Thursday Bird Droppings: The triumphant Orioles can take today to breathe

Hello, friends.

The Orioles! They’ve done it again. Back in the series preview, only 33% of Camden Chat readers thought the team could take two out of three from the Rays, and yet, here we are. After an exciting 2-1 win last night, the O’s officially rebounded from their first series opener loss of the year by winning the next two to take the series after all. Check out Stacey’s recap of the game for more of the lovely totals.

Over the three game series, the Orioles pitching staff and defense held the Rays to just six runs combined. The Rays are averaging more than six runs per game for the whole season! This was an excellent performance, and a lot of that came from starting pitchers who needed to demonstrate that they could tackle tough lineups and come away with good results. Dean Kremer was one of these and he did great last night. It is fun.

With the Wednesday victory, the Orioles are 24-13 with 23% of their season having been played. At this point, they’re on pace to finish with a 105-57 record. I’ll take the under on that win total, but it’s a lot of wins in the bank already and they’ve done plenty to show quality against quality teams. What’s more, you can make the case that we haven’t even seen the best out of this team yet - though we probably haven’t seen the worst out of it yet either.

The flurry of activity so far leaves the Orioles 4.5 games back of the Rays, which is mighty annoying considering that’s the only team with a better record than the O’s in the AL so far. That means the O’s hold the first wild card spot for the time being, with an advantage of 2.5 games over the Red Sox - who, annoyingly, have climbed to third - and three games over the Blue Jays.

Both Boston and Toronto are idle here on Thursday night, just like the Orioles. The Rays, however, will be in action playing the Yankees. As the standings are right now, O’s fans are in the strange place of preferring a Yankee victory. There are not too many times where it is acceptable to prefer this. We will see whether the Yankees are even up to the task of beating the Rays right now.

After the Orioles off day at home, they’ll be back in action on Friday against the Pirates. For a little while, the Pirates were one of the teams flying nearly as high as the Orioles have been so far. They’ve fallen on hard times lately, now losers of nine of their last ten. We can hope that this means that the Orioles are catching them at the right time, rather than catching them right when they start to turn things around a bit.

How will you be entertaining yourself with the Orioles off tonight? Are there any shows you’re behind on that you can watch an episode or two? You might even have time to watch a movie.

Around the blogO’sphere

This year, Mike Elias thinks the Orioles can make the playoffs, and that the roster is already good enough (The Baltimore Banner)
Singing quite a different tune compared to the trade deadline last year! Which is interesting.

Orioles balancing winning and developing with ‘good problems’ (Orioles.com)
Triple-A Norfolk is loaded, and the Orioles have to figure out who benefits from regular playing time there as compared to who might be able to fulfill short-term needs on the big league club.

Jackson Holliday talks about recent promotion (Steve Melewski)
Last year’s #1 overall pick wasn’t at Delmarva for very long and it seems like he might not be at Aberdeen for very long either.

Orioles eagerly watching Norfolk Tides progress (Baltimore Baseball)
Quoted here are Brandon Hyde and Ryan O’Hearn, though it seems the team is collectively tracking some of the prospects down there. There are many.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

There are a few former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2000 outfielder Trent Hubbard, 1989 reliever Mark Huismann, and 1957-65 pitcher Milt Pappas. Part of the trade that brought Frank Robinson to Baltimore, Pappas passed away in 2016 at age 76.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: composer Irving Berlin (1888), baseball Hall of Famer Charlie Gehringer (1903), artist Salvador Dalí (1904), and actress Lana Condor (1997).

On this day in history...

In 1812, the British prime minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated by a pistol shot in the lobby of the House of Commons. He is the only British prime minister to have been assassinated. The killer was a merchant who had been imprisoned in Russia and believed he was entitled to compensation, whose petitions had been ignored.

In 1997, the supercomputer Deep Blue defeated chess grand master Garry Kasparov in their rematch, marking the first time a computer had beaten a chess champion in the classic match format.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on May 11. Have a safe Thursday.