdown.
This loss sucks. Hardcore. Reminds me of the Mothers Day Massacre again. Last thing the Red Sox need is a come behind victory to take the series.
You certainly can’t expect young guys like Olson or Penn or Hernandez or Bergesen to not struggle when they get to Baltimore. It happens. There’s so few guys who never struggle (like Chamberlain) compared to the guys who do struggle before figuring it out (like Bedard or Santana or Randy Johnson or John Maine, etc.). Anyone remember Olson’s minor league ERA? 2.96. This year in 7 games, its 2.97. There’s just that big a discrepancy between the IL and the AL. So when Brad Bergesen isn’t the second coming, don’t get so upset – because he hasn’t proven anything, really.
I’m not expecting anything out of Bergesen other than the fact I haven’t seen him yet… and some pitchers do happen to fly right out of the gate like Chamberlain… and next year I can rest assured that they will be up at a certain point in time to try their stuff out.
I agree the $1 ticket promotion is a good idea, even if it’s nothing more than a shady disguise for trying to avoid the embarrassment of not drawing 2 million fans at OPACY.
Hey, we’re still drawing more than the 1st place Rays. And speaking of baseball in Florida, the Marlins drew less than 600 yesterday. WOW.
I went to the Baysox playoff game last night. Let me tell you, minor league ball is a lot of fun… and it’s way, WAY, WAY different than the big leagues. Not only in atmosphere, but in talent. It’s no wonder a guy like Liz comes up and sucks. I think there were more strike outs and ridiculous swings than there were balls in play. Three (3!!) bats went flying into the stands during this game. Blake Davis looked like an absolute CHUMP out there. This kid comes to bat with Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the ‘E’” every single time. He missed two plays at short, and went 0-4 with some terrible swings.
But…
Reimold took one deep in his first at bat, as did Jeff Nettles.
Berken looked solid and flashed a nice mix of pitches, although Akron’s Matt LaPorta tagged him for two home runs. LaPorta is going to be real good. And Berken looks to me like he would struggle at the bigs, but might contribute.
The umps were terrible, too. Heckled constantly by a small, intimate crowd. “TAKE YER GLASS EYE OUT, BLUE.”
My favorite was when Akron struck out 3 times in one inning and each time this guy was heckling the batters with this classic one:
“Fastballllll, fastballlllllll, fastballllll….” and then when the pitch was thrown, “CHANGEUP!” Each time, it produced a swing and a miss. Hilarious.
Oh, by the way, they lost 6-5 in 12 innings.
I went to the Lakehurst BlueCrabs (PHI) stadium (same league as the Shorebirds I think, SAL?) and had a blast there. The sound effects they use when people strike out, get caught stealing, etc… it was fantastic… much more fun than the Bowie atmosphere. Each batter on the opposing team (then, the Lake Co. Captains) came out to some emasculating song like Barbie Girl or some Cyndi Lauper… when a guy got thrown out at second on a steal attempt they played a clip from the old Willie Wonka movie where Gene Wilder shouts: “You get NOTHING! Good day sir!”
Also watched a guy standing in line at the food stand get knocked unconsious by a foul ball to the back of the head. Guy had no idea what hit him. Carted him off in the meat wagon too.
Yeah, minor league baseball is awesome.
hahaha sweet