The O’s have a third chance to secure a playoff berth tonight if they can win and either the Royals or Twins lose.
Good morning, Camden Chatters.
If at first — or second — you don’t succeed, try, try again.
After squandering two chances over the weekend to clinch a playoff spot with a win, the Orioles will make another attempt to join the postseason dance tonight at Yankee Stadium. There are a handful of teams still alive in the wild card race and various tiebreakers at play, but the math is simple enough for the Orioles, whose magic number is two. If the O’s win tonight and either the Twins or the Royals lose, the Orioles are in.
That could be easier said than done, considering each team’s competition. While the O’s face the AL-best Yanks, the Twins will host the NL-worst Marlins, who are one loss away from their 100th of the season. The Royals, meanwhile, take on the Orioles’ southern neighbors, the 69-87 Nationals, in D.C. Those are games that the Twins and Royals should win on paper, though those two clubs haven’t done much winning at all lately.
Neither, unfortunately, have the Orioles, who are coming off a 2-4 homestand and have lost five consecutive series. You have to go all the way back to the first week of July to find the Orioles’ last series win against a team that’s currently over .500. Yikes. This O’s slump has lasted a long, long time, as we’re all painfully aware.
On the bright side, the Orioles are getting healthier, with the returns of Jordan Westburg, Ramón Urías, and Danny Coulombe during this past homestand, plus Ryan Mountcastle potentially on his way back. There’s hope that the O’s can look like a more complete team in the postseason, but they still have to get there. Clawing out a win tonight would pretty much seal it — and as a bonus, it would delay the Yankees’ clinch of the AL East, for one day at least.
So let’s stow the nonsense, Orioles, and get this done. The sooner the better.
Links
Who should Orioles want to play in postseason? / MAILBAG – BaltimoreBaseball.com
This reminds me of when I declared last October that the O’s should hope to play the Rangers in the Division Series. Really nailed that one, didn’t I? Another great piece of analysis by ol’ Paul.
Here’s how to buy Orioles playoff tickets – The Baltimore Sun
Postseason tickets are on sale for the Orioles. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, don’t worry, they’re refundable.
Mansolino on Holliday: “I see a guy that’s going to be a Gold Glove contender in the years to come” – School of Roch
I realize he’s just 20, but I really did not expect Jackson Holliday to look as overmatched as he has for several months now. Still, Tony Mansolino sees a bright future for the kid, and we can only hope he’s correct.
Orioles birthdays and history
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Five ex-Orioles have Sept. 24 birthdays, including Rafael Palmeiro, who turns 60. Palmeiro was one of the best players in O’s history and a surefire Hall of Famer until a positive PED test in 2005 sullied his career. Happy birthday anyway, Raffy. Other former O’s born on this day include first basemen Travis Ishikawa (41) and Kevin Millar (53), infielder Jesse Garcia (51), and the late outfielder Curt Motton (b. 1940, d. 2010).
Today would be an excellent day for the Orioles to clinch a playoff spot. They’ve previously done it twice on this date. In 1971, they clinched the AL East with a 9-2 win in Cleveland in the first game of a doubleheader, and then won the second game, too. Mike Cuellar and Pat Dobson each pitched complete games to pick up their 20th win apiece, part of a historic four-man crew of 20-game winners that year (joining Dave McNally, who’d won his 20th three days earlier, and Jim Palmer, who got win #20 later in the series).
In 1997, the O’s completed their epic, wire-to-wire domination of the AL East by clinching the division with a 9-3 rout of the Blue Jays in Toronto. The aforementioned Rafael Palmeiro hit a pinch-hit home run on his 33rd birthday, and Scott Kamieniecki worked seven strong innings, to officially give the Orioles their first division crown in 14 years. It would be another 17 years before they did it again.
And in a non-clinching-related achievement, on this date in 2000, Mike Mussina pitched one of the best games of his Orioles career…in what ended up being the next-to-last start of his Orioles career. In seven sensational innings at Fenway Park, Mussina racked up 15 strikeouts — tying a career high that he had set a month earlier — and blanked the Red Sox on five hits to earn his 10th win. Mussina would start just once more, six days later, before leaving the O’s for the Yankees in free agency that winter.