Sunday Bird Droppings: Where the Orioles must try to recover from a blowout

Hello, friends.

The Orioles sure picked a bad time to have their most lopsided defeat of the season. At this point, they can’t give away any no-chancer games, and that’s exactly what they played yesterday. There’s nothing quite like trailing 4-0 before the starting pitcher even records an out. When the dust settled, the O’s fell to the Red Sox, 17-4. That’s pretty bad. Check out John Beers’s recap for the not-so-lovely totals.

The loss leaves the Orioles at 73-66. It’s a fine record. If they close out the season at that pace, they’ll end up at 85-77. When you think about where we all believed the team would be for this season back in April, that’s an amazing accomplishment. The only thing that hurts about it is that they got close enough to make us think maybe they were even better than that, and then it turned out that maybe they aren’t.

If they are, they’re going to have to get back to showing it quickly. Though the Orioles do remain in the top challenger spot for a wild card, so at least there’s nobody else in the way, they now look up at a five game deficit to the Seattle Mariners for the third and final spot. Making up five games in the span of 23 is a tough ask. It remains theoretically possible.

The elimination number for the Orioles - their losses, or Mariners wins - stands at 19. So the O’s need to go like 17-6 and the Mariners can’t do better than 12-11. Except it’s even worse than that because Seattle holds the tiebreaker over the O’s, so the Orioles must finish one win better. The five game deficit is really six games. It’s just... very unlikely, especially with the Mariners having a near-cakewalk schedule remaining.

The Red Sox await again this afternoon at 1:05. Both Maryland-based professional football teams kick off their week 1 games at 1:00, so who knows how many people will even be tuning in to watch the Orioles try to keep things from slipping entirely away. Kyle Bradish pitches for the O’s, with Rich “The Blister” Hill taking the mound for the Red Sox.

Around the blogO’sphere

Notes on Bautista, Henderson, Hays, and others (School of Roch)
The big thing to be aware of from yesterday was manager Brandon Hyde saying that the reason he didn’t have closer Félix Bautista pitch in Friday’s win is that Bautista was still suffering from some arm fatigue after his two inning outing on Tuesday. The Orioles went the wrong way about making sure he wasn’t needed on Saturday.

Orioles notes: Ownership, Elias, Rutschman, Offseason (MLBTR)
The good folks at MLBTR had some thoughts on some recent Orioles news, including the latest round of court filings in the Angelos family drama. These filings state that GM Mike Elias reporting directly and only to John Angelos is written into his contract, and that it was now-disfavored brother Louis who was responsible for Brady Anderson hanging around. Nothing public about this court stuff has made me feel like Louis should be the one in charge.

Orioles’ offseason should be interesting (Baltimore Baseball)
For the first time since Elias has been in charge, it feels like there could and should be some significant activity to actually add pieces to the major league team. I hope he’s better at this part of the process than Dan Duquette was.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Today in 2019, Jonathan Villar hit a three-run home run in the seventh inning that broke a 2-2 tie against the Dodgers on the way to a 7-3 victory. The home run was significant for being the 6,106th home run hit in MLB that year, setting a new record. The league went on to finish with 6,776 combined homers.

The 2019 Orioles, of course, did more than their part to set this record, since O’s pitchers allowed a record 305 home runs. Before yesterday’s games, there had been 4,451 home runs hit in MLB this year. The Orioles had allowed 147 of these.

There are several former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2021 infielder Domingo Leyba, 2018-20 reliever Evan Phillips, 2019-21 reliever Shawn Armstrong, 2018-19 pitcher Andrew Cashner, and 1957-58 four-game infielder Eddie Miksis.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: novelist D. H. Lawrence (1885), college football coach Bear Bryant (1913), singer-songwriter Moby (1965), actress Taraji P. Henson (1970), and rapper Ludacris (1977).

On this day in history...

In 9, the Roman Empire was beaten by an alliance of Germanic tribes in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. One effect of the battle is that Rome decided to make the Rhine River its northern border.

In 1792, during the French Revolution, a number of crown jewels were stolen, including the diamond now on display in the Smithsonian, the Hope diamond. Believed to be more than twice as large but more crudely cut at this time when it was the “French Blue”, the Hope appeared in its modern recognized form in 1839 and was donated to the museum in 1958.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on September 11. Have a safe Sunday. Go O’s!