Ladies and gentlemen, the time has finally arrived where I've decided to get over my fears and accept that the Orioles are in the wild card race. Even if I don't understand how - and I'm not sure anyone does - they are there, and now that I've finally given in to this, it's time to figure out who else is in contention. Andrew was there to briefly run through the strengths and weaknesses of Tampa Bay, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, the five teams who seem like they will occupy whatever wild card spots the Orioles do not.
From the comment box, we answered questions from tflach2 and Marylander - whether we can deem the Orioles season a success even though it seems like some of the markers for progress we thought we'd need to see in a successful O's season have not been there. Also, after further reflection, we changed our minds on the answer to this question later in the podcast. Marylander asked about whether there's any worries about Wei-Yin Chen and fatigue - while neither one of us are experts, we offered our thoughts on this.
And with the O's set to face yet another tests (as Andrew notes, they're all tests) in the upcoming series against the Texas Rangers, we surveyed the landscape of that team, looking at the starter match-ups, and tried to make some sense out of why the heck the Rangers are giving so much playing time to Michael Young. It is puzzling, and hopefully will work in the Orioles' favor in any encounters against the Rangers.
Along the way, some unexpected appreciations for people including Dave Trembley and Mark Hendrickson. Look, I haven't figured that one out either, okay. It happens.
All this and more in this week's Camdencast! If you're not able to download the show, you can click "Continue reading this post" below to find a streaming player. Just press play and you can listen for yourself.
This episode is about an hour in length. Break 1 is at about 17:15 and break 2 is at about 34:45, in case you need to pause and come back later.
If you were subscribed to Camdencast on iTunes, you might have been able to listen to the podcast even before this post went up. You can also use another program of your choice to subscribe with the XML.
Camdencast remains safe for work, provided that your boss doesn't mind you listening to podcasts instead of while doing work.
The improved production value experiment is continuing. Special thanks to Eric, aka CCer OriolesOptimist, for providing a little introduction track. We hope to work with Eric to add a few more things of this nature for the breaks and for an outro over the next couple of weeks - if you have any thoughts on this, please let us know, because your taste may be better than ours. For now, the breaks are the same as last week, except I turned down the gain to -12 so they should at least grate your ears less.
That's all for this time. If you've got any more comments on the show in general, drop us a message in the section below, and if you want to get your question on the podcast, look for the next Comment Box here on Camden Chat on Thursday or Friday. Until next time, thanks for listening, and take care!