Hello, friends.
First and foremost, a happy Mother’s Day to all the moms of Birdland. May your favorite baseball team deliver you a win.
The Orioles have certainly not been delivering wins for the moms or anyone else over the parts of the weekend leading up to Mother’s Day so far. The latest poor effort saw them drop a 6-2 game to the Athletics yesterday, with Shane Baz turning in another clunker and the Orioles offense waiting until the eighth inning to actually get some runs on the board. Check out Andrea SK’s recap for more of the not-so-lovely totals.
I was at Camden Yards for yesterday’s game, my first time back since Opening Day. The Orioles loaded the bases with no one out in the fifth inning and the middle of the order – Rutschman, Alonso, and Basallo – due up and then they did not score any runs. A sizable chorus of boos rained down on the team at this point from frustrated fans.
My general observation over time is that the fans of Camden Yards are pretty generous in regards to their hometown team, almost more than they really deserve. One recurring oddity to me is how often a starting pitcher receives a standing ovation from a portion of the crowd when the outing was like, five innings with three earned runs allowed. That’s not even good!
So, with that in mind, the booing was kind of a shock. It’s hard to say it was undeserved in any way. The team’s play this season isn’t up to snuff. I think they’d be the first ones to agree with this. And as we all know, what’s happening so far this season is not happening in a vacuum. This year’s struggle connects to what happened with last year’s disappointment, and both of these things are connected to slipping to a .500 record in the second half of the 2024 season and then getting swept right out of the postseason for the second consecutive year.
That’s a long time to be a disappointment in the era that was supposed to be, as Mike Elias once infamously said, “liftoff from here.” The Orioles really did lift off for a while there! The 101-61 record in the 2023 season was great. Their first half of the 2024 season was also great. To carry on the metaphor, they were supposed to stay in orbit after lifting off and instead it seems like they’re burning up during atmospheric re-entry. If you are inside the stadium and want to vent some displeasure with that situation, booing is really the only outlet. Either that or you say to the person or people you are with, “Geez, this really sucks.”
In my case, I have this blog, so I can say it to you instead: Geez, this really sucks.
It will take a win today to avoid being swept at the hands of the Athletics. The Orioles are already in last place entering today. Don’t fall farther behind! Chris Bassitt and Luis Severino are the scheduled starting pitchers for the 1:35 game. Bassitt, really? Oof. Take a small bit of heart: At least Severino doesn’t pitch left-handed.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
All eyes are on the Orioles bats. They keep disappearing. (The Baltimore Sun)
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But, once again, it is!
What’s really wrong with the Orioles (Baltimore Baseball)
“They’re not bunting enough” would probably not make my top 50 on the list of concerns about the 2026 Orioles season.
Orioles trying Jackson Holliday at third base during Sunday rehab start (The Baltimore Banner)
I don’t think that you need to gaze too long into the tea leaves to start to think that this means the Orioles are considering that the Coby Mayo experiment is running out of time, at least for now.
Heston Kjerstad started rehab assignment on Saturday (School of Roch)
As Roch observes, the likely outcome is that Kjerstad’s rehab plays out and then he’s optioned to Norfolk afterwards. But if you’re tired of seeing Tyler O’Neill, I don’t blame you for wondering if Kjerstad’s coming right up.
Polar Bear and his cub, Teddy, set to celebrate Mom (Orioles.com)
Needed to get at least one feel-good Orioles Mother’s Day story in here.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
In the 40th game a year ago, the Orioles lost a 6-3 game to the Twins. This was the first game of a doubleheader; they also lost the second game, dropping their record to 15-26 on the season. I took to Camden Chat the next day and proclaimed hopes for the season to be over. This year’s O’s are currently 17-23. Win today and they’re three wins better than they were a year ago. Lose today and it stays at a scant two, which I think is creeping pretty darn close to the point where the hole is too deep to reasonably hope to escape.
There is one lone former Oriole who was born on this day: Happy 42nd to Kam Mickolio, the 2008-2010 reliever who arrived in the trade that sent Erik Bedard to Seattle and departed in the trade that brought Mark Reynolds to Baltimore.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: actor Fred Astaire (1899), basketball coaching legend Jim Calhoun (1942), Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (1957), author John Scalzi (1969), actor Kenan Thompson (1978), and gold medal swimmer Missy Franklin (1995).
On this day in history…
In 1773, Great Britain’s Parliament passed the Tea Act, which set in motion the series of events leading to the Boston Tea Party later that year.
In 1801, Barbary corsairs based in Tripoli declared war on the United States, leading to a four-year, largely naval war in which great Marylander Stephen Decatur distinguished himself for the US Navy.
In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was appointed as the director of the FBI, the first to hold that post. He remained in charge for the next 48 years, until his death.
In 1969, American and South Vietnamese forces began an assault on a North Vietnamese-held hill simply dubbed Hill 397 on the map. This has since become dubbed Hamburger Hill as it took a week to capture at a cost of 56 Americans killed and 367 wounded – and the position was abandoned only two weeks after being taken.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the president of South Africa.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on May 10. Have a safe Mother’s Day. Go O’s!
