Words: Kyle Simpson
With the Ravens in hibernation for the summer, and beautiful weather on the horizon, what is a Baltimore sports fan to do with their time?
Well, thanks to last year’s fantastic showing, Baltimore now has a relevant baseball team called the Orioles that you can spend the summer days watching.
The O’s have started off okay this season with a 5-4 start, they have shown some promise, but with a few old demons still haunting them.
Now I know just above .500 is not really impressive, but we are only 9 games into the season out 162. So do not abandon ship yet. It is (and probably will keep) getting better. One of the current issues that the O’s have is pitching. Rather the lack thereof. The Orioles have yet to find that one ace pitcher that can guarantee wins. Pitchers like Jason Hammel and Chris Tillman give the O’s a chance to win, but the team still needs to rely on hot bats like Chris Davis and Adam Jones to keep putting runs on the board to offset the mediocre starting pitching. Now, the O’s do have a few young aces in the farm system with Kevin Gaussman and Dylan Bundy (who is on the disabled list with a sore elbow) in AA ball with Bowie, but they are still working their way up the chain to the starting roster. The other problem is the batters put at the designated hitting position. They can not hit. For plate appearances, the DH position is 1-30. ONE hit out of 30 appearances. Talk about a cold bat.
But aside from the doom and gloom of what the O’s are not doing, the O’s have had quite a few exciting things happen to kick off the season. The Earl Weaver ceremony on opening day was perfect (they left the ball on the mound rather than throwing a pitch to honor the late general manager), they had Carly Rae Jepsen throw the opening pitch in the third game of the series on Sunday.
Along with cool ceremonial happenings; the first nine games have featured a game-winning grand slam by Chris Davis, who now currently has 19 runs batted in (most all-time through the first nine games since RBI became a stat), a spectacular ninth-inning five-run comeback thanks to Davis and and Manny Machado, who hit a three-run home run to seal the deal on Wednesday night.
It is finally Spring and the weather has been generally nice, so be sure to head to a few O’s games at Camden Yards! Celebrate Baltimore baseball being relevant once again. You can get tickets at www.theorioles.com/tickets. See you at the Yard!
