The Orioles have had a bad week. An embarrassing week. The type of week that makes you question your ability to keep going with this team. After two heartbreaking losses in late innings against the Red Sox and Yankees the Orioles were then on the receiving end of two back-to-back colossal raw shellackings at the hands of the Yankees and Nationals.
The Orioles have given up 10 or more runs four times this year. To give you an idea how much those four games have had an impact on their overall stats, consider this. Currently, according to Baseball Reference, the Orioles are allowing just over five runs a game. In all other games outside of the four 10+ games the Orioles are giving up four runs a game. Those four games account for slightly more than 25% of all the runs that the team has given up all year.
So I guess it hasn’t been all that bad.
Another salve for a weary Orioles fan, if you want to call it this. The Orioles once again can’t solve the impossible Yankees. So far the Birds are 0-6 against the New Yorkers, meanwhile they are two games over .500 against the rest of baseball. They have found varied and creative ways to lose to the Yankees so far this year. Bullpen meltdowns, extra-inning thrillers, good old fashion trouncing. The bloated zombified corpse of Bartolo Colon has been resurrected through some dark, ancient ritual and is pitching well. The same dark magic has allowed Curtis Granderson to discover those short porches in Yankee Stadium International Airport and he only needs nine more to match his total from all of last year.
Brian Roberts has a concussion, Derrek Lee has a strained oblique, Berken and Gonzalez have been awful, Bergy got destroyed and Tillman has a tender back. Yikes.
The Orioles have made some moves in response to all of this nonsense. Ryan Adams, Brandon Snyder, Nolan Reimold and Alfredo Simon and Troy Patton have all been activated. Berken was sent down to AAA and Casear Izturis was placed on the 60 Day DL.
The good news is all indications are Derrek Lee will not spend many days beyond the required 15 on the DL and he hopes to come off the DL as soon as he possibly can. Bad news is Brain Roberts is suffering concussion-related symptoms and is on the special seven-day DL for that specific injury, but there is no real time-table for him. Now that could mean the doctors look at him on day eight give him the thumbs up and he trots on to the field and we never speak of this again. OR he lingers in the post-concussion haze for weeks. Concussions have a way of lingering and there really is no way to tell.
The Orioles washed a bit of the rancid taste of this weekend out with a nice solid win against the Nationals yesterday. Nolan Reimold announced his presence with a two-run shot to left field in the third, that would recover an early (unearned) two-run deficit, helping the Orioles to an 8-3 win on a sunny day in Baltimore.
Today the Orioles try to win the series with a rubber match downtown. A pair of young, unstable, starters will take the mound in Tillman for the Birds and Jordan Zimmerman for the Nats. Tillman is coming off two solid starts: against the Red Sox last week and Seattle prior Tillman pitched to a 0.81 ERA, seven strike outs and three walks over 11 innings. Tillman left the Red Sox game early (only throwing 88 pitches through six innings) with back stiffness. It was a very cold, damp night in Boston and hopefully he will feel better in the warm Baltimore sun. Zimmerman has been consistently mediocre all year. He has given up at least two runs in seven of his eight starts (against Pittsburgh he gave up only one). He is coming off a very nice start against the Braves. Zimmerman pitched into the seventh struck out 11 and held the Braves to three runs on five hits and a walk.
A series win for the Birds today would do a lot to erase last week from the Baltimore fan’s collective memory. We do have to remember that despite the ugliness of the last week and the team being in fifth place they are still very much “in it”. Only four games off the pace but you have to wonder how long that will last if the carousel of minor nagging injuries and maddening inconsistency continues.
Notes and errata
-Adam Jones is the man. Over the last 28 days Jones is batting .348/.400/.478/.878. He already has more then half the walks he had all of last year and is playing a much better center field.
-Nick Markakis is slowly getting it going. Over the last three weeks Markakis is batting .300/.366/.380/.746. Still not seeing the power we are used to seeing from Nick but it is nice to see him start to come around.
-Brian Matusz is about to come back. Today’s start will go a long way in determining who goes/ stays in the rotation though if I were a betting man I would wager that Tillman has the edge right now, unless he is hurt.
