MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
It’s the All-Star break, the much-needed All-Star break for some teams, with the Baltimore Orioles being at the top of the list of teams that can use a rest and a reset the most.
The Orioles have had three days off in the last 70 days, facing most of the best teams in baseball and, big-picture, came through this stretch in very good shape. But for much of the past month, they’ve been in a dead zone – a very dead zone – and have paid for it, just as the New York Yankees seem to be coming out of their extended dead zone, as Saturday’s win over the Orioles marked the first time in one month that the Yanks had won a series, not to mention two games in a row.
That’s baseball, of course. As the great Annie Savoy says, “It’s a long season and you’ve gotta trust it,” and it’s proof positive that every win a team can get in April and in May are every bit as important as wins in late summer through October as they all count the same in the end.
Just shy of 100 games in, the Orioles and the Yankees should expect, with the better part of a week’s rest and upcoming deals prior to the trade deadline to fortify their rosters on the horizon, to be battling each other in the AL East standings for the rest of the way.
Trouble is, both teams, through the course of their respective slumbers, have let an overachieving and red-hot Boston Red Sox team back into the AL East hunt, as the Sawx enter the break just 4.5 games behind the Orioles, who are one game ahead of the Yankees.
Sunday morning’s game between the O’s and the Yanks was a fistfight (without the beanballs and the fastballs to the hands … and don’t get me started on that with these jaspers). Played in the searing Baltimore heat, the teams went toe-to-toe after the Yankees had dominated the first two games of the series.
That the Orioles won the game in the bottom of the ninth after their closer blew his first save in a couple of months is a testament to the grit of this team. They just won’t quit, and they refuse to give up in any game, not to mention first place in the East, even though the Yankees certainly gifted Sunday’s game with a wild closer, an inexplicable error by a terrific shortstop to set up the game-winner, and a ghastly misplay in left field to secure the game-winner for Baltimore.
All of which, again, is further proof that you’re guaranteed to see something you’ve never seen before during every baseball game you watch – two of the best closers in the big leagues, Baltimore’s Craig Kimbrel and New York’s Clay Holmes, both blew saves in the ninth inning before Kimbrel, who blew his save first, was credited with the win.
The win for the Orioles was huge, because it sends them into the break with something positive as they were this close to taking the week off on a six-game losing streak. It’s huge because this team is exhausted, which shows most in its at-bats (.160 batting average with runners in scoring position since June 30) and in its rail-thin pitching staff, which lost three starters and its best reliever to elbow surgery in a month’s time.
Clearly, the Orioles have moves to make if they’re going to be serious about this, such as somehow acquiring at least one major-league ready starter and two relievers. It also feels as though slugging third baseman Coby Mayo’s arrival from Norfolk should be imminent.
At this point, it would be surprising if general manager Mike Elias did anything other than trade for pitching and promote from within for bats, though an experienced rent-a-bat for the final 66 games would prove how serious they really are about this.
Once, though, any of this comes to fruition, there will be difficult decisions to make on the 26-man big-league roster, because these guys have all grown up together, are still young and are still producing, having the Orioles in first place for the better part of the past two seasons.
Granted, the Orioles could take the easy path, hold their breath and whistle past the proverbial graveyard and see what happens. Yet with new, wealthy and fan-friendly ownership and a cutting-edge and progressive front office in place, that isn’t likely to happen.
The Orioles are in this thing to win, beginning, unlike over the past 30 years, at the top in the warehouse, and extending all the way to the final guy on the roster.
The culture, as they say, is in place. We saw that (or listened to it) on Sunday afternoon through the searing Baltimore heat as the Orioles found a way to win yet another game, which they have done more often in the past three seasons than any other team in the American League East.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @MikeBurkeMDT