Thursday Bird Droppings: Where the Orioles finally won their 40th game

Hello, friends.

Another day has dawned with the Orioles in last place in the American League East. After finally, in the waning days of August, picking up their first three-game sweep of the whole season, the Orioles are now 52 games behind the division-leading Red Sox, though they now trail the fourth place Blue Jays by “only” 20.5 games thanks to this same sweep.

Having finally collected their 40th win of the season, the Orioles will take the day off. If you missed last night’s game, where they exploded for double digit runs to pick up a third consecutive win, check out Tyler Young’s recap of the lovely totals.

Watching from the stands last night, I realized that I have been in attendance for the Orioles 1st, 10th, 20th, 30th, and 40th wins of the season. Each of these win milestones happened in a different calendar month. This season sucks.

The quest to avoid the worst record in MLB this season stayed the same on Wednesday night as the Royals were winners in addition to the Orioles. The two teams remain 2.5 games apart in the standings. Of course, if you want to think of it as the Orioles trying to win the #1 pick next year, they are 2.5 games ahead of the Royals, rather than behind. Every team in MLB except for the O’s and Royals has at least 52 wins.

In the 134th game of the 1988 season, the Orioles were beaten by the Mariners, 1-0. Seattle’s Mark Langston went the distance for the M’s, while a different Jose Bautista took the complete game loss for the O’s despite giving up only four hits. This dropped their record to 47-87, which is now seven games better than the 2018 team through the same number of games.

After this sweep, the 2018 O’s are now on pace to win 48 games across this full season. You will note that is a mere one game more than the 1988 O’s had already won by now! It’s not great. The ‘88 O’s won 54 overall. Can the O’s do that? Probably not. The good news is that, with a month left to play games, they have equaled the win total of the 1962 Mets, so with one more win, the worst record in MLB history will be out of reach.

Around the blogO’sphere

Was this raccoon witch cursing the Baltimore Orioles? An investigation (Deadspin)
This theory makes as much sense as the one that Mark Trumbo’s no-fun destruction of the pies is the reason that the Orioles have been so terrible this year.

Orioles monitoring pitching innings (School of Roch)
Although Josh Rogers just made his MLB debut, don’t count on him starting much the rest of the way. He’s nearing his innings limit.

Who will be the September additions to the Orioles roster? (Baltimore Baseball)
Bring us Austin Hays!

Mark Trumbo to have knee surgery that will likely end his season (Baltimore Sun)
See you next spring, Mark. Unless the Orioles trade you over the offseason.

What should the Orioles do with Chris Davis? (Forbes)
Stop batting him fifth, would be one easy suggestion that Buck Showalter simply will not take.

Adam Jones hits grand slam as O’s complete sweep - with quotes (Steve Melewski)
Did you know that last night Jones hit his first grand slam in ten years?

2019 spring training schedules released (Orioles.com)
Should you be struck with the urge to go watch baseball games that don’t count next February and March, you can start to plan your trip around the Grapefruit League schedule.

Birthdays and anniversaries

In 2013, the Orioles received the immortal Michael Morse in exchange for Xavier Avery.

There is one lone former Oriole with a birthday today: 2001 seven-gamer Kris Foster.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Your birthday buddies for today include: landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1716), novelist Mary Shelley (1797), physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871), baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams (1918), actress Cameron Diaz (1972), and tennis player Andy Roddick (1982).

On this day in history...

In 1363, two Chinese leaders rebelling against the Yuan dynasty, Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang, began the five-week Battle of Lake Poyang. Chen was killed at the end of the battle along with most of his army, paving the way for the Ming dynasty.

In 1799, during the War of the Second Coalition, the entire Dutch fleet was captured by the British. Whoops!

In 1835, the city of Melbourne, Australia was founded.

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was confirmed to be the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on August 30 - or at least, unless something happens later, which it probably won’t, since the Orioles have the day off, but you never really know. Have a safe Thursday.