Last night the Orioles fell to 1-4 after being shut down by crafty left-hander Dana Eveland. The Orioles seem to make every left-handed pitcher look crafty. The offensive disappearing act spoiled a great six-inning 2-ER performance from David Hernandez. Hernandez showed why he made the team out of ST last night. He worked quickly; he threw strikes; he got out of jams with minimal damage; he pitched a great game. It was the best performance from an Orioles starter this first time through the rotation.
And the Orioles spoiled it.
But you know what, I am not even that upset about it. Games like that are going to happen. You are going to have nights where you just don’t have an offense and lose 2-0. That will happen to the Yankees, Sox and Rays as well. That, my friends is why you have to win the games you are supposed to win. If our new closer had gotten the job done then we would be sitting at 3-2 and not really worrying about this petty loss. But, because you didn’t win the games you were supposed to win, here we are.
Enough has been written cursing Mike Gonzalez to the inner-most circle of Hell reserved for mutineers, traitors and ineffective closers so I do not feel the need to heap more onto the pile. Gonzalez knows he has to put some serious work in before his next appearance so he will be working with Kranitz in the bullpen to get this figured out. I think I smell a phantom injury coming on.
The Gonzalez troubles are, well, troubling because the Orioles just need to catch a break and get some momentum going in their favor. They have played in very close games and all four of their losses have been by a combined six runs.
Thankfully though this is not football and the Orioles have more than enough time to turn this around. If the Birds were going through a stretch like this in July, no one would be worrying too much – everything is magnified in the first week.
I will be at the park today participating in MASN’s second annual “Blogger Day”. Just want to thank the Orioles and MASN for doing this for the blogging community, it was a rousing success last year and I am glad they are turning it into am annual event. Teams don;t really need to do much for us – we mostly do this for free and would do it anyway without free hotdogs and soda but I’m not going to start complaining about it.
See you at the park.
