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The Friday Night Orioles Game Thread: vs. Angels, 7:05

The Orioles are fresh off winning two out of three against the Blue Jays, which is nice, but also doesn't mean a whole lot in the context of the full season. They have to keep winning. Up starting tonight: the Angels.

Andy Marlin-USA TODAY Sports

The Orioles have yet to win on a Friday this season. You can probably forget about them winning one tonight. Angels starter Jered Weaver sucks. He has an ERA that's almost above 5 and an average fastball velocity that is below 84 miles per hour. He has struck out only 21 batters in 43.1 innings of work.

All of that is a recipe for the Orioles to get like nine hits off of Weaver in five innings, only they somehow never manage to score any runs because they either keep striking out at off-speed stuff out of the strike zone or because they keep grounding into double plays. This fate was written long ago.

Good news for the Orioles is that Wei-Yin Chen is starting tonight's game. Chen has gotten great results so far this year, showing off a 2.52 ERA after he's made six starts. The only knock on him is that he has given up a home run about every seven innings. Mike Trout is pretty good at hitting home runs. He's pretty good at a lot of things.

Actually, the Angels have been a disappointment so far - 17-17 with their resources is not so great. The O's have underachieved too. Maybe they can claw back to .500 against the Angels and send the disappointing Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Milky Way, Universe back to where they belong.

Today's Lineups

LOS ANGELES ANGELS BALTIMORE ORIOLES
Kole Calhoun - RF Manny Machado - 3B
Mike Trout - CF Alejandro De Aza - LF
Albert Pujols - 1B Jimmy Paredes - DH
David Freese - 3B Adam Jones - CF
Erick Aybar - SS Chris Davis - 1B
Johnny Giavotella - 2B Delmon Young - RF
Carlos Perez - C J.J. Hardy - SS
C.J. Cron - DH Reynaldo Navarro - 2B
Collin Cowgill - LF Caleb Joseph - C
Jered Weaver - RHP Wei-Yin Chen - LHP