As it ended up, the most noteworthy thing about the 2016 All-Star Game for Orioles fans is that Major League Baseball screwed Baltimore out of getting to host this year’s edition of the game as punishment for carrying on the fight in the MASN case.
If that’s a new story to you, check out this article from Baseball Prospectus last year which makes the strong suggestion that the Orioles were all lined up to host this year’s game until suddenly they weren’t. The belief that the MASN fight and the Orioles not hosting are connected was stated directly by a couple of people around baseball during tonight’s game.
The next most noteworthy thing is that the American League won the contest, 4-2, with Zach Britton picking up the save, so if the Orioles do somehow make it to the World Series, that means that the first two games and games 6 and 7 would be hosted in Baltimore. There’s a lot of baseball between now and then.
Other than that, there really wasn’t much to talk about. The three Orioles batters, Manny Machado, Matt Wieters, and Mark Trumbo, combined to go 0-6, with only Trumbo reaching base at all, and that only because of a fielding error. Machado only saw six pitches in three at-bats.
There was one amusing play in the field for Machado. In the fifth inning, Colorado’s Nolan Arenado hit a lazy ground ball towards shortstop with a runner already on first base. Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who is a poor man’s Machado, stood his ground and waited for the ball to roll to him.
Machado did not feel like waiting around for the ball, so he cut over from his third base position to get in front of the ball, field it, and flip to second base to get the lead runner. Bogaerts, waiting on the ball, could have probably only gotten an out at first.
This may have saved a run for the AL squad as the next batter, Wil Myers, hit a double that was not able to score Arenado from first, even with two outs.
Britton’s ninth inning saw him record three outs on three ground balls, which is what he tends to do in regular games too. One of them snuck through the infield. Another was a comebacker to Britton that he didn’t field quickly enough to turn a double play. The third was a game-ending double play.
The fifth Orioles All-Star, Brad Brach, did not get into the game, although he did at least get up and warm when Blue Jays starter Aaron Sanchez ran into a little bit of trouble in the fourth inning.
As for the rest of the game, all four American League runs were driven in by two Royals players, Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez. Each one homered in the second inning. Hosmer also had an RBI single in the third inning. He was named MVP of the game.
There will now be two days with no baseball. We will make it through this somehow. The good news is that the Orioles will be in first place the whole time.