Hello, friends.
It only felt for a couple of days there like the Orioles were going to lose every game they ever play again. Thanks to Trevor Rogers and a breakout day from the offense, they were able to avoid a sweep by the Rangers with an 8-3 victory yesterday. Check out my recap of the game for more of the lovely totals.
After yesterday’s win, the Orioles are 3-3 through their first six games. That’s the same record that they had through six games a year ago. Only 3.7% of the season has been played.
Lots of baseball remains. Coming up next for the Orioles is a three-game set against the Pirates, but that doesn’t start until Friday. Both they and the Pirates have the day off today.
Wednesday brought a couple of roster developments that may well have an impact on the whole rest of the season. The Orioles placed Zach Eflin on the 15-day injured list. That was no surprise. There’s still no diagnosis for his injury. I don’t think the MRI will bring good news. The other thing was that, in order to get Albert Suárez onto the roster, they transferred Jordan Westburg to the 60-day injured list. That means that the earliest that Westburg can play is the end of May.
I’ve been thinking that if we don’t see Westburg by May 1, that means we’re not going to see him at all this year. If I’m right in my guess, then this means we won’t see him. At some point, the Orioles will announce he needs the surgery and he’ll get it and he’ll be done for the year. I could be wrong. I often am when it comes to predicting the Orioles. My reasoning is that, if Westburg’s recovery was on pace that the platelet-rich plasma was working, then we’d be hearing by now about when he’ll start a rehab assignment. Instead, he’s heading the other direction.
Another open question is who will replace Eflin in the rotation. My assumption here – again, this could be wrong – is that it’s going to be Dean Kremer. The challenge with that is that the Orioles can’t recall Kremer until April 9 unless someone goes on the injured list at the same time. I think they’ll need someone to start on Monday or Tuesday, and there’s no guarantee that there will be an injured pitcher by then. That’s a problem for Monday or Tuesday, though. Yesterday, Elias solved his “we need long relief to save the rest of the bullpen” problem and it paid off with Suárez pitching three innings.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
We can say with certainty, no MLB game has ever ended like this before (Orioles.com)
The Orioles made a little fun history yesterday by having their win end from an ABS challenge turning a pitch into a third strike for the third out.
An early, nerdy look at the challenge system (FanGraphs)
And speaking of ABS challenges, the folks at FG are on top of figuring out how players seem to be using the challenges early on. It’ll be interesting to see how usage evolves over time, since after all it’s only been less than a week now.
It’s barely April, and it already feels like the Orioles are in the grind (The Baltimore Banner)
The Orioles, thankfully, dispelled a little bit of this with yesterday’s victory. It is, however, going to take sustained effort to avoid recurrences of some of their early problems.
Albernaz on Suárez joining Orioles (School of Roch)
The manager has a connection to Suárez from back when they were both minor leaguers in the Rays organization.
For Anthony Nunez, the best part of his MLB debut was sharing it with his mom (Steve on Baseball)
I am an absolute sucker for all “player’s family members there for the MLB debut” stories. This one on Nunez does not disappoint.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 1976, the Orioles and Athletics made a six-player trade that brought future Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson to Baltimore for one season.
There are a few former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 1996-97 outfielder Pete Incaviglia, 1957 pitcher Art Ceccarelli, 1960-61 pitcher Gordon Jones, and 1959 infielder Bobby Ávila.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: Frankish king Charlemagne (747), fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805), playwright Émile Zola (1840), and baseball Hall of Famers Hughie Jennings (1869), Luke Appling (1907), and Don Sutton (1945).
On this day in history…
In 1513, the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed on the mainland of what are now the United States for the first time. The first landing took place between the mouth of the St. John’s River and modern-day St. Augustine, Florida.
In 1800, composer Ludwig van Beethoven’s First Symphony had its premiere in Vienna, conducted by the man himself.
In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, which brought the country into the conflict that today we call World War I.
A random Orioles trivia question
I received a random book of Orioles trivia questions for Christmas. I’ll ask one of the questions each time it’s my turn in this space until I run out of questions. Since I’ve been skipping stupid questions (I suspect this book was churned out by AI with minimal human oversight,) today is the penultimate question for this exercise. Here’s today’s question:
Who was the first Orioles pitcher to lead the American League in strikeouts for a season?
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on April 2. Have a safe Thursday.
