Thursday Bird Droppings: Where the Orioles are delivering pies again

Hello, friends.

Here is another morning where we wake up to the Orioles being in first place. If you missed it last night, not only are the Orioles remaining in first place, post-game pies are back! Or at least they made a one night return. That was fun.

Will the pies be staying for good or even just deployed occasionally? For now, there’s no public answer to the question, because no Orioles beat writer seems to have asked either Buck Showalter or Adam Jones about the apparent strawberries and cream delivered to Ubaldo Jimenez after his surprising and excellent performance. None of them even seemed to be aware the pie had happened.

And part and parcel of there being a pie situation is that the Orioles won the game. If you haven’t already, check out our Donovan Moore’s recap of the game, including 7.2 scoreless innings by Jimenez. Really! And that was with Trey Mancini and Mark Trumbo as the starting corner outfielders. It’s amazing.

Today brings Wade Miley against former brief-tenure Oriole Scott Feldman as the O’s try to take the series in Cincinnati. At this rate it seems like the Orioles are going to need to win forever because the Yankees are playing like they will hardly ever lose again.

Around the blogO’sphere

Orioles closer Zach Britton set for MRI | MLB | Sporting News

Lest any of us start to get a good feeling about the Orioles, here’s a sobering bit of news. Initially, the insistence was that Britton would not need an MRI, and now the story is changing.

Showalter on Mancini leading off: "As opposed to who?" - School of Roch

“Hyun Soo Kim!” cries that segment of Orioles fans who are Kim partisans to the very end. But why would anyone ever want to see the guy who had the highest OBP on the team as the leadoff hitter, anyway?

Seth Smith may miss a few days with injury | MLB.com

Smith, you may recall, had a hamstring problem in spring training as well. The Orioles have yet to determine whether they’ll DL him over this situation, although with the new 10-day DL, if he can’t play today, he might land on the DL.

Bowden: How much it would take to lock up MLB’s best young players? - The GM's Office- ESPN

The man who once suggested that the Orioles should trade Kevin Gausman for Jeff Samardzija has now set his sights on a hypothetical new contract for Manny Machado.

Injured by errant bat at Orioles game, woman sues for more fan protection - Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore Sun tackles an interesting topic by playing another round of “Quote the Orioles fan who you already know from Twitter” on the subject of dugout netting.

Angel Pagan Won’t Play In 2017 - MLB Trade Rumors

File this under “The Orioles physical was right again” because it seems no other team wants to sign Pagan either. Go figure.

Birthdays and anniversaries

On this day in 1988, the Orioles set the MLB record for worst-ever start to a season when they lost their 14th straight game, an 8-6 defeat to the Brewers. The 1997 Cubs also reached 0-14 but the 88 O’s stand alone at 0-21.

Not a single player who has ever played for the Orioles has a birthday today. Looking down on the farm, it is the birthday of O’s pitching prospect Ofelky Peralta, who is 20 today. Hopefully Peralta is a future Oriole.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Your birthday buddies for today include: Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (1920), King of Latin music Tito Puente (1923), Star Trek actor George Takei (1937), and model and actress Carmen Electra (1972). This was also the birthday of one of history’s great villains.

On this day in history...

In 1775, colonial forces began the Siege of Boston, which, with the evacuation of the British eleven months later, they would ultimately win.

In 1898, President William McKinley put his signature to a joint resolution of Congress that declared war against Spain. So began the Spanish-American War.

In 1918, in World War I, “The Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen shot down the 79th and 80th planes of the war, the record for that conflict. He was shot down and killed the next day.

In 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by US-backed Cuban exiles failed.

In 1999, two students entered Columbine High School in Colorado, armed sufficiently to kill 13 people and injure another 24 before turning their guns on themselves.

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven rig workers and spilling 210 millions of oil into the Gulf.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on April 20 - or at least, until something happens later, which it probably will, because there’s a game to play. Have a safe Thursday. Go Orioles!