allquixotic

Do I just have to stay home for the rest of the year so they’ll make it to the playoffs? Cuz when I go they play like a Low-A team even against bad teams like KC and mediocre teams like SEA.

Warning track power.

I’m at the park. They haven’t won when I was at the park since 2019.

Snakebitten

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0f3AWhCwcjCSiA12S_wrtAxLQ This video should be ready in a while - unedited process to take up the tarp for any who haven’t seen it before.

HERE WE GO!!! V. Likely start time 8:30

Absolutely, the forecast shows that there will be no rain within an hour from now. I predict a start time between 8:30 and 9.

Is the grounds crew stirring? Not sure….

7:29pm still covered…. Radar looks like a cell is moving northeast over Baltimore city imminently. Very foggy out by the skyscrapers.

The field is covered by the tarp

There was an announcement over the PA at the stadium that they are monitoring the weather and might have a delayed start.

Urias has been ice cold. Sucks, because earlier in the season he was hitting it all over the place.

Hahahahahaha. The game ends on a "Kulpa Strike". At least he's consistent.

I don't believe in jinx (much...) so you're fine there as far as I'm concerned. I do hope we end up using them in a close, winning game "soon" (at some point this week) to keep them sharp. Long rests for those guys can mess with them and get them off track. The ideal would be, like, pitching Felix tomorrow in the 9th in a 4-1 O's game.

As long as Kremer says he's pitching pain-free and feels good about his mechanics, I'd put him out there for the 7th. Not sure if Hyde will agree.

Mercifully, Hyde looked at the scoreboard and realized, Kremer could cough up a salami and we'd still be in control of the game.

According to Spotrac (I'm not familiar with the website; don't know how authoritative it is), the O's are ranked 26th out of 30 teams in terms of # of days rostered players have spent on the IL. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/injured-list/current-team/ We have spent $2.3M on IL players this year, while the Yanks have spent $17M. We've got 4 players currently on the IL, while NYY have 12. Sure, the Yanks can "afford it" more, but $2.3M is chump change for any MLB club. I'm not saying this to prove you wrong or anything; I'm just trying to understand (out of previous ignorance until now) whether injury has been a drag on the O's relative to other teams so far this year... My conclusion is "probably not."

Holy crap, nice! Last time I was at a minor league game, I watched Bowie pitch a combined no-hitter earlier this year.

Hey, if Kulpa wants to call a pitch a foot inside a strike with the O's up 8-2, I'm completely fine with that. Just call it for the O's pitching too or expect to get a lot of haranguing from the fans and the dugout.

Don't worry, I'm painfully familiar with this in all aspects of baseball. My error rate is lower when talking about computing and software.

No sympathy for Bassitt Let's score a few more runs before they pull him LOL

Clean 8th by Akin certainly helps their chances on that.

Akin in rare form. Lots of strikes, and the bats are missing 'em!

Buck would leave an obviously ineffective pitcher in way too long. A guy who's missing out of the zone with every pitch, a guy who's walking them, and getting hit hard every time he throws a strike, with the O's up by 5 runs, would be left in until the opposition tied the game or the pitcher threw to their pitch count, which was usually around 100+ pitches. Hyde is the complete and polar opposite. He pulls effective pitchers who aren't even at a high pitch count, just because they gave up a clean ground ball single. He does it whether we're up by 1 run or 7 runs. Guaranteed, no one will pitch a CG SO, no-hitter or perfect game under Hyde. He won't give them a chance. Call me crazy, but I feel like the "right" way to manage pitchers is somewhere in the middle of the Buck and Hyde extremes. Hyde's way babies the starters, even good ones who are perfectly able to continue, at the expense of destroying our pen's long-term viability. Buck's way vastly hurt our win chance by keeping a gassed or command-challenged pitcher in for 20+ pitches too long, usually until the bases were loaded or worse.