Casilla with the Twins, via Wikipedia.

The Orioles are having a fairly busy off-season already. First they picked up Ayala’s option whilst declining Reynolds’s, and now they’ve claimed Alexi Casilla off waivers from the Twins.

Casilla is 28 years old and primarily a second baseman, but he’s played some shortstop and third, as well, and is a good boost to the Orioles’ infield. He’ll probably compete for second base with Robert Andino and Ryan Flaherty, as well as the returning Brian Roberts. Should make for an interesting Spring Training, that’s for sure!

The Orioles made some other announcements today, as well, via Dan Connolly:

On Saturday, players who have filed for free agency can begin to talk with other teams. The Orioles have some interest in retaining pitcher Joe Saunders, outfielder Nate McLouth and designated hitter Jim Thome, but no agreement was reached during the exclusive negotiating period, meaning the three will be able to discuss contracts with all interested parties starting Saturday.

Also Friday, the Orioles announced they have outrighted outfielder Lew Ford, infielder Steve Tolleson and lefty Zach Phillips to Triple-A Norfolk and reinstated right-handers Oliver Drake and Stu Pomeranz, lefty Tsuyoshi Wada, infielder Brian Roberts and outfielder Nolan Reimold from the 60-day disabled list.

So there you have it – busy off-season already, huh?

Oooooooooooooooooooooh.

I liked this game a lot. I liked the first two innings the best because we scored seven runs total in them, which was really, really awesome, but overall I liked the entire game quite a bit.

Once again, we had a fine start from Chris Tillman, who went six innings against his former club and only gave up one run on three hits. Zach Phillips followed, giving up a second run on a solo homer, but his 1.2 innings of work were otherwise not so bad. He did walk a batter, though. Luis Ayala finished the night up and was somewhat rusty, giving up a double followed by a home run and then struggling to continue before being relieved by Tommy Hunter. Hunter loaded the bases and then miraculously did not give up a home run, instead notching a strikeout to end the game.

This win was probably most important because it means now we’re only half a game behind the Yankees. It puts just the teensiest bit more pressure on them to stay ahead because we’re less than a game back. It’s all mental, sure, but sometimes it’s the mental things that matter most at this stage of the season. Mentally, the Orioles are locked in, and it shows in how they’ve been playing overall during this stretch run. I’m excited. It’s late at night and I should be going to bed, but I’m excited, almost too excited to sleep.

I’m going to try to go to bed. If you’re reading this at the moment it’s posting and you’re not on the West Coast, you should go to bed, too.

Oh, drat. At least we were in first place for twenty-four hours.

The wheels kind of fell off in the seventh, when after pitching nicely for most of the game Miguel Gonzalez allowed three more runs, breaking a 2-2 tie and putting the Orioles down 5-2. Luis Ayala relieved him and allowed one more run, and it was Brian Matusz of all people who stopped the bleeding. (Kid’s doing well in the bullpen, actually.)

Here’s the real challenge, though: the next four days are what might really decide things for us, since they’ll be the last time we directly face the Yankees in the regular season. This direct competition between the two teams competing for the lead in the AL East means that they could make or break one another depending on how these games play out, so the Orioles need at the very least a 2-2 split of the series to stay remotely close. Preferably, they’ll win at least 3 out of the 4 games and take the lead by a game, but I don’t want to get overly optimistic.

The offense, I think, is going to be more important than ever in this upcoming series. It’s never the pitching that I’m worried about, especially with the lovely bullpen we’ve got, but rather the offense deciding to take some time off, as they’ve been wont to do this season from time to time. I think they’ll be locked in, though – the team’s realized how important this is and what a wonderful opportunity they have right now, and it’s showed in the way they’ve been playing as of late.

I know I sort of overlooked this series a couple of days ago, but it’s definitely more important than I let on because it really can define the AL East this time. I’m going to be really, really nervous over this, I know it. Augh.

Murphy is doing a fabulous impersonation of me right now.

…oh. Right. Oh. I’m not sure what to say here. This just wasn’t very good at all. I was really hoping we’d make up ground on the Yankees and we didn’t, so I’m in a rather sour mood now.

Here is a Morris Marina.

On the flip side, though, there is this little nugget:

But the Orioles’ loss, just their fourth in 16 games, wasn’t solely on the starter.

Right now we’re winning 75% of our games. That’s a ridiculous percentage. WHEE. See, there are things to make us feel better!

Now here’s a little news:

• Our prospects going to the Arizona Fall League have been announced! Check them out here.
• Dylan Bundy, who is not one of those prospects, will probably go to the instructional league after he plays through the postseason for AA Bowie. He’s not going to be called up in September. Sorry, folks.
• If you didn’t see this article on Luis Ayala hitting on people awkwardly and ineptly, read it. Also keep in mind that Luis Ayala is a married man, which makes this even more awkward.

You know how great Chris Davis was last night? Tonight it was Nick Markakis and J.J. Hardy picking up where he left off and driving in runs left and right. Between the two of them, they had five hits on the night. Not too shabby if you ask me, especially since Hardy missed the cycle by a triple.

Everyone played a part, though – Matt Wieters and Adam Jones had two RBIs of their own, and Steve Johnson pitched a heck of a game, only giving up a two-run homer in the first inning and settling down significantly after that (he pitched six innings total). The Blue Jays were stymied after that by Johnson and Luis Ayala – so much so, in fact, that the Orioles were able to close out the game using Kevin Gregg (who struck out the side – what even). That’s an accomplishment for the Orioles.

Basically, the Orioles did everything right tonight. It’s against a team riddled with injuries, so we can’t look at this and go, “WOW OMG THE ORIOLES ARE TEH BESTEST SO GOOD,” but we can acknowledge that at the very least they’ve pulled themselves together and don’t lose to struggling teams anymore. Remember, last year the Jays would have been trouncing the Orioles.

This is this year.

Well, I suppose we can’t win every single game, but I really wanted this one because we’d have gained a game on the Yankees and that would have been fantastic. I keep picturing this team surging in September and overtaking them, and to do that you kind of need to win baseball games like this one.

Buchholz was pretty darn solid tonight, though. He started off iffy, giving up a home run to Mark Reynolds, noted Red Sox killer, but he settled in and that’s probably a pretty good part of why we lost. The bit where Luis Ayala gave up three runs is part of that, too, of course. Tillman did give up three runs of his own, as well, but that’s better than I often expect from the kid, at least. The game was tied for a while, but Ayala pretty much decided that was stupid and had a bad inning.

Need to cheer up since we didn’t gain a game on the Yankees like we were all hoping to tonight? Here you go:

GANGNAM STYLE! It’ll never fail to cheer you up, believe me.

This is how many saves our closer has.

It took the Indians nine innings to score those first two runs. They came on a homer in the ninth inning off of Luis Ayala, who was going for one of those uncommon feats wherein a relief pitcher closes the game out by pitching the final two innings. In the end, it didn’t happen, so Jim Johnson came out and promptly gave up a double, which became a third run.

This all came after Zach Britton pitched a solid six innings and got three runs of support, with the fourth run being tacked on in the eighth by Wilson Betemit (who blasted a homer into the right field stands). Britton only gave up four hits total and walked two batters, striking out five. He actually looked pretty darn good today, which is certainly exciting given that we haven’t had him around for most of the year. It’s reassuring knowing that we have pitchers in reserve, at least.

Of course, the problem today was that we couldn’t exactly subdue the opponents in the final inning of the game after pretty much smothering them for the first eight. Credit to the Indians for not knowing when they’re beaten, because that’s a mentality that I think all sports teams should have, but the Orioles bullpen really made it possible for them. Jim Johnson ended up with save number 30, sure, but he allowed a run and ended up walking a batter before finally getting things done. It was more stressful than it needed to be.

Oh, but Jim Johnson is leading the AL in saves, so there’s that, at least.

Tomorrow night we play Cleveland again, somewhat oddly ending a series on a Monday night, before we get to return home. We don’t have an off-day until August 2nd. That’s actually a longer time than it seems because we’re playing every night. Eh, we’ll manage now that we’ve remembered how to win again. It’s such a relief knowing that this team hasn’t completely forgotten everything.

I was sick last night from heat exhaustion. The Orioles were sick last night from starting pitching.

Zach Britton made his season debut, and although everyone was excited to see him back he struggled once he hit the fifth inning, which is really just following the trend of pitchers not being able to put together quality starts lately. Poor Luis Ayala had to come in to mop things up and ended up being tagged with the loss when he allowed two runs to score a few innings later in the seventh.

At least Adam Jones had a three-run homer in there. It’s nice to know that somebody’s functioning lately.

This is what we call a funk or a slump, of course, and I think this team differs from Orioles teams of the past two or three years because they’ll be able to put things together again. It’s like kids learning to spell, actually. They’ll make errors at the beginning, but over time they’ll remember how things go and spell them correctly.

Or they’ll be adults who do this, but I’m hoping for the former.

Hawaiin pizza? What’s that? I know what a Hawaiian pizza is, but…

Oh. Well, then. I’m not so thrilled with this being the first game to come back to.

Jason Hammel pitched three innings and gave up only two runs, but he unfortunately left the game early due to a knee injury of some sort – one which Gameday would not tell me more about (MLB.TV and the radio both wouldn’t work until the 8th inning for me for some reason). Unfortunately, that led to our bullpen coming into play and not doing as well as it normally does, with Ayala and Eveland combining to give up five runs over the fourth and fifth innings. The rest of the bullpen came in to get work in this game – when I say the rest of the bullpen, I mean it, because Gregg, Patton, Lindstrom and Strop each got an inning of work, and the four of them did absolutely fine. Even Gregg. Yep.

On the offense front, we really were still useless, which only solidifies the fact that we need help in that department when we’re buying in a week or two. We had six hits total in this game. That’s really not very many, you know. Somehow, we scored two runs in there, but the issue remains – this team doesn’t have good offense. If they win, it’s because their offense absolutely explodes, but a good offense is a consistent offense and this offense is the most fickle one I can remember.

I really can’t find a better way to sum up tonight than this screencap I took from Gameday:

Yep. Right. Let’s just try again tomorrow.

What does it MEAN?

I know, I know, we won again. It’s really starting to get hard to believe, isn’t it?

I’ve been sitting here for a while now trying to think of what to say about this team, but the only thing I’ve really noticed lately is that Jason Hammel’s endurance seems to have dropped off as of late, which naturally leads to us having to score enough runs to keep him from losing. We were able to do that tonight, but I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep that up.

When the offense is firing on all cylinders, it’s truly incredible this year. Adam Jones is absolutely on fire – fourteen homers already? Seriously? This is just fantastic. I’m really liking his performance (although he could cut down on the strikeouts a little bit). All in all, the offense put up six runs today, with all of the RBI coming from the folks at the top of the order. That’s probably the most encouraging random stat of the night. Seriously.

The most troubling random stat of the night is, as mentioned above, Hammel’s endurance. He’s gone eight innings or more at least once this season, and yet in his last two starts he’s petered out near the end. He’s struggled to get through the sixth lately, which makes me wonder if he’s exhausted or if there’s something else going on. Either way, although Luis Ayala allowed two inherited runners to score in the sixth, which made the score 6-4 at that point, the bullpen was able to bail him out, only allowing one extra run during that time.

Really, guys, we’re lucky to have the bullpen. They’re that friend that’s always conveniently there to help you out at the right time when you’ve upset some people and need to come up with an excuse to cover yourself really quickly.

I just have to wonder how long this is going to last. I’m actually starting to believe that this team might be able to sustain itself for an entire season playing at this level. They’ve almost got me convinced despite the fact that there are some definite issues in there. I guess I’ll just have to keep watching and see.