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Playing the "on pace for" game is dangerous for any sports fan. A team that reels off a bunch of wins early could be on pace for one of the best seasons ever. Remember the Dodgers last season? They had a 44-7 stretch that went from June to August and put them on a pace to win more games than any team in history. They finished 2017 12 wins shy of 116. Sure, it was a good season, but it wasn't what we were all expecting.
We see this type of stuff all the time when hitters get hot at the plate....
Maybe we can set aside for the moment the fact that manager Buck Showalter gambled and lost, pitching Brad Brach three days in a row. And also leaving him in too long when he was struggling. If we could put aside a blown three-run lead in the ninth and the latest gut-punch loss we can realize that something pretty neat happened last night at Rogers Centre.
The Orioles sent out a rookie battery of catcher Austin Wynns, drafted in round 10 in 2013 out of Fresno State and pitcher David Hess,...
I really didn't have much of an opinion of Washington as a sports town before I moved here in 2001.
I knew the Redskins had won three Super Bowls and were the biggest deal in this city. I knew the Capitals made the playoffs most years and had been swept by the Red Wings in the 1998 Stanley Cup Final. To be honest, I didn't know much about the Bullets/Wizards. And I knew that with no baseball team in the District, a lot of people were fans of the Orioles, a model franchise for decades that was...
As Zach Britton moves closer to his 2018 debut with the Orioles, his removal from the disabled list anticipated for June 15, the curiosity is how manager Buck Showalter will use him right out of the gate.
Should he ease Britton back into the ninth inning rather than call upon the left-hander right away to record the last three outs and protect a slim lead? Is it wiser to give him, say, the sixth or seventh inning in those initial appearances?
It's a question that Showalter has posed to the...
TORONTO - The Orioles tonight turned a feel-good win into a walk-off loss. They blew a three-run lead in the last of the ninth and took a walk-off loss in the last of the 10th, losing 5-4 at Toronto to start a four-game series.
Against Miguel Castro, Teoscar Hernández led off the 10th with a double to left-center and Justin Smoak was intentionally walked. Castro then fanned two straight batters, but could not get the third out. Shortstop Aledmys DÃaz lined a single to left and the Blue...
This week, Major League Baseball held its annual First-Year Player Draft, with more than 1,200 players selected over three days. Much like new television shows, most of these players will not be hits and being chosen on draft day will likely be their career highlight. But a few, like new YouTube show "Cobra Kai," blossom into breakout performers. With May sweeps barely in the rearview mirror, I use my favorite sitcoms to help introduce the 2018 Nationals draft class.
"Head of the Class":...
TORONTO - Orioles closer Zach Britton threw another scoreless inning today during his minor league rehab assignment. Britton has thrown scoreless ball over four games and today needed just seven pitches to pitch a scoreless sixth inning for Triple-A Norfolk at Columbus.
Britton got a strikeout on four pitches and then got a groundout, allowed a single and induced a lineout - all on first pitches. Seven pitches, six strikes, not bad.
In four rehab games for three affiliates, Britton has thrown a...
"The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America" by George Packer was published in 2013, but it is just as important now as it was then to understanding where our inner soul is as a nation.
Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of other books that reflect on recent history in the U.S.
In the prologue to this work, Packer says, "No one can say when the unwinding began - when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave...
Austin Wynns is behind the plate for the Orioles again tonight while they face Blue Jays left-hander Jaime GarcÃa to start a four-game series in Toronto.
Wynns is playing his second major league game. He singled in his first at-bat Tuesday night against the Mets.
Danny Valencia is in the cleanup spot, followed by Mark Trumbo and Jonathan Schoop. Chris Davis is batting seventh as the only left-handed hitter in the lineup.
Craig Gentry is playing right field.
The Orioles are 8-12 against...
TORONTO - The Orioles managed to score just three runs in two games at Citi Field against the New York Mets, but they posted 2-1 and 1-0 wins to sweep that two-game series. Tonight, they look for their first three-game road winning streak of the 2018 season.
According to STATS, LLC., the series win was just the second in Orioles history when scoring three or fewer total runs. The Orioles also swept a two-game series from the New York Yankees from Sept. 9-10, 1970, winning 1-0 and 2-1. According...