Saturday afternoon Orioles game thread: at Twins, 2:10

Back in March, before any of us had any idea of how truly bad the Orioles season was going to be, I sat out in the stands in Camden Yards on a cold night and watched them nearly get no-hit by Twins starter Kyle Gibson. This may have been the first real sign that things were going to go not just poorly but exceptionally poorly. The Orioles are not any garden variety level of bad. They are the worst.

Nearly getting no-hit by Gibson was distressing because he posted an ERA over 5 in each of the previous two seasons. Things are a bit better for him this season, holding a 3.58 ERA even though he walks almost four batters for every nine innings. That makes it a trifle less embarrassing that he almost no-hit the Orioles. Well, he DID no-hit them for six innings and then got removed from the game for a high pitch count: He'd issued five walks.

I mention all of this because Gibson is starting against the Orioles again today. The Orioles offense remains bad, just so much worse than even anybody's worst imagination might have been. They are incapable of scoring runs against essentially every starting pitcher, and they aren't much better against relievers. And they're fielding an outfield that will include Jace Peterson and Danny Valencia.

Baseball was fun once. I remember this. Even two years ago it was somehow fun in spite of a horrible starting rotation. But the memory of that fun grows more dim by the day, and waiting around for players to be traded in the next 24 days is really not much fun at all.