Happy 4th
No fresh content today, just best wishes. Have some fun and be safe out there. Comments are open as always if you want to talk about tonight’s Orioles game.
I might check in tomorrow with a post on Wimbledon, but if not I think I’ll just let this roll through Monday. Or not, depending on how I feel. Don’t be surprised if I do — that’s all I’m sayin’.
Thanks for being here.
RIP STEVE MCNAIR
so completely fucked
Oh my God…RIP Steve McNair and the lady who was shot along with you.
Wow, just wow.
Steve McNair Shot to Death
Say a prayer for Air McNair and his family.
so sad………RIP Steve
Very sad news, and I can’t even begin to express how desperately sad it makes me.
I really can’t. All I can do is keep moving, always moving.
Looking up, though, the Orioles are the financial juggernaut in a two team race for top international free agent Miguel Angel Sano, although their interest is going to be based in large part on what MLB finds in its investigation of Sano’s age (reportedly 16).
The Orioles have been flat dormant so far in international free agency, which is very bad – but getting the best player in Sano would absolutely make for an automatic win – and would make the GCL Orioles probably very good, while putting Sano on the fast track to taking over longterm in Baltimore at 3rd or short in a Hanley Ramirez or Miguel Cabrera type role (provided he doesn’t hit any Rowell-esque hiccups along the way…going from 16 to the majors is a big, big leap…but still).
@Andrew – Who is the other team going for him?
@Kevin – The Pirates
I went to the 4th of July NATINALS game. While I didn’t care about the game at all, I got to see the ballpark for the first time, and Adam Dunn hit his 300th homerun. Kind of cool that they came back against the Braves.
1. Congrats to AJ for making the All-Star team, a well deserved honor. Even if it is mandatory to have a representative, he’s earned it.
2. Look at BROB going deep to start the game
Awesome play by Hill! I don’t know about that one, but against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of Southern California, I’ll take it
Interesting post by Schmuck today saying how Palmer told him the team doesn’t know how to win and lacks killer instinct. I’ve heard this a lot lately, that they need to find a “winning attitude”. Sounds like something Andrew would scoff at, but something that might have some merit, too. Mostly, I think it’s our pitching more than anything. But the team does lack a vocal leader for sure. It’s going to be something they need to address, I think, like filling a positional need. Maybe that guy should be the manager and you don’t need a vocal player?
Maybe all this goes away with good starting pitching. That’s what I tend to think.
Also interesting to hear about Brian Roberts admitting there were “other factors” affecting his play recently and told DT he feels he’s letting the team down. I smell marriage problems. Or PED investigations. It’s not cool to speculate on a dude’s private life, so I’ll stop there. And as long as he has nights like the Sunday (home run, 3 RBI, double, steal), who cares.
@dan the man – It’s funny to me that you can make fun of me in one paragraph and then turn around in the very next paragraph and agree with me.
You ask me, this is giving a special name to a non-special problem. The pitching sucks. That’s what is wrong with the team. Call it a “killer instinct”, call it a lack of a “winning attitude”, but the name does not change the problem, which is still that the pitching sucks.
You can give me five of the strangest, most antisocial, weak-minded assholes on the planet, but if they can get major league hitters out, not only will nobody care what kind of person they are, their personality quirks will probably be widely celebrated (see: Bedard, Erik).
That’s just it, I’m not making fun of you at all, I’m just saying it’s fully justified for you to scoff at something intangible like “winning attitude”. I hear that phrase and sort of immediately agree with it, but then I go “what would Andrew think of that” which makes me think of “what is actually, statistically wrong with this team – the pitching”. I like to think I’m somewhere in the middle of the two schools of thought that are commonly discussed between you and Neal. One the one hand, I do agree that the team lacks a vocal leader and has no collective experience winning, but at the same time I know I can’t fully and accurately judge something like that until the team is complete and the pitching is established and generally “good”.
There is no correllation between winning baseball games consistently and having a vocal clubhouse leader. There IS a correllation between good pitching and winning baseball games, so maybe the Orioles should focus on that first.
Also “winning attitude” is a pretty flimsy thing too. If teams that lose consistently have losing attitudes, how do you explain teams like the Rays who win the AL pennant? How does a team with a winning attitude like the early 2009 Royals suddenly slide right into the cellar? The attitude always follows the performance, so lack of “winning team baseball” attitude is not what’s wrong with the Orioles.