Thursday Bird Droppings: The Cal Ripken’s birthday edition

Hello, friends.

The streak lives! After an annoying loss on Tuesday, the Orioles came right back on Wednesday and dropped a 7-0 shutout on the Jays to make it 80 straight series without being swept. That constitutes the 79 series in which Adley Rutschman has played in his MLB career, plus one more on top of that. They’ve had the post-World War II record for a while. With three more, they’d tie a streak by the 1922-24 Yankees.

It could have easily ended up differently. Dean Kremer had a laborious first inning after being pressed into service a day earlier than expected. The high pitch count first inning does seem to be his thing at times. Though he bent early on, he never broke, and he ended up pitching the first six innings of a combined shutout, lowering his season ERA to 4.31. We’re getting pretty darn close to acceptable overall season results for Kremer.

Check out Alex Church’s recap of the game for more of the lovely totals.

Unfortunately for the Orioles, last night’s win did not result in their gaining any ground against the Rays in the division. For the second straight night, the Rockies blew a late lead, in this case allowing two runs to score in the ninth inning before going on to lose in the tenth. The lead holds at two games. The magic number to clinch is 34.

Having won the middle game of this series, the Orioles can take it to the bank if they’re able to win tonight’s finale as well. It won’t be an easy task as they go up against yet another mid-3 ERA pitcher in Jose Berríos. With Jack Flaherty’s Wednesday scratch, Kremer moved up a day to start last night and Kyle Gibson is moving up a day to start tonight. Please, Kyle, do something that lowers your 4.97 ERA. Thank you. First pitch is scheduled for the standard civilized weeknight baseball time of 7:05 Eastern.

Around the blogO’sphere

Flaherty: “Sometimes you don’t bounce back the way you want to” (School of Roch)
Up until now, the Orioles Jack Flaherty experience has been the downside of the risk of acquiring a pitcher who had a below-league average ERA when acquired. Now, they’re also getting the downside of the risk of acquiring a pitcher who had started 23 games combined across the last two seasons.

How will the Orioles resolve the pitching logjam? (Orioles.com)
Separate from anything that happens with Flaherty and the rotation, the Orioles have a bunch of guys on the way back who may alter the relief mix. Austin Voth’s return from the injured list yesterday, sending Mike Baumann back to the minors, was only the first of these.

The Orioles have plenty of things to sort out on the mound. Who will lead their playoff rotation isn’t one of them. (The Baltimore Banner)
I’m not only sharing Jon Meoli’s opinion that Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez are the easy choice for a 1-2 punch in the playoffs for the Orioles because it happens to be the same opinion I expressed on my podcast earlier this week. But that’s definitely part of why!

John Angelos’ latest tomfoolery puts another damper on Orioles’ bright future (The Baltimore Sun)
Angelos deserves to be burned daily by the local newspapers until he stops being so... you know, John Angelos. And The Sun has kept delivering on what he deserves.

For O’s Gunnar Henderson, ROY talk is nice, playoffs are the goal (Steve Melewski)
It’s not like I expected Henderson to say anything different than this, but it makes me happy to read it anyway. Of course the team’s goal is what matters the most.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Today in 1983, Tippy Martinez famously (at least to us) picked off three runners in the same inning, a tenth inning where the Orioles had to use Lenn Sakata as an emergency catcher and each Blue Jays runner to get on base got overconfident and was punished by Martinez. Sakata hit a walkoff homer in the bottom half of that inning, improving the Orioles record to 70-52.

Of all the players to ever play for the Orioles, only one has a birthday today. Happy 63rd birthday to Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr., a Rookie of the Year, two-time AL MVP, 3000 hit club member, and the holder of baseball’s consecutive games played record.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Along with Cal, your birthday buddies for today include: writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899), WWE co-founder Vince McMahon (1945), video game auteur Hideo Kojima (1963), filmmaker Ava DuVernay (1972), and comedian Dave Chappelle (1973).

On this day in history...

In 410, the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, marking its first time in the hands of a foreign enemy in nearly 800 years. This event did not end the Roman Empire, but it was one of the shocking public signs of the coming fall.

In 1215, the pope of the day, Innocent III, declared the famous from your history class Magna Carta grant of some rights to some people to be invalid. Clause 61 of the document bound King John against seeking “to obtain nothing from anyone, in our own person or through someone else, whereby any of these grants or liberties may be revoked or diminished.” So much for that.

In 1814, the British invaded Washington and set fires that engulfed the White House and the Capitol building.

In 1991, Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

**

And that’s the way it is in Birdland on August 24. Have a safe Thursday. Go O’s!