Rays 7, Orioles 6: They want me to hate them.

You know how sometimes a person is in a relationship, and they want break up, but they're too lazy or non-confrontational to just do it, so they passive aggressively start acting like a jerk so that the other person will go ahead and break up with them and they don't have to deal with it? This is what the Baltimore Orioles are doing to me. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Orioles are my abusive boyfriend.

Mark Hendrickson again pitched a good game. He allowed three hits, all solo home runs, in 6 innings, and left the game with a 6-3 lead. Matt Albers entered the game in the 7th inning and predictably the game went to hell as he allowed a 3 run HR to Willie Aybar to tie the game. The go ahead run scored in the 8th and was credited to Chris Ray although Danys Baez was in when it scored on a sacrifice fly.

The offense scored 6 runs which looks pretty good on paper, but they left men on base all over the place. First inning, 2 LOB. Second inning, 3 LOB. Fifth inning, 2 LOB. Sixth inning, 3 LOB. Seventh, 1 LOB. Eighth inning, 2 LOB. Ninth inning, 1 LOB. Jeff Niemann was a mess all night and they let him off the hook more than they should have. Andy Sonnanstine relieved him and wasn't much better. Yes, 6 runs is a lot. But it should have been more. If the Orioles loved me and weren't trying to get me to kick them to the curb, they would have scored at least 8 runs.

I watched the very beginning of the post game show and Jim Hunter and Rick Dempsey aren't doing so well. Hopefully someone is keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't start cutting themselves.

O's lose. They now need to go 3-3 over the final 6 games to avoid 100 losses on the year. Remember when they needed to go 3-14 to avoid 100 losses? Those were good times.

-Stacey