My dear Camden Chatters. My dear (here there is a long, rambling list of every Camden Chatter - yes, even you). Also my good lurkers that I welcome back at last to Camden Chat. Today is the one hundred sixty-second game of the season. It is one hundred sixty-two today! I hope you are all enjoying yourselves as much as I am.

I shall not keep you long. I have called you all together for a purpose. Indeed, for three purposes! First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that one hundred sixty-two games is too short a time to blog among such excellent and admirable Orioles fans. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. Secondly, to celebrate my final game thread of the year. I should say, OUR final game thread of the year, for it is, of course, also the last Orioles game for you as well.

It is also, if I should be allowed to refer to ancient history, one year and two months anniversary since the arrival of Buck Showalter as manager - though the fact that would be so significant slipped my mind at the time. We were 32-73 then, and individual game threads did not seem so important. The game thread was very splendid, however, though I had a bad cold at the time, I remember, and could only say 'thag you very buch'. I now repeat it more correctly: Thank you very much for coming to my little game thread.

Thirdly and finally, I wish to make an announcement. I regret to announce that - though, as I said, one hundred sixty-two games is far too short a time to spend among you - this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. Good-bye!

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In A.D. 2011

Epic wild card collapse was ending

 What happen?

 Somebody set up us the inside-the-park bomb.

 We get signal.

VARITEK: What !

EPSTEIN: Main screen turn on.

VARITEK: It's You !!

  HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN !!

ANDINO: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

ANDINO: You are on the way to elimination.

VARITEK: What you say !!

ANDINO: You have no chance to survive make your time.

ANDINO: HA HA HA HA ....

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This is as spoiler as spoiler gets. The Red Sox cling to a one-game wild card lead over Tampa Bay. There are three games left to play for both teams. Tampa plays New York, which has already clinched the best record in the AL. All that stands in the way of Boston is the lowly Baltimore Orioles, who have nothing in particular to play for. Perhaps pride, perhaps spite, perhaps the all-time hits record for a player from the Dominican Republic, perhaps for a future in the major leagues to extend beyond this Wednesday.

Tonight's matchup is a rematch of last Wednesday: Josh Beckett for the Sox against Tommy Hunter for the Orioles. The setting is moved a ways down I-95 to Camden Yards. Improbably, the O's were victorious in that game. Can lightning strike twice? The O's aren't even sending up a forfeit lineup - and after yesterday's uber-forfeit lineup saw six runs scored, I'll believe almost anything. Granted, those runs were scored against scrubbadocio extraordinaire Brad Penny. Beckett is a bit tougher game and he'll be more likely to learn whatever there was to learn from the last game.

Is this the best you've got, Boston? You're in the middle of a potentially epic choke job and you've got J.D. Drew and Jason Varitek starting the game? Good luck with that. You should be embarrassed for yourselves that you'll have to rely on a series against the cupcake Orioles to seal your fate.

Unrelated to this game entirely, did you know that Boston still has fruit from the Bronson Arroyo tree? Arroyo was traded to Cincinnati for Wily Mo Pena after the 2005 season. Pena was traded to Washington for a PTBNL in August 2007 that became Chris Carter. Carter was named as a PTBNL in an August 2009 trade to the Mets that brought Billy Wagner to Boston. Wagner was offered arbitration, declined and signed with Atlanta, awarding Boston the first-round pick of Atlanta in the 2010 draft (used on Kolbrin Vitek) and a supplemental pick (Bryce Brentz). That will sound a lot more impressive if Vitek or Brentz ever turn into anything. Based on minor league stat lines, it looks like Brentz has a better chance.

It turns out that you can trace a weirder and more obscure tree from the O's - the Nerio Rodriguez tree. Rodriguez was traded to Toronto to bring back Juan Guzman at the 1998 trade deadline, and Guzman was then traded at the deadline in 1999 to Cincinnati, bringing back B.J. Ryan, whom, when he departed in free agency after 2005 gave the Orioles a supplemental pick and a second round pick in the 2006 draft that became Ryan Adams. And the supplemental pick was Pedro Beato, who we allowed to be claimed by the Mets in exchange for another year on the 40-man roster for Pedros Viola and Florimon Jr. I guess the O's won that trade.

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Today is your last chance to see the Orioles play teh base-ball in daylight this year. Of course, you'd have to live in Michigan to do that. The Orioles' and Tigers' records are mirror images of each other, with one team making plans for October contests, and the other headed to the Diamond Ridge golf course at the end of next week.

The Orioles' website sunnily claims,

Matusz out to end season on positive note

...overlooking the fact that barring a no-hitter today, Matusz will be viewed in the rear view mirror this offseason as the skinny-armed guy whose biceps are CLEARLY smaller than a year ago, and WHY DOESN'T HE WORK OUT MORE, the yutz? At least in some quarters. 

The Tigers have a Matusz-esque pitcher of their own, one Brad Penny of former greatness. Detroit's official site says Penny is "making his pitch for the postseason roster." Judging by the comments in the article, Detroit fans would have it otherwise. Not quite as skinny-armed as B-Mat, Penny has given up 42 runs in his last 53 innings (over a ten-game stretch), with a staggering WHIP of 1.9. His ERA sits at 5.31, just slightly less than half of Matusz's 10.68. Back on August 12, the O's tagged him for 4 runs in 5 innings. 

In other words, expect a riveting pitcher's duel at Comerica today.

Fact: The Orioles have won 9 of their last 12 games.

If we trade Jeremy Giambi to the Phillies and get rid of Peña, we might just turn this thing around. 

In one corner, Justin Verlander, the American League leader in wins and probably should be the Cy Young award winner (but not because of the wins). In the other corner, Jeremy Guthrie, the American League leader in losses. Of course, wins and losses are a terrible way to judge pitchers, but any other way you choose to examine the results of Verlander and Guthrie from this season, it's perfectly clear that Verlander comes out ahead by a wide margin, to the tune of a gap of 1.99 points of ERA.

The Tigers continue to try to secure home field advantage in the ALDS. To do this they have to have a record equal to or better than that of Texas, with whom they come into play today tied at 91-66. They still have something to play for after clinching and this is more than just a tune-up start for Verlander. Detroit has to win if they want to enhance their chances of playing Boston (or, still possibly, Tampa Bay, with Boston getting smoked by New York in afternoon action today).

Back to the subject of losses, the usual suspects at The Sun have pointed out that this is the fifth time in six years that the Orioles have had the league leader in losses on their team. Last year it was Kevin Millwood, in 2009 it was Guthrie, in '07 it was Daniel Cabrera and in '06 it was Rodrigo Lopez. In 2008, it was ... Verlander. Sadly, if Guthrie were to turn things around to the extent Verlander has - which is an unlikely enough proposition - it would likely be another team to benefit by the time 2014 rolls around. This whole paragraph is really sad. Of course, the Orioles have been one of the worst teams in the league every year of that time, so maybe it isn't surprising. Stubbornly sticking with some of these guys when they really sucked (especially Millwood, Cabrera and Lopez) wasn't so good though.

From the cool baseball stat department: according to Baseball Reference, there have been 199,991 games played since 1876 going into today's action. There are six games that will be either concluded or official by the time the O's game starts, and there are eight games starting at either 7:05pm or 7:10pm. Presumably, the third of these eight games to go official will be game #200,000. If the Orioles-Tigers game was that game, that would be pretty cool even if it was entirely insignificant.

You know what else would be cool? If I wasn't looking at where the O's are planning to use Brian Matusz as a starter tomorrow. I won't be here tomorrow to rant about it, so for tonight I'd like to say... you know what, I've said it all already. You win, Orioles. I give up. I surrender. Uncle. Please, just no more.

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A month ago, I would have bet all my worldly possessions against the possibility, but the Orioles, with six games left, have equaled their win total from last year. It's probably a good thing that I am not a gambling man. In fact, I would have had all money on the O's hitting the much-ballyhooed 100 loss mark. These wins have not come against teams with nothing to play for who are running out scrubs intentionally. The O's have won eight of their last ten games, and these have been against teams that are competing for playoff spots, or heading to the playoffs. It is an inexplicable scenario, but it is reality. It is not a joke.

What does it mean? That is the grand question. Probably nothing more than that we could get a less painful send-off into the offseason than we initially thought. This is still better than nothing, although it would have been much better to be playing this way since June.

Tonight, the series continues against the Tigers. Detroit has something to play for, namely home field advantage in the divisional round. They need to have the same record as or better than Texas to do so, and they enter play today tied. Pitching this game for Detroit is Rick Porcello. The one-time contender for the Rookie of the Year award (3rd place in 2009) has yet to find the magic from that first season. This year, he's averaging less than six innings per start and he's sporting a 4.79 ERA over 169 innings. He may start game 4 of the ALDS.

The O's look to the Sauce, Alfredo Simon. He has made ten starts since the beginning of August and has given up four or more earned runs in six of these ten starts. He is looking more like Weak Sauce, but he has at least survived in the rotation this long, so he will probably be in the conversation for next year too, especially if he can close out the last two starts of this season well.

There are hitters involved in this game too. They are some guys. Miguel Cabrera is really good, Alex Avila, Jhonny Peralta, Matt Wieters and J.J. Hardy are pretty good, a few guys are good, some are okay and the rest suck. At least one run will score in order to assure that the game ends. This could be an expected outcome, like a Cabrera home run, or an unexpected outcome, like Chris Davis working an 0-2 count into a bases-loaded walk. Most likely more than one run will score. Maybe we will be the ones scoring them.

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Fresh off of three winning series against contenders for the Wild Card in Tampa Bay, Los Angeles and Boston, the Orioles will head to Detroit to face a playoff-bound team. The Tigers have already clinched their division, but they are neck and neck with Texas in determining who will get to face Boston in the ALDS round of the playoffs. Those two teams entered today's play with the same record. The team with the better record will face Boston while holding the home field advantage and the team with the lesser record will face New York without the home field advantage. So it's fair to say that the Tigers still have something to play for in the last week of the season, because really, right now anybody should want to play Boston in the first round.

The exception to the previous paragraph is if Boston collapses so completely that Anaheim slips into the Wild Card spot in the AL. They are behind by 2.5 games with seven to play, but with the way Boston's looked lately, this isn't impossible. Then, none of that other stuff matters, because Texas can't play LAAAOCCAUSAESMWU in the opening round, and New York would play Los Angeles and Texas and Detroit would play one another. Did you get all that?

However, the Tigers aren't playing tonight's game like a team that's trying to squeeze out every last win. Tonight, they're sending out Jacob Turner, their first-round pick with the 9th selection in the 2009 draft. Hey, we picked before them. Who did we take? Oh, dang, right. Turner will be making his third-ever big league start. He has had one decent start against Los Angeles and one bad one against Kansas City. Turner was an AA All-Star. He is 20 years old.

Turner signed a major-league contract worth $5.5 million, which is about three million dollars more than the O's paid their draft pick that year. Do you want to hear something funny? In 2009, the O's paid Jay Gibbons $6.2 million. I guess that wasn't very funny after all. Sorry.

Turner is a right-handed pitcher. He wasn't exactly blowing away the minor leagues as far as his ERA, putting up respectable low-3 numbers. He has carried a K/BB rate of about 3 through the levels, which is pretty good, and perhaps a better predictor of success.

Just as one last indication that maybe the Tigers aren't taking this game super seriously, their starting catcher tonight is Omir Santos. Yes, that Omir Santos. They are also playing Magglio Ordonez, Delmon Young and Brandon Inge. All of these guys suck at hitting in the year 2011.

That's good news for Zach Britton, who's looking to close out with a strong finish. He is already the season's sole survivor of the cavalry, but the better he looks, the better the future looks. It may not mean anything since we've already established the lineup he'll be facing mostly sucks (although he still has to go up against the likes of Miguel Cabrera), but hey, confidence boosters are worth something too.

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Tommy Hunter on the mound for one team and Josh Beckett on the mound for the other? Come on, now, that's just not fair. Hunter against anyone in Fenway Park probably isn't fair. Hunter with the Orioles defense behind him isn't fair. Well, these are our lemons. Perhaps we can make some lemonade.

Beckett has a 2.50 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP. He's started 28 games and is averaging about 6.1 IP per start. He's striking out almost a batter per inning. The Red Sox have won ten of the last thirteen games that he's started. That's good for them, because they need a win. The Rays lost a game in the day half of a day/night doubleheader today and Tampa's facing C.C. Sabathia for the nightcap.

The O's can prolong the race by continuing a string of improbable victories, and to be sure, this one would be no less improbable than any of the others. Dinging Jonathan Papelbon for a blown save? I mean, how often do the O's actually manage that? It seems like never.

Even with an O's victory tonight, which is unlikely in and of itself, the Sox will probably go into the playoffs. We can take solace in knowing that with the state of their pitching staff they aren't going to get very far. But not too much solace, because that's one fewer team with a chance of beating New York and keeping our ultimate enemy from experiencing any joy ever again.

Turns out there's nothing really good about being a spoiler. Go figure.

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The memory of the time is fading into the mists, but Erik Bedard used to be on the Orioles. I remember watching him pitch for us, but Bedard doesn't evoke any strong feelings in me. He had one really great year in 2007 with 221 strikeouts in 182 innings and then we traded him. I figured he was due to get hurt again and he did. The trade has amounted to being for Adam Jones and a couple of seasons of George Sherrill. That wasn't quite the return we imagined, but it was still better than keeping Bedard.

Now Bedard is on the Red Sox and he's starting tonight. Nick Markakis and Jeremy Guthrie are the only Orioles left who spent a season on the roster with Bedard. He's had a decent 2011 season, with a 3.50 ERA and 119 strikeouts over 123.1 innings. He is left-handed, so the O's are predisposed to suck against him. And with him striking out a lot of batters, that also makes them predisposed to suck.

Mark Reynolds and Jones are back in the lineup tonight. This could be a good thing, if they are both all the way healthy, which they may not be. I think Reynolds is more likely to be all the way healthy than Jones, whose thumb was still taped up when he pinch-ran last night. But what do I know, really? Not much.

One thing I do know is that Rick VandenHurk starting against this Boston lineup probably won't go much better than did Matusz last night. Maybe it won't turn into an 18-runs-allowed bad game, but come on. The Hurk is making this spot start as something of a sacrificial lamb and God bless him, because he'll need it. The lineup is no joke.

There is always the chance the baseball gods will shine on the Orioles again tonight as they did yesterday afternoon. Boston clings to a two game lead over Tampa Bay in the Wild Card, and if they should happen to lose tonight and Tampa should happen to win, well... things could get really interesting. But first Boston has to lose, which means the Orioles have to win. Will the baseball gods oblige?

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Ahoy me hearties! After outslugging th' Sox in today's day game 6-5, the swashbuckling Orioles look t' take game two from the scallywags from Beantown this night.

It'll be a tough go for these landlubbers, as Brian Matusz pitches again' tha' scurvy bilge rat, John Lackey. Both are deservin' of a keelhaulin' for their pathetic seasons, and me heart aches to think of what Matusz coulda been.

Th' season tis good as over for Cap'n Showatler an' his crew, but even again' the hornswaggling Sox they yell, "No quarter!" and hope to raise th' Jolly Roger high in victory.

Aye, 'tis a difficult life, that o' the O's fan. But we splice the mainbrace an' hope to pillage the mangy Sox one more time. Arrrr!

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