The Wednesday afternoon Orioles game thread: at Athletics, 3:35

Short of getting no-hit or perfect gamed, neither of which I would rule out, the Orioles can't do much worse today than they did last night. Of course, they could also do just about as badly as they did last night, here today facing Kendall Graveman, one of the players that Oakland received back in what will probably turn out to be the ill-advised (for Oakland) Josh Donaldson trade.

Wei-Yin Chen draws the task of pitching today. He may have the advantage against an Oakland lineup that has the next-to-last OPS against left-handed batters in the American League. As a team, they bat .241/.311/.366 against lefties this year. One reason they plucked former Oriole Danny Valencia, seen in today's lineup, off of waivers was to try to correct that problem.

Not that Oakland lacks for dangerous hitters who can punish any handed pitcher if he makes a mistake. At least with Eric Sogard out of the lineup there will not be the temptation to intentionally walk him. Man, that was infuriating.

Before you skip past the lineups and into the comments, maybe you can help us get a new feature off the ground. Starting next week we are going to try to begin a "Plays of the Week" feature, with choices for you to vote on for the best of the best. This is for great plays and other awesome stuff. Stacey will be going through game threads looking for #OsGreatPlays so she knows what's worthy of inclusion. If you see something you think is good, leave a comment or rec somebody else's comment. Thanks for helping out.