How can you not be anything but proud of this team?

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

6 hours ago, accinfo said:

The Orioles are 14-9 in September.  That is a .609 winning percentage.  Tired or not they are doing just fine.  

And that 14-9 stretch comes right after losing Felix Bautista. Not any easy thing to do when you lose the best closer in baseball and have to rearrange the back end of your bullpen.

[glenn__davis]

I'm still trying to understand the thread title haha.  But I get the sentiment. 

[TopGunnar]

8 hours ago, Frobby said:

This is the third time this year that the O’s got down 0-2 in a four game series and it felt like the sky was falling.  All three times they came back to split the series.  

July 3-6: after losing 4 of their previous 5, the O’s visited the Yankees in a 4-game set and lost the first two, 6-3 and 8-4.   At that point, they’d lost a season worst 6 of 7 games and had fallen 6 games behind the Rays.  With their backs to the wall, the Orioles won the next two 6-3 and 14-1, and ended up reeling off 8 straight wins, trimming Tampa’s lead to one game in the process.  In game three, they were losing 2-0 after 5 but rallied to win behind an excellent performance by Dean Kremer, who went 7 innings and allowed only 2 runs, one earned.    The finale was a blowout that left the O’s feeling like they’d won the series even though it was a 2-2 split.  

Sept. 14-17: After a successful 9 game road trip, the O’s came home and dropped the final two games of a three game series to St. Louis, scoring only two runs combined in those two games.   The Rays came into town, trailing by two games, and promptly got into a virtual tie in the standings by beating the O’s 4-3 and 7-1.  At that point, the O’s had tied their prior high losing streak with 4 straight losses, and had scored only 6 runs in 4 games.  But the next night, Grayson Rodriguez pitched 8 brilliant innings, the bats woke up, and the O’s blanked the Rays 8-0, guaranteeing that the O’s had won the season series and this earned the tiebreaker for the AL East title.   The next day, the O’s came back from deficits of 1-0, 3-1 and 4-3, to win 5-4 in extra innings, getting down to their last strike three different times.   The Rays left Baltimore no closer in the standings than when they arrived, and with the O’s having earned the tiebreaker, in effect adding a game to their lead.

September 20-23:  After losing a heartbreaker in Houston when they blew a 1-0 8th inning lead and lost in the 9th, the O’s rolled into Cleveland for the last four games of a stretch of 17 consecutive games.  They lost game 1 5-2 on a night where the Guardians fouled off 37 Grayson Rodriguez pitches and chased him after 5 innings, then lost the second game 9-8 in heartbreaking fashion when a rally in the top of the 9th to come from behind and put the O’s in the lead 8-7 was quickly reversed, in the bottom of the 9th by a walk-off, two run double off Yennier Cano.  At that point, the O’s had lost 3 in a row for only the third time all year, had suffered two walk-off losses in three days, and the bullpen was absolutely running on fumes.   Tampa had trimmed the O’s lead down to 1.5 games. Enter John Mesns, who allowed only one hit, a solo homer, in 7.1 innings   Still, when he departed the O’s were clinging to a 2-1 lead and needed another five outs.   Manager Brandon Hyde first went to Yennier Cano, who had looked horrible in blowing the lead and losing the game the previous night, and Cano responded by getting a routine fly out and a strikeout.  Then in the 9th Hyde went to Cionel Pérez, who had taken the loss in the series opener by yielding a HBP, a walk and a single without retaining a batter, to face the top of the order.  Pérez redeemed himself by retiring the side in order and the O’s held on for the win.   Then today, Gibson allowed only 1 run in 7 innings, and Coulombe and Hall got the final six outs in a far more relaxing 5-1 win.

All three times, there was a lot of negative karma beyond just the loss of the first two games of the series.  And all three times, a starting pitcher stepped up by throwing 7+ innings in game 3.   In each case, when the series ended it felt like a series win even though it wasn’t.

if any team ever earned a day off, it’s this one.

 

Nice write-up. I’ll say it every time that starting in the 5th inning of game 3 in NY was when our season changed. We took off from that point and haven’t looked back.

[btdart20]

14 hours ago, baltfan said:

If they have a winning month, they would have had a winning month every month of the season. 

Now let's win October!