The Friday night Orioles game thread: at Marlins, 7:10

As a general rule, I don't watch baseball games that don't involve the Orioles unless it's the playoffs. That means I haven't watched an inning of the Marlins since the last time the O's played the Marlins, which was in June of 2010. Giancarlo Stanton was just a rookie in his first month of big league action then, and he still went by Mike. Safe to say a lot has happened since then.

Juan Samuel was the manager the last time these two teams played. Kevin Millwood was the Orioles starting pitcher. He gave up four runs in five innings but still got the win because baseball isn't fair sometimes. A lot has happened for the Orioles since then too. Ty Wigginton was the cleanup hitter - hard to say whether that's better or worse than Delmon Young. Anyway, tonight's cleanup hitter is Chris Davis.

This series is also a homecoming for Manny Machado, who's never gotten to play in MLB near his hometown like this before. May it be a good return for him, and for the Orioles as well. The Marlins are losers of seven straight games, which unfortunately means they're probably due to start to turn things around. On the other hand, they fired their manager and replaced him with their GM, who's yet to win a game as manager. So maybe the Marlins will just keep on losing, or at least for the next three games, which would be plenty fine with me.

The Orioles have yet to win on Friday this year. If they can't beat a team that's lost seven in a row before this, maybe they never will win on Friday this year.