masn-baseballs-orioles.jpgTORONTO – Early morning turns to late morning and the questions and confusion won’t dissipate. They hang heavy in the air. Warning signs and orange cones should surround the area.
The finality is jarring enough without the questions and confusion.
The Orioles won’t play another game in 2016, reduced to spectators and feeling satisfied that they again proved so many people wrong.
Didn’t finish in last place. Didn’t go home after the last regular season game in New York.
Didn’t advance to…

TORONTO – Early morning turns to late morning and the questions and confusion won’t dissipate. They hang heavy in the air. Warning signs and orange cones should surround the area.

The finality is jarring enough without the questions and confusion.

The Orioles won’t play another game in 2016, reduced to spectators and feeling satisfied that they again proved so many people wrong.

Didn’t finish in last place. Didn’t go home after the last regular season game in New York.

Didn’t advance to the Division Series, losing a battle of bullpens with starter Ubaldo Jimenez on the mound.

Zach Britton never got into the game and he wasn’t hurt, the latter being the assumption when he never made an appearance. Britton said he warmed in the ninth, 10th and 11th innings. He definitely was spotted from the press box in the ninth – our view is limited – and many of us tweeted that he was up again the following inning before assuming we mistook him for left-hander Brian Duensing.

As it turns out, and despite the numerous corrections on Twitter, Britton did begin to throw before again taking a seat.

I only saw him pacing in the 11th with a baseball in his hand, but he must have made a few throws.

None of them occurred on the Rogers Centre mound and manager Buck Showalter was grilled about it until he had black lines across his back.

zach-britton-white-point.jpgHe considered using Britton more than once, but liked the job his other pitchers were doing. Being on the road influenced him. It seemed that he was waiting for a save situation.

It would be more understandable in the regular season, but the confusion stemmed from how the Orioles moved away from the normal postseason “anything goes” mentality. Britton was told to be prepared to work multiple innings, as he did in the finale in New York that preceded last night’s game.

No one knew that a lead was necessary, but that seems to be the case.

We also can debate the choice of Jimenez over, say, Tommy Hunter or Dylan Bundy, who would have been more natural relief fits. Jimenez always is a roll of the dice and that’s taking into account his 2.45 ERA over his last seven starts.

A box of chocolates, that guy.

Starting Jimenez over Chris Tillman wouldn’t have brought as much second-guessing as choosing him in the 11th inning.

Edwin Encarnacion demolished a Jimenez pitch, sending it into the left field seats and sending the home crowd into a frenzy. Or whatever is a couple of notches above it. They pretty much showed up at batting practice already in a frenzy.

Should Jimenez have been ordered to walk Encarnacion intentionally to load the bases with one out for Jose Bautista? Not a bad idea when you consider that Bautista is 3-for-38 against Jimenez, but a serious risk with a pitcher who isn’t a strike-throwing machine.

Should Britton finally have come into the game to face Encarnacion? He’s a pitcher who’s known as a groundball machine.

“Of course, this is going to hurt, but you have to find a way to move on,” Jimenez said. “But it’s not going to erase what I was able to accomplish in the last seven or eight games. That’s for sure. The way it ended up, I was in a spot that is definitely not my best.”

The one-game playoff as a wild card team can be downright cruel. But as Showalter says, if you don’t like it, play better. Win the division.

“You know, it’s the risk you take any time you put yourself in …It’s a good position to be in the playoffs, but you know it’s because you haven’t won your division that there’s this potential for this, so that’s tough. But you know the description going in, what you’re going to have to do and not do,” Showalter said.

“There’s so many different things that go on. You can use Zach Britton in the seventh and eighth inning and not have anybody to pitch the last inning, so there’s a lot of risk taken every inning, every pitch. You take that on when you get in this format.”

As more time passes, it will be easier to appreciate what the Orioles accomplished. A third playoff berth in five seasons. Mark Trumbo as home run champion. Britton as Cy Young candidate. Manny Machado as Most Valuable Player candidate. And Showalter as Manager of the Year candidate. What happened last night doesn’t erase what he did with a team picked for the division basement.

There’s also the reality that Matt Wieters may have played his last game as an Oriole, that Trumbo may leave as a free agent, but that’s for another time. It’s still necessary to at least try to process what unfolded last night.

“This was as action-packed as you could hope for as far as the crowd being into it, us feeling good about where we were,” Trumbo said, “but the nature of a one-game playoff is one side is going home pretty unhappy.”

Unhappy, confused and probably filled with questions.

I apologize for the lateness of this entry. My plan to write it at the Toronto airport after sleeping for two hours was ruined because I couldn’t access the internet.

I’m officially done with Canada. In this sense, it’s good to be home.

It’s just different without games to cover.