bluedog

This is legit hilarious.

I remember the O's nearly winning the division one year against the Brewers when they were 3 games back with 4 games against Milwaukee to end the season. The O's won the first three games to tie everything up going into the final day. Palmer was on the mound for the final game and unfortunately we lost, but it is a great reminder of how big late season head to head series can be for teams trying to close a largish gap in the standings. The O's are 7 back today in the loss column. I can easily see us picking up 4 more games before we play the Yankees the final week of the season. How exciting would it be if we entered that 3 game series just 3 games back of them? REALLY long odds to sweep them, but the excitement would be HUGE.

What is the lineup today? I haven't seen it yet. I have only one issue with Hyde's lineups. Just one. Otherwise I love how he's handled lineups, the bench and particularly the rotation.

I hated seeing Hyde pinch hit for Stowers last night instead of for Odor who was next up. With a big lead, I'd rather give Odor some rest and see what Stowers can do against a left handed pitcher.

Do you offer Judge 5 / $250M just to screw with all the other front offices? The O's are one of the only teams that could afford that contract given our low payroll for the near future. If another team beats that then it benefits the O's by making someone else overpay.

Agreed.

Thanks. We all have to deal with tragedy. What helps is having others with empathy to help us through it. My dad was a huge Cleveland fan. He and I went to an O's / Indians game every chance we got. Last few weeks before he died he was in a medical coma. I sat by his bed and read him Cleveland box scores every morning. I like to think it helped. Sports can divide us or connect us. I may be a softy, but I prefer the latter. I wish OH was a little more forgiving. We're all connected by our love of the O's. I don't know about why the O's would lose faith in Lopez. That's why I was asking about whether there was a makeup concern.

You mean getting them *and beating them* in the first round?

It's crazy to attack someone for being off topic by starting an entire thread of off-topic posts about being off-topic. If avoiding off-topic posts is so important to you, you should have sent me a Private Message instead with a suggestion about staying on topic. and back on topic - I've followed the O's since 79 - over 40 years. I have enjoyed this team more than any other team in my lifetime because of how they win. Every single time that Odor comes to bat, I feel irritated. My enthusiasm for the team gets over written with "WTF is this guy doing getting constant playing time when there are obvious better options on the bench and in the minors". So yes, Odor is absolutely reducing my enjoyment of this team. Not sure why I would make that up as a pretext to go off-topic about Odor since this is the 1st time I've mentioned on OH how much Odor bothers me.

I'm not sure what this has to do with Baseball, but I lost my dad last year after a 3 year bout with Cancer. I am CEO of a tech startup and I have 200+ investors in my company. All of them were supportive of me while my Dad was in the hospital, but they also held me accountable for running my company and doing my job. Not because they were heartless people but because that's real life. If I needed to take time off to be with my father because I couldn't concentrate on work, that would have been acceptable and we would have appointed someone else to run the company in my absence. Trading Lopez is a head scratcher. I don't think Elias has shown a pattern of acting irrationally, so I was simply asking might there be another reason he made that trade. Lopez just blew a save where he hit two players in an inning and yelled at one of the guys after he hit him. He blew consecutive saves against the Twins where he seemed to get rattled just before he was traded away. I don't think its crazy to ask the question whether or not Elias lost faith in his ability to handle the pressure of the game in high leverage situations. As for knowing that Lopez had family problems, I don't follow the O's closely enough that I know their personal stories. I watch their games on MLB.tv when they are competitive. I come here when they are winning to share the excitement with other O's fans with the hope that its a safe and low stress place to hangout and rap about baseball.

I didn't question his makeup. I have no idea about his makeup. I asked whether or not the team questioned his makeup which *might* explain the strange move of trading away an all-star closer, whose under team control for years during a pennant race. If you and I were friends sitting in a bar, over a beer, you probably would have responded constructively by sharing your insights about his background. I didn't know about his kid. I certainly would never want to suggest that someone who's dealing with personal family issues has makeup issues. But instead you attack me and suggest I'm some kind of heartless person for saying something you frame as negative. You never seem to pass up the opportunity to go negative on people. OH should be a place where people can talk about the O's safe from constant criticism and negging. Guess its not.

We are having a discussion about favorite Oriole teams ever and I post the one reason I'm not sold on this being my favorite team ever and you think that's off topic?

Can you imagine a more delicious storyline than the Yanks missing the playoffs entirely because they have the greatest collapse in MLB history, end up 4th in the AL East and are passed by the Orioles who post the greatest single season turn around in MLB history?

Agreed! I just wish they would sit Odor. It's frankly astonishing that he plays more often and is pinch hit for less than any other player. I am so sick of watching him flail at the plate and listening to Jim Palmer talk about how good he is at turning double plays as if that's a justification for plugging his 0.1 WAR into the lineup every day. Other than that, I have no complaints about this team.

I am wondering if Lopez has some makeup issues that caused the O's to move on from him.

Over their last 10 series, the Yanks are 1 - 1 - 8. The tie and one of the losses were to Oakland and the Angels. Pretty funny that they won a 2 game series against the Mets and won the first 2 games of the A's series and everyone was talking about how they had righted the ship just in time for the playoffs and since then they've gone 1 - 6.

What's amazing to me is that the Twins traded for Lopez after he blew two saves against them.

Orioles are now 7 games back of the Yankees in the loss column. Toronto is 5 back, the Rays are 3 back. The O's were 23 games back in the loss column on July 2nd. They've made up 16 games on the Yankees since then. If the Yankees are swept by the Rays tomorrow and lose to the Twins on Monday, the Jays beat the Pirates tomorrow and the O's win their next three games, the Rays will be 1 back in the loss column, and the Jays and the O's will be 5 back. The division is definitely in play and there is a plausible scenario where the Yanks actually miss the playoffs... Talk about chaos.

Yes I think its in play for the Rays. The Yanks are now facing intense pressure to not collapse, which is the best way to insure a collapse. Add in the biggest payroll with the most spoiled and entitled fans, highly toxic local media and an expectation for months that the division title was in the bag and you've got the perfect storm for choking.

25 - 5... So you're saying there's a chance!

O's catch the Yankees for the pennant. Yanks miss playoffs. There you go problem solved.

Orioles only 8.5 games back of Yankees for pennant. Just saying...

Isn't it amazing that you can even make a plausible case for 5+ players in our system after we've already graduated 4 of our Top 10 or so players this year? Ain't the beer cold!

Beginning of next year, an O's prospect has a huge start to the season and rises to #1 status following in Adley and Gunnar's footsteps. Who is it and why?

Isn't Hall a strong possibility? Also, if the O's take care of business against Oakland, that DH against Toronto is going to be intense due to the playoff implications. One of the most important days of the season. Given the quality of opponents and position in the standings, the O's have basically been playing playoff baseball for a month now. Every game is critical. If the O's do make the playoffs they will have played like 50 games against playoff caliber opponents leading up to the playoffs. Quite a stretch.