Orioles magic number is down to one
With their 6-4 loss to the Texas Rangers in today's series finale, the Orioles are now one loss away from clinching a 13th straight losing season. That stretch of futility is matched only by the Pittsburgh Pirates. They recently secured themselves of an 18th straight losing year.
The result was essentially a formality after Vladimir Guerrero's three-run homer in the fifth off Kevin Millwood gave the Rangers a 6-1 lead. Luke Scott cut into the deficit with a two-run homer in the sixth, the 100th of his career. Ty Wigginton then got the Orioles a little closer in the ninth with a solo homer off Neftali Felix. However, Feliz struck out the final three batters, including fanning Felix Pie with a fastball that was clocked at 100 miles an hour to end the game.
Josh Hamilton also hit a three-run homer off Millwood, who was beaten by his old team and is now 2-14 this season.
"They're pretty good," said Millwood. "They've got a pretty good track record. You've got to make good pitches to them. The ball Hamilton hit out and the ball Guerrero hit out weren't good pitches."
What also was troubling was the Orioles didn't make Rangers starter Tommy Hunter work very hard, an assertion that manager Buck Showalter did not dispute. Hunter had gone only three innings in three of his past four starts. However, he needed to throw only 46 pitches to get through the first five innings today.
Heading into the sixth, the most pitches he threw in any inning was an 11-pitch first.
"The last thing you want to do with a day like today heat-wise and day game was to give him some short innings, which he had. ... He didn't really have a tough inning for quite a while," Showalter said.
A Baltimore native, 
Comments
What can you say? The O's turn yet another journeyman into Cy Young. The Orioles will never be any good until the organization learns to value walks. Look at this line up. Roberts and Markakis have decent plate discipline. That's it. Pie, Jones, Bell and the ridiculous Cesar Izturis are allergic to walks. I fully expect the vaunted Oriole development team to turn Manny Machado into the second coming of Alfredo Griffin.
Posted by: robertl | August 22, 2010 9:39 PM
That's why they call this the "TRAGIC" number. there's no "magic" to it!
Posted by: Len | August 23, 2010 8:43 AM
"he needed to throw only 46 pitches to get through the first five innings today."
Imagine this scenario:
What if each Oriole batter decided he was not going to swing at any pitches during the first five innings and just allow Tommy Hunter to either strike him out or walk him (let's dis-allow getting hit by a pitch for this exercise).
Q: What's the minimum number of pitches that Tommy Hunter would need to throw to get through these five innings, i.e., get 15 strike-outs?
A: Needing to throw 3 strikes for each strike-out, Tommy Hunter would need to throw a minimum of 45 pitches to get 15 strike-outs.
So, the O's required of Tommy Hunter only 1 more pitch during these first 5 innings than they would have had they not swung at a single pitch. At least the O's got one run out of this stretch.
Posted by: Al East | August 23, 2010 12:13 PM
RobertI, you are exactly right. I don't know if it's the Crow or what, but this whole team seems to spit on the idea of taking a walk. OBP might as well be APB for all they care. Pretty disappointing.
Posted by: James | August 23, 2010 2:09 PM