In yo face, Kansas City!

Seriously, this was the 115th game of the season. This is our current record:

This means that if we win one more game, we avoid losing 100 games. We’ve only got 47 games left this season. This is absolutely incredible. Look at this:

I’m not fully sure as to what’s happened here, considering that there are very few changes to this team from last season, but just look at this! Can you believe it? It’s kind of hard to even believe that these are mostly the same Orioles that put up that dismal record last season. Now we’re about to officially escape the possibility of 100 losses.

Also, Manny Machado homered again. So there’s that. Markakis also homered, which tied the game up, and Mark Reynolds of all people had a clutch hit to drive in the winning run this afternoon. Sometimes that happens.

Tomorrow is an off-day, hooray! We’re playing the Red Sox starting on Tuesday, and for once I’m actually liking our chances. Let’s rest up for that series – I’d love the Orioles to prove me right…

A three hour rain delay. Eddie Murray honored. All sorts of old-timers at the stadium. You’d think the Orioles would be inspired because all the former players stuck around and waited just so that the ceremony could go on before the game.

Yeah, nope.

Jeff Francoeur even stole home in this game.

There’s really only one thing I can say tonight.

To be fair, the seventh inning was pretty nice for us, with Manny Machado doubling and Omar Quintanilla singling in two runs right after him, but the fact remains that the rest of this game sucked and this team didn’t perform for Eddie Murray, so it gets a Marina.

Oh, and we play at 1:35 later today. Yep.

Today was Manny Machado night.

There’s an overlooked bit where Miguel Gonzalez pitched eight innings and only gave up one run on a solo homer, but that’s not what anyone’s going to be talking about.

Everyone’s going to be talking about this. (The fact that the same kid caught both balls is incredible, too.)

Sometimes, you just have a good night. Sometimes, your adrenaline is pumping when you’re first called up and you go on a tear. And sometimes, you’re actually living up to your status as a top prospect. Sometimes the hype about you is real. It’s uncertain what Machado’s status is right now, but tonight, he was pretty darn stellar. At the very least, he definitely wasn’t rushed to the front, so to speak.

Speaking of being rushed to the front, Nick Markakis is currently on a pretty good pace:

I get mad at MASN when they run these because it’s not exactly fair to compare a player’s stats mid-season to a bunch of completed seasons. They really love running them in the middle of games, too, so by the time we all talk about them in our postgame wraps they’re already obsolete.

That being said, this tells us what everybody already knows: Nick Markakis is good at hitting in the leadoff position. I think he should stay there forever. I think a lot of people agree with me, too.

Unfortunately, nobody cares about that at all because of Machado tonight, so. Yeah. MACHADO WOOOOOOOO.

You can go back to watching the Olympics now.

This wasn’t a very good game for the Orioles, so let’s talk about Manny Machado making his MLB debut tonight because that was very positive and it’s more interesting than talking about us losing.

Sure, Wei-Yin Chen gave up seven runs on nine hits, which was a career high for him, but Manny Machado had a couple of hits of his own tonight. His very first hit in the Majors was a triple, which led to him scoring one of the two Orioles runs tonight after Markakis hit him in. His second hit was a little infield hit, but I’m sure he’ll take it. After all, he was 1/3 of the team’s offense tonight – he had two of the Orioles’ six hits.

Go watch him triple. It’s just fantastic.

Machado looks winded after his triple, but I’m sure he’s smiling on the inside.

The kid did leave three people on base tonight, but he also went 2-for-4, which was the second-best out of any Orioles batter on the night (Wieters went 2-for-3 with a walk). He didn’t make any errors, which automatically makes him an upgrade at third base, and although he looks pretty exhausted and a little nervous in that screencap I took of him after arriving at third on his triple, he’s definitely ready. He’s mature enough as a player to be here. (Compared to Bryce Harper, he’s also mature enough as a person, but everyone seems mature compared to Bryce, so.) I think we should all be excited about this. Having him here is going to be delightful.

Especially since he’s not Wilson Betemit at third base.

I…yeah. This was one of those games that we probably could have won, but we weren’t able to put things together. We were tied 2-2 for some time, but Matusz struggled in the 6th, giving up two more runs to put the Royals up 4-2. That’s how it stayed, unfortunately.

To be fair, I don’t quite know what to say about this game, considering that we struck out ten times and walked only once. Oh, and the guy we just signed to a six-year extension today made an error in the outfield. Somebody’s going to be all snide about that, I can guarantee it.

I’m short on time because my relatives are here for a barbeque, so here is a photo of my cat expressing my emotions.

My family is here, too. Too many people!

I’m not sure where that offense that I was praising so highly yesterday went, but they seem to have disappeared after the third inning.

And that was a problem today, because the bullpen finally broke down.

‘Broke down’ is a bit harsh, I’ll be honest – they only gave up two runs, which tied what starter Wei-Yin Chen gave up in his six innings of work. When Chen left the game, though, the Orioles were up 3-2. (We scored two of those runs on solo shots by Davis and Hardy, which increased our homer total to 72, the most in the Majors. Six of our players have seven or more homers.) The major issue here is that the offense didn’t come through when it should have – yesterday, the team piled on excessive runs, but today, when they needed those runs, nothing emerged. The Royals shut the Orioles down after the third inning – nobody was able to successfully do anything.

If it makes you feel better, Europe voted a song performed by six Russian grandmothers as the second best in their annual song contest this year.*

*I make no secret of my love of the Eurovision Song Contest.

This is what happens when you get a day off. See? You score a ton of runs!

We also made two errors, but eh – sometimes you get rusty.

Anyway, here’s a quick run-down of the good things that happened tonight:

• Jason Hammel got a win. I expected that since his opponent was Bruce Chen, but Hammel is now 6-1, an impressive mark after only two months of baseball.
• Nick Markakis had three hits tonight.
• Adam Jones had two RBI; Chris Davis had three, including two on a massive homer to right field.
• This team stole three bases tonight.

Hammel went six innings, with Stu Pomeranz following him up with two innings of work (in which he allowed two runs on three hits) and Dana Eveland taking care of the ninth smoothly. Hammel escaped a couple of jams in the fourth and the fifth impressively – he had seven strikeouts on the night – which was pretty much what this team needed lately. The bullpen needed that extra night of rest, to be honest.

Also, it should be noted that this team was 6-for-10 with runners in scoring position. That’s quite nice.

I think we should be playing the Royals all the time. Really.

"Yaaaaaay!" says Louise.

The Royals can’t win at home. Not fighting it, because it means that when we go there we win.

We just swept a little two-game series, and now we’re on our way back home to play the Nationals. Things were looking a little bleak after Matusz gave up three runs in the third, but we clawed our way back, scoring two runs in the fourth and three more in the seventh to take the win. Matusz himself stayed in the game long enough to earn the win (his six innings of work weren’t bad at all). He really just only had one bad inning – the third – and that was it. Things settled down nicely after that and we were able to capitalize on…well, the Royals being at home.

There’s not much else to say about this, but get ready to battle the Nationals for top billing on MASN and actual attention from people. This could get pretty intense. Except nobody will notice because we’re the Orioles and they’re the Nationals. Eh. Let’s make this series a war to remember just to make people sit up and pay attention to the Beltway teams!

(Check out our Nationals site here!)

You get Louise tonight because I wasn't expecting to write a winning recap thingy.

I was out tonight – incidentally, our Giants writer Mac and I were at a Mets game. I managed to sit at Citi Field, watch the Mets lose, drive back from Citi Field to my home in Bergen County, NJ, and watch Betty White on David Letterman before the Orioles game ended tonight.

I was expecting them to have lost by the time I sat down to start writing this recap. Then I went on Twitter and it turned out that they only won a few minutes ago. In extra innings, which seems to be the theme here this season.

This time, it only took them fifteen innings instead of the seventeen it took them a few weeks ago, but what I missed in the car was the team rallying in the ninth (including a solo homer by Wilson Betemit, who I attempted to ironically vote into the All-Star Game tonight as a joke) and Adam Jones hitting an absolute monster of a home run in the 15th to win it. (Apparently it went 431 feet.)

Kevin Gregg actually got a win out of this. I think that says everything.

Let’s do it again at 2:10, guys. Just a few hours until we start up for one more before we move on and battle the Nationals for attention for a few days.

Yesterday, my roomie and I went to the game. Afterwards, we had tickets to go to the National Aquarium at 4:00. Between that and the fact that I am extremely prone to heat sickness and was starting to fall ill in our right field seats, we crawled out of the stadium after the eleventh inning, the score still knotted at 5-5.

Two innings later, as I was recovering whilst looking at jellyfish, Vlad Guerrero finally got a hit and pushed a run across, and the Orioles won 6-5.

Not only was this a series sweep, but it actually put the Orioles at .500 again. I can’t even express how exciting that is. They were never at .500 all of last year.

Oh, yeah, this happened. At least twice.

Nolan had a fairly good game for us yesterday. 4-4, with two of those hits landing in the left field bleachers. In fact, Nolan’s been pretty darn solid since he returned to the lineup – and the Majors – so it’s nice to see him really getting a shot here again. He also looked pretty good defensively in left field yesterday, making a couple of nice catches at the wall. The only gripe I have is those people who stepped into my above photo of Nolan’s homer that I got. I liked my seats and all, but it was hard to get photos of home plate there.

Anyway. Nolan. Yeah. He’s a cool kid.

And don’t overlook Jeremy Guthrie in all of this. Aside from that unlucky second inning, he looked great. No walks, some lovely strikeouts (four)…we only had to listen to Justin Bieber once…yeah, pretty good game. (Granted, it was field trip day at the ballpark, so the music was catering to the kids.)

So long story short, the team’s at .500 and riding a five-game win streak. You’re allowed to be proud of them again.