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.

I suppose this is a step towards winning this series, now, isn’t it?

Really, though, I missed this one due to actually being outside with other human beings for the first time in a month and a half, so as usual the Orioles did that thing where they won whilst I was existing. But something very strange happened.

Nick Johnson stole a base and hit a home run. And the home run made the Orioles win.

Yeah. It happened.

Sometimes, there’s really only one way to say things.

This one…let’s call this one The No-Hitter That Wasn’t.

Jason Hammel came awfully close to throwing a no-no, taking it into the 8th before Justin Morneau broke it up with a double off the right field wall. In the end, only two hits – both in the 8th – accounted for the only Twins run of the day. Hammel was that good today. We flirted with greatness this afternoon.

The offense didn’t contribute too much, but it was enough – J.J. Hardy homered in the second, and two more runs came across in the sixth when Wilson Betemit doubled in Adam Jones and Nick Johnson.

On a related note, Nick Johnson’s moustache is really rad. I’ve known that for a while, but I just wanted to share that today.

The Orioles are now 3-0. This places them, in theory, in first place in the AL East since even if the Rays sweep the Yankees today Baltimore comes alphabetically before Tampa Bay. It’s kind of strange to be in first place, but then again, it’s a small sample size.

Speaking of small sample sizes, MASN ran this graphic during the game and I screencapped it:

Markakis saw pitches after this graphic, of course, because this appeared in the middle of the game. Before the game started, he was leading the league in batting, which is probably why they brought this up. At any rate, what we need to take from this is that Markakis recovered very, very quickly from his surgery and we probably don’t need to worry about him.

Actually, with the way this team’s played, it’s tough to find things to worry about. Help me find something to worry about, won’t you?

It’s strangely appropriate that the reliever the online fandom has dubbed Shutdown Sauce has gone off to a place where they put lots of sauce on chili, isn’t it?

Here’s the drill: the Orioles put Alfredo Simon on waivers the other day. He was just claimed by the Reds, which means he’s no longer our property. Since we also outrighted Jai Miller to Norfolk (he cleared waivers for obvious reasons) and reassigned Pat Neshek to minor league camp, there’s room on the 40-man roster for Ronny Paulino and Nick Johnson.

By the way, Neshek didn’t give up a single run this entire spring, which I think makes him a better option than someone like, say, Kevin Gregg, but whatever. Keep baffling us all, Orioles.

Opening Day is this week, so we’ve almost made it! Get ready to suck at baseball, everyone! (Well, maybe we won’t, but the chances of that are as slim as Jai Miller being picked up on waivers, so.)