Hello, friends.
Another day dawns with the Orioles in fourth place in the American League East. They may not stay there for long. The Orioles are now ahead of the last place Blue Jays by a mere half game. As losers of ten straight road games and five in a row overall, they sure feel like they’re in a race to the bottom.
When the Orioles reached a 22-10 record, did you think that they would see .500 again this season? I sure didn’t, either, but here we are anyway. They are .500 again and if they lose tonight with Alec Asher on the mound they will be below .500. Good grief. Every stat seems more brutal than the last.
If you missed last night’s game, you’re one of the lucky ones, but make sure to check on the not-so-lovely totals from Chris Booze’s recap.
The way that the Orioles are playing lately, it almost makes you want to write off the entire rest of the season. That’s a grim conclusion and maybe not one that things are actually dire enough to reach quite yet. What’s worse, as our Tyler Young will be writing about later today, if the Orioles somehow DID decide they need to sell off this season, things have developed in such a way that there’s no one to sell.
Maybe the draft will end up being the most exciting thing about the week. That’s a familiar feeling from the bad old days. The Orioles did pick three players in the first two rounds last night. Read about first round pick D.L. Hall, a Georgia high school lefty, and while you’re at it, check out some more about the second round picks, Canadian high school shortstop Adam Hall and Xavier lefty Zac Lowther.
Rounds 3-10 await this afternoon starting at 1pm. The picks in the later rounds come rapid fire. Blink and you’ll miss them.
Around the blogO’sphere
Orioles first baseman Chris Davis leaves Monday’s game with right oblique strain (Baltimore Sun)
Just in case you didn’t think there were enough things going wrong with the Orioles right now. The Sun’s Jon Meoli tweeted post-game that Buck Showalter “indicated it’s not looking good.”
Orioles recall Miguel Castro - School of Roch
Castro quickly took his place among the Orioles pitching staff by giving up a home run in Monday’s game.
Pregame notes on Machado, Britton and Flaherty - Steve Melewski
Zach Britton and Ryan Flaherty are on the way back, although exact timetables for a return still aren’t being given at this point. Britton is scheduled for a simulated game on Thursday.
MLB Draft: Pick-by-pick selections, analysis | MLB.com
MLB.com’s Jim Callis thinks the Orioles got good value in picking D.L. Hall. He went so far as to call it “an absolute steal” on the live broadcast.
MLB Draft 2017: White Sox select Gavin Sheets in second round - South Side Sox
Sheets is the son of former Oriole Larry Sheets. This selection was announced by longtime Mark Brown nemesis Ron Kittle.
The Home-Run Spike Has a Home-Run Spike | FanGraphs Baseball
Jeff Sullivan has some thoughts on home runs spiking. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem that Orioles pitchers are single-handedly responsible for the increase in home run rate in the league.
Birthdays and anniversaries
On this day in 1999, the Orioles set a franchise record for runs scored in a 22-1 blowout of the Braves. Cal Ripken Jr. was 6-6 with two home runs in the game. Mike Mussina pitched seven innings and got the win.
There are three former Orioles with birthdays today. They are: Cocked-hat reliever Pedro Strop, 1991 backup catcher Ernie Whitt, and the late Tom Gastall of the 1955-56 Orioles. Gastall passed away during that 1956 season at the age of 24.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Your birthday buddies for today include: Holy Roman Emperors Charles the Bald (823) and Charles the Fat (839), Nobel Prize-winning poet/playwright W.B. Yeats (1865), recent United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (1944), Brat Pack actress Ally Sheedy (1962), Captain America actor Chris Evans (1981), and one-time child actresses Mary-Kate Olsen (1989) and Ashley Olsen (1989).
On this day in history...
In 1777, during the American Revolutionary War, a Frenchman named Gilbert du Motier - the Marquis de Lafayette - arrived in Charleston, South Carolina to help train the Continental army.
In 1805, Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition scouted out ahead of the group and discovered the Great Falls of the Missouri River - marked today by the town of Great Falls, Montana, though only one of the five falls remains in its natural state today.
In 1966, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in Miranda v. Arizona that police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them. As you have heard many times in crime television: You have the right to remain silent.
In 1970, with The Long and Winding Road, The Beatles reached #1 on the U.S. charts for the last time.
In 1971, the New York Times began publication of the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on June 13 - or at least, until something happens later, which it surely will, because the Orioles are going to draft some people today and probably lose another baseball game. Have a safe Tuesday. Go Orioles!