It was an incredibly frustrating night in Birdland, as the O’s bats were quieted to the tune of 0 runs on just 2 hits, and the Rays evened the series at 1-1. However, things set up nicely for the good guys to take the series tonight, as Dylan Bundy takes the mound against Alex Cobb. As we outlined in our series preview, Cobb hasn’t been all that great to start 2017. Throw in that Kevin Cash burned just about his entire bullpen last night (he used five relief pitchers and no starters), and I’m feeling good about taking two of three.
We just need those bats to wake up!
Let’s see what’s up in the links.
How Sustainable is Baltimore’s Start?
Baltimore Sports and Life’s Brandon Warne digs into the numbers to try to figure out if the O’s can keep this hot start going, based on what we’ve seen so far. Their walk rate is near the bottom of the pack, as usual/expected, but the pitching has been better than advertised. Once the bats come around for real, they should be able to stay in the thick of things all season again. Here’s to that!
Is Brad Brach’s Elevated Fastball Taking Him to New Heights?
Camden Depot’s Matt Kremnitzer has all the GIFs and graphs you could ask for to help explain how Brad Brach‘s high fastball is helping him become the (even more) dominant reliever we see here in 2017.
Red Sox-Orioles Has Makings of Next Big Rivalry
FanRag’s Jonathan Bernhardt wonders if O’s-Sox could be the next big rivalry. Meh. Count me out, for a couple reasons. One, I don’t like “rivalries” in general. I understand how they increase ratings and “interest” from casual fans, etc., but as a die-hard, to me they just add more stress to the already incredibly stressful hobby of sports fandom. That’s part of the reason I despise MLB’s unbalanced schedule (and the NFL schedule, to a lesser extent). Secondly, I don’t want to hear sports yakkers talk about some sort of “silver lining” stemming from all the stupidity we saw in O’s-Boston this past weekend. It was all dumb, and let’s not encourage any of it.
Anyway, that’s just me. Maybe you want this to be more of a rivalry.
Britton Could be Back Sunday, Rickard on Friday
Camden Chat’s Mark Brown has your injury round-up. As for Rickard, the best option would seem to be to activate him and option him to AAA Norfolk, unless Buck wants to get rid of Craig Gentry, which I can’t really see happening. While he shouldn’t be leading off (BUCK!), he’s made some nice defensive plays (and a blunder or two), and is a nice option off the bench late. Optioning Rickard would allow the team to keep both in the organization for now.
How Do you Keep a Five-Man Bench? Fire Up the Norfolk Shuttle & Let it Ride
RE: Rickard/Gentry, Dan Connolly of Baltimore Baseball has another solution – a five-man bench and six-man rotating bullpen. I wouldn’t have a problem with this idea in one respect, but if it happens, a guy like Gentry needs to become as invisible as Ryan Flaherty has been so far this season, at least as far as the starting lineup goes. Gentry would need to be nothing but a late-inning defensive replacement or pinch runner. This team is having a hard enough time finding ABs for all their outfielders as it is.
