Hang on just a little bit longer....

[SteveA]

7 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

This week is their chance. Can’t control the TB/TOR series but can control how they do. 

If you can't win two vs the worst team in baseball with Kremer and Wells going, that's when its time to pack it in.

[dtk9119]

Problem is so far TB/TOR are going back and forth which won't help us.

Not worried much about the pitching it's all about the bats.

[eddie83]

5 hours ago, SteveA said:

If you can't win two vs the worst team in baseball with Kremer and Wells going, that's when its time to pack it in.

Well. Halfway. Get tomorrow and see what happens in Canada. 

[O's84]

I'll admit it, I didn't even realize the Jays had passed the Rays.

[eddie83]

2 minutes ago, O's84 said:

I'll admit it, I didn't even realize the Jays had passed the Rays.

Rasmussen-Stripling tomorrow. 
TBD vs Gausman Thursday. So we miss those two.  
 

It’s been back and forth. 

[tntoriole]

The White Sox, Twins, Red Sox are all closer to us than we are to the Rays.. the race pretty much is over,  i think  .. 21 games to go  and 5 games back.. yes, we can wait a bit till math kicks in but I stopped being really thinking maybe, just maybe after we were swept in the doubleheader. 

[Dunk35]

On 9/12/2022 at 3:51 PM, Gurgi said:

Its over.   Elias probably did the right thing by dumping Mancini and Lopez but it hurt.  But what really hurt is he did nothing to improve the team after the trades.   Not bringing up propects just for clock reasons.  We way over played ourselves and looked for a moment like we could get a wild card spot.  But Elias never had that in the plans.  If we were going to get in it would be in spite of the front office.  

It was a fun ride but its over.   Funny thing is next year we could be worse than this year.  Much like the 90 Orioles were a big empty compared to 89.  All it would take is for several of our shock over performing starters to have a crap year.  Throw in some bullpen problems and its quite possible next year the Orioles will be worse.   You never know.  

I woukd be quite shocked if we end up worse next year than this one. We very well may finish with no hitter over .800 OPS this year. That's almost unheard of for any kind of winning team. The hitting has to improve next year and I think overall, it will. 
 

The pitching has been pretty good for the last several months. Next year we wont lose anybody, maybe Lyles? And we can add G-Rod, Means, DL just from internal moves. Elias does pretty good with finding BP arms and he needs to add a couple of guys there for me to feel comfortable. 
 

We are going to add payroll and possibly a significant trade using our cushy farm system. I like where things are headed right now. 

[Spy Fox]

1 hour ago, Dunk35 said:

I woukd be quite shocked if we end up worse next year than this one. We very well may finish with no hitter over .800 OPS this year. That's almost unheard of for any kind of winning team. The hitting has to improve next year and I think overall, it will. 

I got curious how true that was about the .800 OPS hitters and winning teams given the much lower hitting environment of this year. 

Here's how many .800+ OPS players each current playoff team has, as of Tuesday, among their leading season starters at each position:

• LAD — 4 (Smith, Freeman, Turner, Betts)
• HOU — 4 (Altuve, Bregman, Tucker, Alvarez)
• ATL — 3 (Olson, Riley, Harris)
• NYM — 3 (Alonso, McNeil, Marte)
• PHI — 3 (Realmuto, Hoskins, Harper)
• STL — 3 (Goldschmidt, Arenado, Pujols )
• TOR — 3 (Kirk, Guerrero, Bichette)
• NYY — 2 (Rizzo, Judge)
• CLE — 2 (Gimenez, Ramirez)
• SEA — 2 (Suarez, Rodriguez)
• SD — 1 (Machado)
• TB — 1 (Diaz)

And we only currently have 1, Rutschman. Santander is close but so are 1 or 2 guys on all the teams above.

So yeah, the offense does need more high performers to contend with the big guys. Especially since the pitching, which has outperformed this year, could easily plateau or decline next year even if we add more talent. 

[Ridgway22]

7 hours ago, dtk9119 said:

Problem is so far TB/TOR are going back and forth which won't help us.

*Not worried much about the pitching* it's all about the bats.

How long has it been since anyone could say that?

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, Dunk35 said:

I woukd be quite shocked if we end up worse next year than this one. We very well may finish with no hitter over .800 OPS this year. That's almost unheard of for any kind of winning team. The hitting has to improve next year and I think overall, it will. 
 

The pitching has been pretty good for the last several months. Next year we wont lose anybody, maybe Lyles? And we can add G-Rod, Means, DL just from internal moves. Elias does pretty good with finding BP arms and he needs to add a couple of guys there for me to feel comfortable. 
 

We are going to add payroll and possibly a significant trade using our cushy farm system. I like where things are headed right now. 

There’s plenty of reasons the record could be worse next year.  For one thing, the O’s are three games over their Pythagorean record.  Second, the bullpen is full of guys having career years.  Reverting back below the league leading save percentage will drop some wins.  Third, the team has had almost zero position player injuries.  And, we certainly have starters who could regress.  

[JR Oriole]

8 hours ago, O's84 said:

I'll admit it, I didn't even realize the Jays had passed the Rays.

On July 10, Tampa was 45-40 and both Toronto and Seattle were 45-42. Since that day, the Jays have gone 35-20, the Rays have gone 34-22, and the Mariners have gone 34-20. No wonder we could never pick up any ground. Those three teams essentially played equivalently good baseball, with none of them giving us a window to get into the picture. All we needed was just one of those teams to fall away.  Instead, none of them did.  

This week's Tampa - Toronto series has so far followed the script of stiff arming the Os.  The two teams trading wins, with the only team we had a realistic chance of catching (due to remaining head to head matchups and owning the tiebreaker) coming out on top 2 of 3 so far.  I imagine when this 9 game stretch between Tampa and Toronto is over, the Jays will have won 5 of the 9 games....which is probably the least desirable outcome for us out of any possible iteration. 

While we absolutely sank ourselves as a result of our play last week, it is somewhat laughable how we had literally no help from the three teams we were chasing. 

[DrungoHazewood]

8 hours ago, tntoriole said:

The White Sox, Twins, Red Sox are all closer to us than we are to the Rays.. the race pretty much is over,  i think  .. 21 games to go  and 5 games back.. yes, we can wait a bit till math kicks in but I stopped being really thinking maybe, just maybe after we were swept in the doubleheader. 

Hey, the '64 Phils were 6.5 games up in the standings on September 17th and by September 30th were 2.5 games back. We just need John Schneider to channel his inner Gene Mauch have Manoah go eight innings every two or three days the rest of the way.

[sportsfan8703]

We’re alright. Win today. Take 2/3 from Toronto. Then hopefully sweep the Tigers. Not crazy. Very do-able. 

[tntoriole]

59 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Hey, the '64 Phils were 6.5 games up in the standings on September 17th and by September 30th were 2.5 games back. We just need John Schneider to channel his inner Gene Mauch have Manoah go eight innings every two or three days the rest of the way.

If we sweep Toronto in Toronto I will feel stirrings again.  But we shall see 

[Frobby]

I’m just focused on the team winning as many games as it can.  The playoffs are a long shot, but it all starts with playing consistently good baseball.