Well, Opening Day sure was fun as the Orioles beat the Rays 7-4 at Tropicana Field. Last night was another story.
A day after the Orioles used a complete team effort to defeat the Rays, the team squandered a four-run lead in the sixth inning on their way to an 8-7 walk-off loss. Now, it was only game two of a long, long season, and one loss isn’t a big deal. However, this loss was hard to swallow.
Entering the bottom of the sixth, the O’s were leading 4-0 and Wei Yin Chen had thrown 65 pitches, allowing four hits all while shutting out the Rays. That’s when the wheels came off.
Chen exited the game with two outs and a runner on, giving way to Luis Ayala, who proceeded to give up a single to Evan Longoria and long game-tying home run to Shelley Duncan before finally getting the third out.
To the Orioles’ credit, they battled all night and scored a run in the top of the seventh on a single by Nate McLouth to take the lead back after Nolan Reimold walked and Brian Roberts singled. But the bottom of the seventh is where the head-scratching really began.
Pedro Strop, dominant in the World Baseball Classic last month, made his season debut and got a quick fly-out to centerfield. Then the left handed Matt Joyce came to the plate.
Now, I have never been a fan of the infield shift on lefties. It seems to me to be the dumbest move in all of baseball. Let’s shift our infield and outfield completely to the right side of the field and leave a huge gaping whole down the third base/leftfield line. Whoever first thought of this should be banned from baseball.
Any professional hitter, except for maybe Kevin Millar, should be able to hit the ball wherever they need to, and that includes the opposite field. So what did Matt Joyce do? He bunts to the third base side of the mound and there was no play, as the only player there was Pedro Strop, who made an ill-advised throw that luckily didn’t sail into the stands.
So when Kelly Johnson, another lefty, stepped to the plate, the infield was back to normal, right?
Wrong.
Buck kept the shift on, and Johnson singled to center on what would have normally been a routine ground ball to the shortstop had it not been for the shift. Two outs that would have ended the inning turned into two base hits, and the Rays would go on to score three runs in an inning that should have gone scoreless.
Folks, I don’t like to question Buck. To me it is akin to questioning Ozzie in the Ravens front office. But last night, Buck made some questionable calls that cost the O’s the game.
He removed Chen after 84 pitches in favor of Ayala, who had just spent the Caribbean Series giving up home runs; he kept an ill-advised shift on in the seventh that led to three runs; and he kept Tommy Hunter, a pitcher that allowed 32 home runs last season (fourth most in the majors in just 133.2 innings), in the game to give up a walk-off homer to Matt Joyce after the Orioles had fought to tie the game in the top of the ninth against possibly baseball’s best closer.
To be fair, I can’t really argue with the Ayala move, or even the Hunter move. You have to trust your bullpen, especially when they were as good as they were last year. But to me, last night’s loss was extremely hard to swallow, and a brilliant day at the plate by Chris Davis (4-4, HR, 4 RBI) was wasted, as was the resiliency of an offense that just two seasons ago would have given up after that four-run sixth.
This isn’t the time to panic as it is very early in the season and this team can and will bounce back. It just shows that, like the players, sometimes even the managers need to shake off a little rust in the early going.
