Maryland and NCAA Sports

I don't really get hating on the streak.  Its something that hasn't been done to this level in a long time; the rarity of it makes it noteworthy, if nothing else.  I don't need people talking about the streak to remind of the playoff streak - not like I'm going to forget that happened.  But the regular season streak means that we haven't had a losing streak longer than - 4 games in two years.  I kind of wish the streak was spoken about in those terms - longest losing streak only 4 games - rather than in terms of being swept.  Because avoiding even a 5-6 game losing streak for two years is something worth noting, IMO, and that's basically what not being swept means. Looking back at the schedule; they lost 6 in a row from 5/13-5/18/22.  That includes the three game sweep in Detroit that is the last time they were swept, then they lost the first three games of a four game series vs. the Yankees.  Since then, their longest losing streak is just 4, three different times - 6/29-7/2/22 (which was immediately followed by a 10-game winning streak), 6/30-7/2/23, and 9/12-9/15/23. They also had three 3-game losing streaks - vs Boston 8/27-29 (4 game series),  5/6-5/8/23, and 9/20-9/22/23 (both split across two series)- ironically, that is one 4 game streak and one 3-game streak within two weeks of each other, while we were trying to clinch the division last year. So, in 2 years, that's 3 streaks of 4 games, and 3 streaks of 3 games. I'm not going to do this for every team as a comparison, but that does seem pretty good.  Longest being 4, and only 6 total in two years of 3 or 4, seems noteworthy.  At the very least, the 'streak' of sweepless series being upheld means no losing streaks of 5+ games, and that to me is why the streak does hold some meaning, despite the playoff sweep.

Up to this point, it’s fair to say I have not been a fan of Melanie Newman in the booth, except for some between-inning coverage where I found her passable. So far I found her somewhere between distracting and exhausting, and not particularly skilled at calling the action on the field. So I was somewhat dismayed to find that she was calling last night’s game with Ben. But to be fair, I thought she did quite a good job overall. It wasn’t perfect, but she seemed much more in control and even managed a bit of rapport with Ben over a few topics. To the point where I might prefer to hear her again over someone like Scott Garceau or maybe Geoff Arnold. That might not sound particularly impressive, low-hanging fruit snd all, but considering how irritating I found her until now, I thought it was a dramatic improvement.

And didn't he also do something with his fingers that was unusual?   Like twiddling them constantly while awaiting the pitch instead of just gripping the bat steadily with them?

There literally would be no difficulty in using any other level probability per game, but the reason I've stayed with coin flips is that there are a huge number of assumptions (starting with the notion that the probability should be level) that need to be explained if I were to use a different p(individual win).  That doesn't work for a tweet or a post that I don't want to go on for a long time to explain the assumptions, but "coin flip" does, because the assumptions are commonly understood. The fact that the other teams still ahead of the Orioles did it with substantially longer average series length makes them less impressive than what the O's have done and those teams also played .650-.700 baseball over the period of the streaks which is a result of a significant difference in top-to-bottom parity in the leagues.  Both facts are too much to explain each time, but not too difficult to calculate on a coin flip basis. For example, the previous AL record holders, the 1922-24 Yankees, using the coin-flip basis had approximately a 1 in 8,819 chance chance of going unswept in their 83 consecutive series. But for folks who want to say "coin flip is not accurate", I'll produce this goalposting once for "levelized win probability" through the 103 series lengths the Orioles have played (1922-24 Yankees 83 series lengths in parenthesis): .600: 1 in 952 (1 in 90) .650: 1 in 102 (1 in 20) .700: 1 in 19 (1 in 7) 1.000: 1 in 1    

We acknowledge that we need BP help but for me, it doesn’t have to be someone established in the majors (be nice to add that as well though). MLb.com just put together a list of closer prospects from each team. Maybe prospect for prospect trades could happen or maybe the Os would trade a vet bat for someone.     https://www.mlb.com/news/one-potential-future-closer-for-each-club-2024