allquixotic

NOW they pitch Fuji...

We may still lose, but not in regulation. Finding a decent pitcher out of the pen is going to be even harder in extras. We should either score 2+ runs in the 10th inning or just roll over and lose in bot 10 instead of dragging this out. IMO.

We're not the same team without Felix. None of these guys can pitch!

wtf?????? how was that a ball?????

Not a great showing by the pen tonight, but an even lousier showing by the offense. 2 stinking runs against a team that's not that good. Disappointing.

Just a wild guess, but since the Ravens and the Orioles are both tightly associated with Baltimore in the complex web of parameters that go into a large language model, it's likely the algorithm took significant inspiration from both Orioles and Ravens mascots to produce sort of a fusion of the two. This is how language and image models work.

How to know you have a good team: across two games, your team outscores the opponent by 18-1

Bases clearing double for Tony Taters! That gives me Delmon Young vibes from the ALDS!!! Holy cow!! YEAH!!!

3 balls called strikes this inning. Robo umps PLEASE!

Given that OPACY now allows us to bring our own food, I’m totally fine with them charging $50, $100 or whatever they feel they need to for a hotdog. Somehow I feel like the generous outside food policy makes in-park food prices almost moot — at some point nobody will buy it. They are keeping it just cheap enough that those who forgot to bring something will be able to afford a food purchase. But I’d gladly see McKenna off the team permanently. He is not good. His middling AVG hides a putrid overall offensive record. And we have a few other players who are fleeter of foot.

The aisle seat in a lot of the lower level sections is measurably smaller than the rest of the seats. Club level seats (not talking about box seats, just the 200 level seats) are significantly wider than lower level seats, on the aisle AND in the middle. I'm large in every dimension (tall, wide) so I try to avoid tickets anywhere but the club level. For the playoffs, I'm going to squeeze in there no matter where I get a ticket, but hopefully it'll be club level.

I was at this game… amazing game, edge of seat the whole game… was worried mid game, then that home run set off the crowd like a bomb… we were so ready for Felix to finish the game, then it felt like a “loss” when he went off the field (in terms of what we lose if he’s hurt), but Coulombe getting the “W” was still fun to see. We’ll have to see what impact Felix’s injury will have… hoping for the best.

One of the indisputable facts of this year. This team doesn’t suffer many losing streaks.

I’m at the game tonight. I am happy.

Nice job Kremer! Six scoreless is great, especially pitching him out of order in the rotation.

I’m OK with both pitchers getting an enormous strike zone for the rest of the game. We have a lead.

Pitching was adequate to good most of last night, and really good tonight. Problem seems to be that we are suffering from a power outage against any team not from Oakland.

Terrible RISP / bases loaded ABs this series so far. Far worse than we’ve seen them this year. Can’t cash in on some hits and gifts… well, we don’t throw a shutout very often. We needed those runs. Dammit.

Gotta love Baumann tossing a meatball on the first pitch. Ugh. Disgusting.

Getting tired of McKenna's automatic out.

Padres are very, very lucky this series and it's so irritating. A lot of balls right at em, and a lot of theirs sneak through by inches. We're better than them and trying harder and not getting the results.

Our ability to develop guys down on the farm is far better than it used to be in the dark ages. Optioning a young player to AAA isn't a death sentence to their career in this organization; it's more like helping someone with the best damn remedial education money can buy. I think Cowser will be much improved when he returns to the bigs. The real question is, when? I think I'm in the 2024 camp on that. It's August 15 and the O's have a 3 game lead in the division. Now's not the time to help youngsters learn on the job at the MLB level. Now is the time to put the best MLB team together we possibly can, every night, with all eyes on the upcoming championship.

Maybe, maybe not. Obviously the best thing would be for him to develop consistency with the splitter, because when it's working, he's one of the most effective pitchers in the game. But I didn't suggest that because, more than likely, the type of work he needs to fix a pitch will require the off-season and spring training to work on. You don't start tinkering with your closer's mechanics down the stretch when your team is holding on to first place by a couple of games. It'd also require the off-season for him to develop a new pitch he could throw more consistently as an alternative to the splitter. That does just leave the fastball and the slider unfortunately, but hey. The best pitches in baseball are ones that are unhittable even when they know what's coming. Maybe it's too soon to mention him again, but remember Britton? We had him last time we were a contender. In 2016, Britton threw a sinker 91.7% of the time, a slider 7.9% of the time, and a 4-seam fastball 0.4% of the time. Basically, he was a 1-pitch pitcher. But that one pitch was so effective that he could get ground balls with it very consistently. With Mariano Rivera, it was the cutter about 90% of the time -- and nobody could square up his cutter either. Bautista is shaping up to be a 1-pitch pitcher, with a devastating fastball that can strike guys out because nobody can hit it, and a splitter that makes the fastball way more effective when it works.... but when the splitter doesn't work, it's a guaranteed non-competitive pitch. I'd rather him fix it, but realistically, I don't expect that he can make such a major change to his routine down the stretch. On the other hand, subtracting a pitch requires zero skill. Just don't throw it.

Bautista needs to give up on his splitter a bit sooner if he can't find the release point or whatever mechanical aspect causes him to spike it or overthrow it consistently in about 50% of his appearances. It seems like, once he takes the mound, he either has the pitch, or he doesn't. Continuing to throw the pitch is just going to elevate the pitch count and put runners on base via the walk or hit by pitch. I'm OK with batters having an easier time knowing what's coming because he removed a pitch from his arsenal after realizing he can't throw it. His remaining pitches are good enough to get strikeouts and saves still. But when a pitch is an uncompetitive ball 95% of the time, you probably need to give up on it and go back to the basics. He's probably out there with determination, thinking to himself that he just needs to tweak his delivery just a little bit to get that splitter to work, and tries it over and over again trying to "find it". I admire the determination, but he's giving an opposing team a chance to steal a game from us in the 9th every time he does that. And sometimes you're going to give up a grand slam or a bases-clearing triple in that situation. He's been clutch for us all season. It's hard to suggest messing with success, but you know: "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Perhaps, just maybe, if Felix gives up on a pitch that doesn't work for him sooner in an appearance, his ERA would still be below 1.

I'm not sure why you're so confident they'll be amazing next year, either. It's not like one measly year of extra experience will magically guarantee a team to be competitive for the foreseeable future, or to have a more legitimate shot at the World Series. At this point, I have zero confidence that any season other than this season is going to be a playoff bound season for the O's. We have a very excellent chance of making the playoffs this season because of past performance this year that has given us a huge amount of momentum. Now, we can almost coast into the finish line and still make it into a wildcard. And if they play up to any remote definition of "good", they'll probably be the first place AL East team. But next year and the year after is a complete crapshoot. Someone who's key to our winning formula could get hurt long term. Someone could get traded. We might find out that some of the folks who we let go after this year were quietly part of a winning formula or a winning culture that gave us the magic legs we needed this year. The difference between a team that had a forgettable, decent season, and a team that won first place in their division, is about 20 to 25 games. That margin is surprisingly small. The reason the number is so small is because converting a win into a loss, or a loss into a win, has a "double effect" of sorts: it affects both the W and the L column simultaneously. So. If the O's this year had a mere 20 games in which the ball didn't bounce our way, or Bautista or Cano or Fuji or Baumann blew it, or that pivotal hit turned out to be an "at-em" ball, or the opposing side DIDN'T make that critical error at the exact time we needed it... ... Then we would be the Red Sox right now instead of fighting for first place. Having a well-managed team with strong talent, a great farm system, and a front office that makes shrewd but effective decisions, is a protection against having a putrid season, to the tune of 100+ losses. Even then, you could still lose 100+ games, but if all the things I said are true, the chances of a putrid season are very, very low. But no amount of good management, high hopes, player development, and impactful trades will ever provide more than a coin flip's worth of confidence that a team can make the playoffs any given year. If we're a coin flip away from making the playoffs next year, that's an indication that the organization is "doing things right" -- and we're quite possibly out of the dark years of the late 2010s. But it's still a coin flip. We can't really make it much better than that, because we don't have the money to "buy a World Series" like the Dodgers and Yanks do. When a big money team can smell success just an arm's reach away, they bring out their stretchy arms cheat code and snatch that victory with payola, the great inequalizer. Money. But we don't have that. We don't have money. Am I cautiously optimistic about the future of the team over the next few years? Of course. Do I have some rosy, unrealistic expectation that we're going to be the best team in baseball in 2024? Well, it's possible, but it's far from guaranteed. We maybe have a 1-in-5 or 1-in-8 odds of being the best team next year, by W-L record and Pythag. But so many other things can derail us into mediocrity, and a lot of it comes down to luck. It's easy to turn 20 Ws into 20 Ls. That doesn't make you a Bad Team necessarily; it's just the way the ball bounces. There's just not enough of a guarantee that we'll continue to be good, even if we do everything right.