Monday Bird Droppings: Where the Orioles have set a new record for futility

Hello, friends.

The 2019 Orioles are not a good baseball team at all, but they are good at one thing: Setting records about how bad they are. With a loss on Sunday, they’ve now gone 43 games in a row without managing to win consecutive games. MASN’s Gary Thorne noted that’s a new club record for futility, breaking the old record of the 1987 O’s, who went 42 games straight without back-to-back wins in there somewhere.

Heaping more onto that pile of bad news, the O’s offense was unable to score any runs while facing former Oriole Mike Wright over two innings in Sunday’s loss. That’s another real talent of this team, perhaps: Making people and teams who everyone else knows are bad look good. Check out Drew Bonifant’s recap of the loss to see just how good the Orioles made the Mariners look.

You can’t bring up the 2019 Orioles and record setting without thinking about their prolific ability to allow home runs. The O’s served up another pair of taters on Sunday afternoon, including J.P. Crawford hitting just his second home run in 100 at-bats.

This leaves the O’s at 156 home runs allowed through 78 games, a pace of exactly two home runs per game. That adds up to 324 home runs over a full season, keeping them well ahead of the pace of the current record of 258 homers allowed by the 2016 Reds. At this rate, they might snag the record for themselves before Labor Day rolls around.

At 22-56, the Orioles themselves are on pace to finish with a record of 46-116. Yes, that’s one game worse than they managed to win last season, which was previously the worst O’s team that anyone could possibly contemplate. These guys are worse. Through 78 games, the 2018 incarnation of the team was 23-55, so again, the O’s of right now are one game worse.

This was the third game of a 1-13 stretch for last year’s losers. There’s room to get back ahead. You know, if the Orioles can actually manage to win a game or two. They’re guaranteed not to lose today, since today is a day off. Enjoy your Oriole-less day before they play the 38-40 Padres in a brief two-game set.

Mike Mussina was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame 156 days ago. The Orioles have not announced any plans to retire his jersey number or erect his statue at Camden Yards.

Around the blogO’sphere

John Means on track to return next weekend (Baltimore Sun)
Good news at the MLB level is limited. If Means is healthy and ready to pitch after a minimum 10-day injured list stay, that will be a plus for those of us who keep watching and listening to these guys.

Ynoa knocked out early, O’s blown out in trip finale, with post-game quotes (Steve Melewski)
“We’re able to throw out there what we have right now,” said manager Brandon Hyde of the Baltimore/Norfolk pitching staff struggles. Better players are not right around the corner... but hopefully not too far beyond that.

For Norfolk’s Gary Kendall, his first season in Triple-A is a major deal (Baltimore Baseball)
Some neat perspective from the Triple-A manager after a long time doing Double-A.

McCoy making major impression (School of Roch)
My current favorite fringe Orioles prospect is Bowie shortstop Mason McCoy, so you’d better believe I’m including the article when Roch wrote about him over the weekend. McCoy added two more hits on Sunday to increase his batting line to .324/.382/.429 in 42 Bowie games.

Birthdays and anniversaries

One lone former Oriole has a birthday today: 1995 reliever Doug Jones, who turns 62. Jones posted a 5.01 ERA for the 1995 squad, and as a sign of the time that he played in, this was still good for an ERA+ of 96.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: psychologist Ernst Weber (1795), poet/journalist Ambrose Bierce (1842), author Mercedes Lackey (1950), actress Mindy Kaling (1979), and frequent goal-scoring footballer Lionel Messi (1987).

On this day in history...

In 217 BC, a Roman force being led by Gaius Flaminius was defeated by Hannibal in the Battle of Lake Transimene. With Hannibal accomplishing an ambush with his entire army of about 55,000 men, this is regarded as the largest ambush in military history.

In 1314 AD, Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce defeated the English in the Battle of Bannockburn.

In 1812, the French Grande Armee, led by Napoleon, crossed the Neman River, marking the beginning of its invasion of Russia. He’s believed to have had 680,000 men in this campaign, of whom only 120,000 survived to the end of the eventual retreat.

In 1922, an organization then known as the American Professional Football Association changed its name to something much more familiar today: the National Football League.

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And that’s the way it is on June 24 - or at least, unless something happens later while the Orioles have a day off. Maybe they’ll make some progress with unsigned draft picks. Adley Rutschman apparently posted an Instagram from downtown Baltimore on Sunday night, though he seems to have deleted the post so only Twitter screenshots like this remain:

Have a safe Monday.