Tuesday Bird Droppings: The wild card grind continues for the Orioles

Happy Tuesday, Camden Chatters! I hope you enjoyed the off day before the Orioles take on the Chicago White Sox, the team breathing down their necks in the wild card race. The good news is that after losing yesterday, the White Sox are now 1.5 games behind the Orioles. They are barely hanging on.

The bad news is that due to a rainout over the weekend, the White Sox were able to move their legit ace, Dylan Cease, to the series against our Orioles. He’ll be tough to beat. I would never say impossible because anything can happen, but I will say that it feels almost impossible that they’ll beat him.

But the Orioles are good at home and I feel, dare I say, a little confident in their abilities? Not like, a LOT confident. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Orioles took two out of three. They need to if they want to continue to have a chance.

Two other games of interest were also played last night, Rays vs. Angels and Twins vs. Rangers. The Twins fell to the Rangers 2-1, and the Rays defeated the Angels 2-1. The Rays win pulled them a half-game ahead of the pack for the first wild card spot, now three games ahead of the Orioles. And the loss by the Twins dropped them a half-game behind the Orioles. I approve of that.

Aside from scoreboard watching, the one thing on the mind of every Orioles fan is Gunnar Henderson. Orioles Twitter is frantic at the idea that he might be called up before tonight’s game against the White Sox. If the Orioles have any plan to do that, they haven’t shown their hand. But as we saw with the Adley Rutschman debut, giving the fans a lot of lead time to get ready for a big debut isn’t a concern of theirs.

Maybe I’ll look like a fool later today when the Orioles make the big announcement, but I think we’re looking at at least another week before Gunnar makes his Orioles debut. I have no real reasoning behind this other than a hunch, and I hope I’m wrong and he is suiting up tonight against a wild card rival.

Links

Minor Monday: Norfolk’s Justin Ramsey breaks down some of the Orioles’ top pitchers - BaltimoreBaseball.com
Justin Ramsey is the pitching coach for the Tides, so he is a voice worth listening to.

Rodriguez keeps making positive strides toward return to real games - MASN Sports
Roch Kubatko says that Grayson Rodriguez is confident he’ll pitch again this year, and his progress so far suggests he might. Don’t tease me!

Orioles' Brett Phillips Clears Waivers, Assigned To AAA - MLB Trade Rumors
For those of you upset at the idea of losing Brett Phillips, don't worry. He's cleared waiver and is now a Norfolk Tide.

Shorebirds Add Six New Arms from Orioles 2022 Draft Haul - OurSports Central
Three more members of the 2022 draft and three undrafted free agents, all pitchers, are now with the Shorebirds. Best of luck to them!

The Rutschman Effect - Baltimore Sports and Life
Adley Rutschman is like, really good, y'all.

Stan 'The Fan' Charles: Liftoff Time Calls For More Serious Uniform Numbers For Orioles - PressBox
This is an actual story in which Stan the Fan says that if the Orioles really wanted to show they were serious about winning, their players would have lower numbers.

Birthdays and History

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! You have an incredible number of birthday buddies, maybe the most I have ever seen in my time doing these posts. Nine former Orioles were born on this day!

The headliner off this group is pitcher Mike Boddicker, who is celebrating his 65th birthday today. Boddicker played for the Orioles from 1980-88, playing in 190 games with a 3.63 ERA. In 1983, Boddicker made 26 starts for the World Champions with a 2.77 ERA, good for third in Rookie of the Year voting. In the playoffs that year, Boddicker pitched two complete game, one in the ALCS and one in the WS. In the ALCS game he struck out 14 batters and he was not a strikeout guy.

In 1988, Boddicker was traded to the Red Sox for Brady Anderson and Curt Schilling, so he helped the team even as he departed.

Also born on this day in history are Denny Bautista, Alejandro Freire, Casey Blake, Raúl Casanova, Jeff Manto, Ed Barnowski, John Morris, and Hall of Famer George Kell. If you don’t remember most of these players, or don’t remember when they played for the Orioles, I forgive you.

On this day in 2002, the Orioles fell behind 6-0 to the Blue Jays but then came back to win 11-7. The win brought the Orioles to .500 at 63-63 and Baseball Reference added the commentary, “From here on it will be all downhill.” Oh indeed, Baseball Reference.