My hero!

This was one of those games where everyone plays super-well and the Orioles are the lucky ones who scored one more run than the other team.

Jordan Zimmermann, who started tonight for the Nationals, is an extremely unlucky man: he’s 3-6 on the year now, but he has a 2.89 ERA. He gets absolutely no run support from his team, and tonight was no different – they scored a total of one run, which came in the fifth when Mark Reynolds made a throwing error. The Orioles tacked on two of their own, one in the second, a homer by Mark Reynolds, and one in the fifth (J.J. Hardy drove in Nick Johnson, of all people).

Jason Hammel, though, is my hero. He went eight innings tonight, threw less than 100 pitches (96, to be exact, with 69 of them being strikes), and only gave up the one unearned run. He’s been incredible this year and although I was sad to see Gutz go in the trade for him, he’s making Dan Duquette look like a genius right now.

At least in one way tonight, however, we all won.

In ‘the Orioles are stupid’ news, the team is potentially sending its veteran starter who was there to mentor all of the younger pitchers, Jeremy Guthrie, to the Colorado Rockies. Here’s what we’ve got from Dan Connolly so far:

Again, this isn’t official, but it sounds like it’s fairly close and it’s making quite a few fans upset.

We’ll miss you around here, Gutz. You’re a great man and an excellent role model. And you have ties with Stanford, so I doubly like you.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

EDIT: The deal has been confirmed on Twitter by Guthrie himself and the Orioles beat writers are all tweeting that his agent has announced it as well. Consider it done. Have fun in Colorado, Gutz – it’s gorgeous out there and you’ll probably fit right in with all the hipsters in Boulder.

In this edition, Steph attempts to update from her father’s iPad. Hilarity hopefully does not ensue.

We’ve had one or two Orioles news tidbits since the untimely death of my computer’s boot drive. The computer is at HP for repairs and is estimated to return to my loving arms by February 1st. (In related news, that’s too far away.) Here are a couple of Orioles quick hits for your general interest:

~ The Orioles signed Wilson Betemit last night. Betemit, 30, received a two-year contract with an option for 2014. He can play all over the diamond, including at third base (watch your back, Reynolds) and at DH.

~ Jeremy Guthrie made an application video for the MLB Fan Cave. Seriously. This is pretty darn spectacular, people. Watch it.

Well, that wasn’t so bad, now, was it? Maybe I’ll be able to survive until my computer comes back after all.

Yes, this is a meat tenderizer. Yes, this is a horrible pun.

Okay, we’re all done, and our 40-man roster stands at 38 people!

Only three Orioles were non-tendered: recently-DFA’d Willie Eyre, Luke Scott, and Jo-Jo Reyes. That means the following Orioles will be tendered new contracts:

• Adam Jones
• Jeremy Guthrie
• Brad Bergesen
• Jim Johnson
• Dana Eveland
• Robert Andino
• Miguel Montero
• Darren O’Day

Go to MLB Trade Rumors and check out their awesome Non-Tendering Tracker: it’s an awesome little tool that I used to keep up with the non-tendering deadline today.

Now let’s all go to bed. Nobody should be up this late on a Monday night with work tomorrow, right?

I really don’t want to do this.

There are few days I hate more than the end of the season. Even though the Orioles pulled out an amazing ninth-inning win, coming from behind to ruin the Red Sox’s chances of making the playoffs, I’m still completely crushed. It’s because I have to say goodbye to everybody now. I guess I should start with that.

• Robert Andino: That walkoff you hit in the ninth should hopefully solidify the #freerobertandino hashtag’s existence on Twitter. You deserve it.
• Brian Matusz: Please, please, PLEASE fix whatever’s wrong with your pitching this off-season. I can’t bear to watch someone I adore as much as you struggling like this. It really hurts.
• Nick Markakis: Keep on balancing strange objects on your chin, buddy. I know you’ll be back next year.
• Adam Jones: You were the absolute MAN this season. I’ll miss you big-time this offseason. If you want any more drawings, just let me know!
• God Matt Wieters: Your cat looks like my cat. Well, one of your two cats looks like one of my four cats.
• MATT ANGLE: COME BACK ALREADY. I MISS YOUR DWEEBISH EARS. I LOVE YOU, FAVORITE ORIOLES PROSPECT.
• Kyle Hudson: You kind of look like a dweeb too, and it’s adorable. I can’t wait to see you next year, either.
• Nolan Reimold: YOU ARE FREE, NOLAN. FELIX PIE IS GONE. With that said, welcome to being a regular-ish player. Except now it’s October so you have to wait until February.
• Jeremy Guthrie: Get better taste in music. Oh, and go Stanford!
• Kevin Gregg: PLEASE LEAVE.
• Alfredo Simon: I’m sad that I can’t put any more Shutdown Sauce on my food until February. This crushes me in a strange way.
• Zach Britton: We both have cats, so you’re cool in my book. (Thank you, Orioles Pet Calendar. Mine arrived in the mail yesterday. Expect a post.)
• Chris Tillman: I’m going to miss the adorable gap in your front teeth. It makes you look so endearing.
• Jake Arrieta: You’re hot.
• Buck Showalter: I’m really going to miss your outbursts this offseason. They made my days so entertaining.  And you know what? In the end, you did the best with the team you had. I’m not sure why you keep getting them to play so darn well in September, though. Can they do this the rest of the season, too?
• Willie Randolph: I’m sorry if last night brought back bad memories of your tenure with the Mets. It kind of did for me.
• Jim Johnson: You’re better than I thought! It’s nice to see you pitching well.
• Troy Patton: OH, YOU’RE ALIVE.
• Chris Davis: Sorry you’re on a team that loses now.
• Tommy Hunter: I could say the same to you, too.
• Mark Reynolds: You walk far more than people notice. Must be the strikeout numbers blinding them. At any rate, I’ll even miss you this offseason.

I’m going to miss everyone, not just the people named here, of course. I just can’t deal with the offseason. Be prepared for a ridiculous number of Arizona Fall League updates from yours truly because I just can’t let go of baseball. Ever.

Oh, and one more thing: good luck in the playoffs, Koji. I miss you to death. がんばれ!

At least Chris Davis did this and it was kinda cool.

The Rays’ third inning tonight was really all it took. Seriously.

See, they scored three runs in it. We scored two the entire game. We’re really not too good at this baseball thing, now, are we?

Nobody in our starting lineup, by the way, has an average higher than .286. That average belongs to Vlad Guerrero. The next closest is .283, which is Nick Markakis’ average. Although those aren’t horrible averages, the fact that they’re the highest batting averages that were on the field tonight…not a good sign for this team. When averages are on the lower side, if the team is winning it usually means that they successfully bunch their hits despite not getting too many during a game. This team really doesn’t win much, so we can’t even say we’re bunching hits well.

By the way, Zach Britton is an almost-respectable 9-10 now. For this team, that’s a surprisingly good W-L record. It’s a little disturbing that Britton has the second-best W-L record on this team, with Jake Arrieta (10-8) leading the way on the bench as he recovers from surgery. The supposed staff ace of this team is 7-17 (Guthrie). The future staff ace is 1-7 (Matusz). I don’t like using wins to determine a pitcher’s success, but for the most part these guys haven’t pitched horribly, with the exception of Matusz’s obvious struggles this year. Guthrie in particular has gotten the short end of the stick a number of times this season. If anything, what we’ve learned this year is that wins really don’t do much to tell you how good a pitcher really is. Wins are a team effort; they just happen to get the pitchers’ names on them.

I may or may not expand on that rant at a later date, considering that I need more data to back it up. However, my point stands – this team pitches better than its record indicates. Its batting and its bullpen are the major issues, and although this past offseason was supposed to resolve those problems they still exist. Get ready for a busy offseason, ladies and gentlemen.

The Orioles are really not in a good position at the trade deadline this season.

By that, I mean that they really don’t have anything they can do here. If they’re going to make a move, they’re likely going to move someone who’s had some degree of success this season, namely Jeremy Guthrie, the hard-luck loser, or even Koji Uehara, the best cog in the Orioles’ bullpen. What to do in these circumstances?

The Orioles’ farm system is notably empty. Behind Britton and Machado at the start of the season, the prospects looked somewhat bleak and scattered about. A trade for minor leaguers would bring in some potential key pieces for the near future as the Orioles continue to rebuild. However, at the same time, moving either Guthrie or Uehara would essentially condemn the Orioles to defeat for the rest of the season.

» Continue reading “What Do You Do When You Don’t Have Trade Pieces?”

8-3. We were on the winning side of that for once.

Clearly, we don’t need a DH. We might as well just stay in the National League after this one. I mean, even Arrieta got a hit (in his first ML at-bat, too). He drove in his first career run, too. It was amazing. Five runs crossed the place in the first inning alone. Basically, things were good.

Arrieta held up his end of the bargain, too, but he struggled to do so, only throwing eighty-seven pitches over five innings. Nevertheless, he got his ninth win, which leads the team. Again, my theory that the runs are attracted to Arrieta because he is an attractive man holds true. I’m absolutely positive that I’m right on that one. You can’t argue against me. Even when he pitches in a mediocre fashion, everything wants to be around him, so he gets wins.

Oh, and Guthrie’s in line to make his next start right now, and he might just bump Matusz back for a few days. It all depends on how healthy they are. Let’s just hang tight and see how they’re doing…

The Orioles are the world’s best roller coaster.

Top 6th. Two runs go on the board for the Orioles.

Bottom 6th, minus Jeremy Guthrie. Two runs go on the board for the Blue Jays.

Top 9th. Orioles perform a miracle and get two runs across. They win, but not before Kevin Gregg gives one of the runs back on a solo shot.

That game broke a sixteen-game losing streak for the Orioles in Toronto, who really should have won more games there in that span but just weren’t good enough to do so. Here’s some good and bad things from this game:

The Good:

• Ryan Adams got his first career RBI.
• J.J. Hardy went yard. It was a no-doubter.
• Guthrie pitched really well in the five innings he survived.
• Despite blowing a lead, we came back and won.
• Kevin Gregg didn’t blow a save.

The Bad:

• Lots of scoring chances blown by the Orioles.
• Ryan Adams hit into a double play three times before his RBI. All three times, Mark Reynolds was on base for him.
• Guthrie exited the game after the 5th inning with a sore back. As I write this, he’s filling everyone in on Twitter, so check him out here and see what he’s saying about it.
• Kevin Gregg appeared in this game.

See this team, though? The group that showed up today was slightly better than the group that’s been taking the field lately. Now let’s see if they can pick themselves up even more and actually get those bats into a higher gear. At least they weren’t swept.

For more on Derrek Lee’s batting with runners in scoring position, check out this post from School of Roch. Lee drove in the winning run today by hitting a chopper to third that Reimold beat out by sliding into home.

This is basically the story of this team so far. This game nails it on the head. Aren’t we really just going up and down and up and down and then up again and then down once more?

See, we get a lead. In this game, we first got one because Markakis hit into a double play and pushed across a run. We tacked on a second one when Weets went yard. But then Smoak went yard, too. That was for three runs in the bottom of the eighth. We went down 1-2-3 in the ninth right after that, wasting an eight-inning effort from Jeremy Guthrie.

This is Happy Guthrie. We don't see him too often these days.

This man is the most consistent pitcher we have on the roster. If he’s not even winning, then there’s a problem. We’ve lost five in a row after that walkoff that came when I was looking at jellyfish. Things just aren’t going well. We need offense. We could use a little more defense. Pitching’s pretty solid at the moment, but the bullpen can always use some bolstering.

This just isn’t a great team right now. They barely deserve to be called good or decent. I won’t call them bad just yet, because they’re still growing, but they’re well on their way at this rate if this is how they’re going to lose games the whole year.