The number of AL East teams in the playoffs has gone from three to one in only two days.
Hello, friends.
That was a bonkers afternoon of baseball, wasn’t it? If the 15-inning Rays-Guardians game that Cleveland ultimately won 1-0 on a walkoff homer wasn’t to your liking, perhaps you were more into the Mariners coming back from an 8-1 deficit to beat the Blue Jays, 10-9. These two games were almost complete opposites of one another and both were intense. Now only the Yankees remain for AL East teams. May they be promptly swept out of the next round.
Games like that make me remember that I’m not going to be prepared to handle it when the Orioles make it back into the postseason. Next year, one hopes. The intensity of such high-stakes games applying to my favorite baseball team, where I am riding with every pitch. I remember it from 2012 and 2014 and 2016, of course, but it’s been several years and Orioles fans certainly have not had the perennial contender status to get used to it. I guess it used to be like that 50+ years ago. Not so much lately.
When the dust settled on Saturday’s games, only one of the four wild card matchups was set up for a decisive rubber match today. The Phillies completed a two-game win by holding on to a 2-0 victory against the Cardinals on Saturday night. Former Orioles manager Buck Showalter’s Mets have forced a third game of that series by picking up a 7-3 victory over the Padres last night. Even that was tense: The last out was recorded with the bases loaded and the tying run at the plate.
The Mariners and Guardians also advanced with their victories, awaiting their respective next opponents on Tuesday. The last two days have featured all-day baseball. That’s not going to be happening today. The final Padres-Mets game doesn’t get started until 7, and that’s all there is.
Around the blogO’sphere
Five things we learned from the 2022 Orioles season (The Baltimore Sun)
I try to avoid supporting the Five Things industrial complex, but you know, on offseason Sundays, there are only so many things out there to find.
A look at one aspect where improvement might be tough for the ‘23 O’s (Steve Melewski)
Melewski suggests that it’s going to be hard to have better team chemistry next year than the Orioles had this year. I think if they come out of the gate hot and get on a winning pace early on, it might not be that hard to sort it out.
Orioles’ Hyde deserves to be Manager of the Year (Baltimore Baseball)
Not the first Orioles beat writer nor probably the last to hold this opinion. It seems like the O’s 31 win improvement almost demands this, but we’ll see if the voters agree and give the award to a manager whose team did not make it to the postseason.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 1966, the Orioles completed a four-game sweep of the Dodgers for their first World Series championship. Dave McNally allowed only four hits in the shutout, with a Frank Robinson home run off of Don Drysdale making the difference in a 1-0 game.
In 2014, in between the ALDS and ALCS rounds of the postseason, the Orioles announced a contract extension of three more years with shortstop J.J. Hardy. It felt good at the time.
There are a few former Orioles who were born today. They are: 2015-16 reliever Chaz Roe, 2013 four-gamer Jason Pridie, and 2001-13 second baseman Brian Roberts. Today is Roberts’s 45th birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835), baseball Hall of Famers Rube Marquard (1886) and Joe Sewell (1898), Beatles musician John Lennon (1940), movie man Guillermo del Toro (1964), Maryland men’s basketball champion Juan Dixon (1978), and model Bella Hadid (1996).
On this day in history…
In 1604, astronomers caught sight of a supernova within the Milky Way galaxy that was visible to the naked eye – the most recent time this has occurred. The supernova was named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, who, though he didn’t see it first, was the one who doggedly tracked it for nearly a year.
In 1919, the Reds beat the White Sox in the World Series, after which a number of members of the White Sox were accused of losing on purpose, thus earning the nickname of the Black Sox scandal.
In 1986, the musical The Phantom of the Opera first opened in London. It’s the second-longest running West End musical, behind only Les Miserables, both of which are still currently running. On Broadway in the US, Phantom is the longest-running show ever, though its record-setting run has been announced to be ending in February, after what will then be nearly 14,000 performances.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on October 9. Have a safe Sunday.