For the Orioles, it’s been well .. a bad week. Aside from the Sunday curse continuing, the Opening week ended with a disappointing thud as the Blue Jays won this afternoon, 5-2, to complete the weekend sweep.
Until the seventh inning, all was good on a nice, sunny day in Baltimore. Ace Kevin Millwood, who was making his first start at Camden Yards as a member of the Orioles, showed why the top brass thought so highly of him to make a trade with Texas in the off-season.
For 7 2/3 innings, Millwood (0-1) was the man on the mound and held a 2-1 lead for Baltimore; however, back-to-back homers by Toronto’s Jose Bautista (a 2-run shot) and Alex Gonzalez (solo) did the Orioles in.
The Jays added an insurance run and put the nail in the coffin on Sunday as Edwin Encarnacion hit a solo homer to give the Jays a 5-2 lead.
Kevin Gregg pitched a scoreless ninth for his second save of the year.
Baltimore got on the board in the first inning, 2-0, thanks to an RBI-double by Miguel Tejada and a Luke Scott RBI-groundout. After that, the Orioles were handcuffed by the Jays and would not score after that.
Despite getting nine hits, the Orioles were once again stymied on the offensive front, going 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position. Shawn Marcum – who started the game for Toronto – earned the no-decision, and Casey Janssen (who pitched in relief during the 7th
Back to the Orioles: It’s been a depressing week for fans and with only 157 games to go in 2010, let’s hope it turns around. The pitching has been pretty good and the rotation along with the bullpen (um, aside from Mike Gonzalez) has been solid. Oh yeah, it may be a while before we see him close again…
The offense is another story. Miguel Teajda may have six RBI’s on the year, and Matt Wieters is hitting north of .400 to kick off the first week of the season; however, that’s it. Everyone else is struggling, and it may be that Brian Roberts ends up on the DL after valiantly trying to start off the season on the field.
Simply put, the bats need to get going … or it’s going to be a long, long month of April.
Moving on…
For us fan bloggers who cover the Orioles, MASN and the team once again held “Blogger Day” and both James and I will be sharing our thoughts on the day in upcoming posts.
As well, Luke Scott had an autograph siging (in conjunction with the World Fishing Network) at Bass Pro Shops at Arundel Mils on Saturday, and the blog along with Baltimore Sports Report were there to cover the event. We were able to get a few words with the slugger and there’ll also be a post coming along perhaps tonight or Monday on that.
