Bird Watching - O's Take Astros Series, Are Only 2 Games Back And Looking To Climb The Standings With The Rays In Town
Yet another up and down week for the Orioles. A terrible series against the Marlins, come home and take two of three from the first place Astros. Just have to start stringing some wins together, no more of this win one lose one shit. If we’re counting yesterdays doubleheader plus the no fan game as a series vs the White Sox, the O’s have won four of their last six series. That’s one way to creep back up in the standings. The O’s are yet to have their full roster, and haven’t come close to playing their best, yet they’re only two games back. They have had nothing go their way this year, yet are still within reach of first.
Disaster in Miami
Everything that could’ve gone wrong in Miami, did go wrong. If you told me the O’s would hold Giancarlo Stanton to 1-12 in the series, I would say there’s a good chance they win the it, and that isn’t what happened. The worst pitcher in the bullpen got tossed for the same thing 99.9% of all pitchers do, they couldn’t capitalize on the Marlins being a bad baseball team with a wanna be coach, and lost the series. Even with the O’s scoring 8 the first night, the offense didn’t look good this series. Struggling to score runs has been the story of the month. 1-0 loss in extras, then losing 5-2 in the rubber match. Just an embarrassing performance in Miami, glad that one is over with.
Astros Come To Town
The first place Astros (thats weird to say) came into town for three. Game one the O’s handed Dallas Keuchel his first loss of the season. He had given up only one home run all year, then gave up two to the O’s, so it was nice to see them start that series off with a win against someone who could be the Cy Young favorite. Then in 2015 Orioles fashion, they went out and scored 1 run against Scott Feldman, losing a stinker 4-1. Game three had a lot of O’s fans feeling pretty good, as the scoring started with a double steal, with Paredes swiping home to get the thing going. Chris Davis actually resembled a baseball player and went all 2013 on us. Had two homers, his first home run since May 11th, including the go ahead homer in the eighth. Was a very welcome site, glad to see Crush come through when the team needed him. Hopefully this series can be a turning point for the team and they start to click. Still need someone else to pick up the slack with the bats, Manny? Adam? J.J? Anyone want to get hot?
White Sox Doubleheader
The O’s split the doubleheader with the White Sox, losing 3-2 to Chris Sale in the first game, and winning 6-3 later on. Pretty much what we expected when we saw Sale was on the mound. It was obvious his stuff was on pretty early in the game. 12 strikeouts, 4 hits, 0 walks, 0 runs over 7 and 2/3 innings for the lanky lefty. He owned the O’s, no one could touch him, pretty standard for a Sale start. The O’s have had his number in the past, but no such luck yesterday. For Baltimore Tyler Wilson had a solid first start for his career, loved what I saw from the kid.
Game two went the O’s way. Manny started it off with a leadoff triple, Davis had an RBI double, and Pride of Pigtown Steve Clevenger had an RBI as well. Mike Wright got the win and is now 2-0 in three starts. He’s forcing them to keep him in the rotation, love it. Keep it up rook. Game one, eight of nine starters struck out, game two all nine starters got a hit, go figure. That’s how its crumbling for the O’s right now. Game to game they look like two different teams.
Upcoming
Big opportunity to leapfrog the Rays and possibly slide into first depending on the A’s-Yanks series. Rays come into town, always a good series with them. Karns, Ramirez, Odorizzi going for the Rays with Gonzo, Chen, and Tillman going for the Birds this series. If the O’s take two they jump into second place, NEED two of three. Sweep would be great, but this team hasn’t shown they can put together a sweep, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
After the Tampa series the Birds head to Houston. Four game series with Houston, no reason they can’t take this series again. Won’t see Keuchel till game four, win two of the first three and guarantee a split on the road, can’t ask for much more than that. O’s fans are rooting hard some wins this week, plus wins from the A’s and Seattle over NY this week. Take care of Tampa first. Need a 5-2 run this week, lets go Birds.
O’s CREAMPIE OF THE WEEK
Pearce getting his creampie after his homer propelled the O’s in their win over the Astros. Can’t escape Big Game Hunter and those pies bruh. Buy your O’s pie shirt here. Pies are the best celebration in the game, can’t tell me different.
All season on Twitter we’ve been making our picks for who is going to #DongCity. Trying to pick the O’s player who goes yard during the game. Feel free to tweet me your #DongCity picks before the game, even though I’m 8-46 on picks, theres still a good chance I’ll pick better than you.
P.S. Peace out De Aza, thought you’d hit 15-20 dingers this year, I was wrong.