Currently, part of being an Orioles fan is accepting the reality that during this rebuild, watching the team lose games is part of the deal. It seems that many people do understand this, but plenty of people do not. One way to process something difficult is to maintain a good sense of humor about it. In that spirit, this is a new weekly feature on ESR where we talk about the five worst moments of the previous week as fans of this team. Please do not mistake this as negativity or piling on. I would also like proper recognition for the heroic undertaking of narrowing it down to only five things each week.
Lesser men would crumble under such a heavy burden, but I take my duty to Birdland very seriously.
Since this is the first installment of The Five Worst Things, here is how it will work: I present five god awful Orioles moments from the previous week in blog form, then I will tweet out a poll to vote on which moment was truly the worst. If you’re not following already, make sure to do that so you can vote in the poll and also make suggestions for worst moments in future weeks. Eventually – hopefully – this can transition to The Five Best Things, but that is entirely up to the team to force that change.
Without further ado, here are The Five Worst Moments Last Week.
Billy Hamilton Homers Off John Means
Billy Hamilton is a very fast man. That’s basically his scouting report. He steals a lot of bases and covers acres of ground in centerfield because he runs at a high rate of speed. What he does not do, generally speaking, is hit the baseball well. He has 24 home runs in his entire nine-year career as a major leaguer. His career barrel % on 1,820 batted balls is 0.5% and his average exit velocity is 81.8 mph.
On Saturday, he hit a John Means fastball 364 feet for a home run to break a 0-0 tie. This was probably the last thing anyone saw coming with Means on the mound and Hamilton at the plate.
Was it the worst moment of the week? You tell me.
Orioles Lose Literally Every Game
Did you know the O’s didn’t win last week? Pretty crazy stuff. From Monday 5/24 through Monday 5/31, the Orioles played eight games and did not emerge victorious in any of them. To make matters worse, half of those games were played against the Twins, who started the week with the same record as the Orioles.
I have very low expectations for this team in terms of their win-loss record, but failing to win a single game in a calendar week (and more) is just not going to be something with which I will ever be comfortable. Over the eight games they lost last week, two were one-run games, two were two-run games, two were three-run games, and one of each of the four and five-run loss variety. That is to say, there were definitely opportunities for victories. That is either encouraging or depressing, depending on who you ask.
I am guessing that this will be the runaway favorite for the Worst Thing Last Week.
These Hats
New Era released what they were calling the “Local Market” collection. The hats looked like a cross between a poorly-decorated Christmas Tree and a refrigerator full of magnets that had been arranged by a toddler. Clipart images of what someone decidedly not from Baltimore imagined would inspire people actually from Baltimore to shell out $40 adorned the cap randomly around the entire crown. I can confidently say that not one single person saw the hat and reacted positively to it. The feedback was so bad (by fans of every team, not just ours) that the entire line of hats were pulled from the store within a few hours of getting mercilessly roasted on Twitter.
I wish they had kept them up so that we could see one in the wild at some point, but it seems we will sadly never get this opportunity.
Mancini & Mountcastle Dinged Up
Trey Mancini took a nasty pitch off his right elbow on Thursday night, and the very last thing anyone wants to see is Trey getting hurt.
As we all well know, he spent the entirety of last year not playing baseball, but fighting cancer. He fought his ass off to get back to playing, and not only is that inconceivably impressive in and of itself, but he is playing at the same All-Star level he was at before the missed season. He doesn’t deserve this sort of thing from the universe. LEAVE TREY ALONE!!!
Additionally, Ryan Mountcastle took a 93 mph Jose Berrios pitch off the left hand on Tuesday’s game against the Twins.
You always hope when a guy gets HBP it isn’t the hand. So many tiny bones in there, way too much of a chance that something ends up broken and forces the guy to miss time. In this case, it seems like a bullet was dodged. Mountcastle did miss some time, but was back in the lineup – albeit as DH – over the weekend.
How about we just chill out with the bean balls this week? Sound good? Cool cool cool.
Black Jerseys on Not Friday
What exactly is going on with the uniform choices this year? Black jerseys are for Friday nights. That is not debatable. Who is trotting out our guys for Sunday afternoon games in the black jerseys and when will they be fired? Aside from the fact that we just do not do this, what sense does it make to wear black in the middle of the afternoon with the sun high in the sky broiling these guys to kingdom come? I know there is an affinity for black uniforms, especially here in Baltimore (for the O’s and the Ravens), but I never understand when either team wears them for a day game. Am I wrong here? I don’t have a feel for how everyone else feels about this outside of some close friends, but I am going to assume most O’s fans are on the same page with me here. Let me know how you feel about it in the poll!
So there you have it, the first ever Worst Things Last Week is in the books. Head over to the poll in the tweet above and let me know what you think was the actual worst thing.
