The Sunday Orioles Doubleheader Game 1 Thread: vs. Indians, 1:35

At long last, Adam Jones is back, not only in the Orioles lineup, but playing center field. Doesn't everything look so much better now? It does, provided that Jones is healthy this time. He told reporters he's thrown for three consecutive days without pain. That does sound like a good sign, so let's hope it stays that way.

The afternoon game is the regularly scheduled Sunday game and it will feature the regularly scheduled Orioles starting pitcher, Ubaldo Jimenez. Neither team gets a 26th man for the first game of the doubleheader. That should be fine for the Orioles, as Ubaldo, this year at least, hasn't tended to get bounced from games early. Hopefully he can manage to go at least six innings one way or another, because with a second game coming later tonight, you really, really don't want to have to burn good relievers, especially if it turns out that the Orioles are losing the first game.

Did you know that Matt Albers was involved in the trade that sent today's Indians starter, Trevor Bauer, from the Diamondbacks to Cleveland? Arizona, it seems, decided that Bauer wasn't gritty enough or some such. The puzzling Arizona mindset of just giving up on young pitchers has continued even into a new GM regime now. Well, whatever works for them. Although what they're doing isn't working.

None of the Orioles batters have faced Bauer more than three times. Manny Machado has a home run. Steve Pearce went 2-2 the other time he faced Bauer, which is probably why he's in the lineup here. Whether that's a good idea rather than putting Travis Snider out there, who knows.

A number of Indians have excellent numbers against Jimenez, though most of that's in less than 10 PA. Watch out for Brandon Moss (17 PA, 1.145 OPS), Ryan Raburn (10 PA, 1.150 OPS), Michael Brantley (8 PA, 1.089 OPS), Yan Gomes (7 PA, 1.238 OPS), Carlos Santana (7 PA, 2.048 OPS), and Jason Kipnis (5 PA, 1.467 OPS). Good God, this is going to be terrible.