September pennant/playoff race baseball takes years off your life. It doesn’t help when your NFL team also makes every game way too friggin’ close and seals their win just moments before Zach Britton takes the mound to try to hold onto a one-run lead either. And it’s only gonna get MORE stressful. New York was just swept by Boston, so aside from the obvious bad news there, the silver lining is that the Yankees are pretty much toast, which is one less team chasing the O’s in the wild card race.
If you’re able, get out to the Yard this week and shout down those bandwagon Sox fans from Northern Virginia. Tickets at this link.
Finishing with Non-Losing Record Still an Underrated Sight in Baltimore
Our own Andrew Stetka, in his weekly MASN guest column, appreciates being .500 or better once again. Definitely very cool. Now that we’ve taken a moment to do that…
Sunday Notes – Machado, Hardy, Buck, & Duquette Trolls Sloppy
This FanGraphs column has all sorts of O’s nuggets in it if you scroll through, including notes on J.J. Hardy’s power, Manny Machado doing something only two players have done, and more. The money quote though, is at the the bottom of the page where Dan Duquette talks about his favorite memory of Big Sloppy David Ortiz.
If the Orioles Have a Bad Series, That Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t Trying
A good reminder from Alex Conway of Camden Chat. Of COURSE they’re trying. It may not look like it at times, but they are.
Pearce Headed for Surgery; Mancini Up; Rickard Not Improving
The Orioles have struggled to hit left-handed pitching all year. One player who bucked that trend was Joey Rickard. Then Joey got hurt. So the team brought in Steve Pearce, who can mash lefties. Then Steve got hurt. It looks like they’re both done for the year – Pearce definitely, and Rickard much more than likely. If/when these teams do reach the postseason, they’d better hope for some righty-heavy opponents.
Zach Britton Has Actually Been Unlucky
Sending you back to FanGraphs again, this time to check out August Fagerstrom’s article on how many of the hits Britton has given up are of the “unlucky” variety, which he used a new tool to determine. The general indicators of luck (BABIP, FIP vs. ERA, LOB%) all say that Britton has been a bit lucky, but if you look a bit deeper you could reach the opposite conclusion.
And in Ravens News…
The Good, Bad, Ugly, & The Megan Fox: Ravens 25 Browns 20
Tony Lombardi’s weekly recap of the aforementioned nail-biter in Cleveland. Hey, 2-0 is 2-0, right?
