Orioles Overview: Week 2
Mark Bonifacio- New York Daily News
The Orioles went 3-3 this week to bring their record to 4-6. The Orioles bats started to heat up as we thought they would. Chris Tillman has proved he is an elite starter beating Justin Verlander and going 8 innings without letting up an earned run Friday night. He has lowered he ERA to .84. Chris Davis is still looking for his first home run. He came close in his first two abs against the Blue Jays Friday night. They may have gone out in better conditions with less wind. The season is still young and there is plenty of time to improve. The good news is that the Orioles are still only 1.5 games back of the Jays. Thats right the Jays are first in the division, but you know that won’t last long. The Birds still have a chance take the series over the weekend, and could find themselves in first.
Matt Wieters continues to impress as he had a 9 game hit streak, though that was ended tonight. After Fridays game Wieters is hitting .333 with 6 RBI and 2 HRs. Delmon Young is looking like Delmon of old as he is hitting .381 with a HR and 4 RBI.
The bad news is Orioles starting pitching hasn’t gotten much better. Chris Tillman and Miguel Gonzalez have the only quality starts. While Chen his start against the Yankees, he gave up 4 runs on 9 hits in 5 innings of work. Not being able to get deep in games has been a common issues for starters not named Chris Tillman. Norris went 5 in his start, Gonzo 9.1 in 2 starts, and Jimenez and Chen went 10.2 in their 2 starts. It is hard to believe that the pitching will continue down this road.
As for Friday nights game, once J.J Hardy and Manny Machado come back there is no way the Orioles will have 2 errors in one game, let alone 2 in one inning. The real problem is that the Orioles could not score against Jays.
The big off the field story this week is obviously Adam Jones’ comments about fans running on the field. Honestly I agree with Jones. Running on the field is just stupid. Maybe Jones was a little harsh, but it was likely an exaggeration. Jones said “Obviously, I don’t want to inflict any pain on people, but if you put us in harm’s way, got to protect myself.” How many times have you said that you were going to kill someone that was annoying you. Jones said he wasn’t sorry in an interview Wednesday, “I’m not sorry. People say sorry and don’t mean it. So, I’m not going to say sorry.” Overall I like seeing Jones be honest in an interview.
