It was kind of a rough week for my beloved Maryland scholar/athletes. They dropped their second ACC series on the road to Miami the One in Florida, and then got roughed up at home by James Madison. Perhaps the 27-0 drubbing of Coppin State, called off after eight innings, made them feel better, and they're head into a weekend home series with Clemson on a high note, having beaten VCU just tonight.
No doubt you're wondering how Brett Cecil's doing. Quite well, thanks for asking. He picked up his sixth save of the season on Sunday when he faced five batters. He did take the loss on Saturday, but it was in a valiant effort: he entered in the seventh inning and would have gotten the long save if he hadn't been betrayed by his defense. So, an actual loss but a moral victory, and I hope the scouts appreciate it.
I've got a new position player to start following: freshman outfielder AJ Casario. Not only did my wife chat with his stepmother at a game, he's hitting .387. Not a lot of power, and a less than enviable K/BB ratio, but .387 is .387, and he's, like, 18, so lay off. He went 7 for 11 against Miami, so it's not like he's just fattening up on Coppin State, either.
In other Ich bin ein Marylander news, the Orioles are all screwed up. Still. Tom Boswell had a really good column as to why, prompting to me to wonder why he can't make this much sense when he's talking about the Nationals.
"I just thought that Brian [Roberts] should stay an Oriole, not that the front office didn't think so. They were looking at it from a standpoint of improving the ballclub," Angelos said Sunday, confirming that he nixed an offseason deal for slugging first baseman Adam LaRoche. "And they may have been totally right. I looked on it as the retention of a player that came through our system and who is of such great value to the club for all the things that he does out there with the public and in the hospitals and so on."I mean, honestly. It's like some dumbass who thinks Preston Wilson should have gotten a big fat extension because of his community service is running the team. A major league team, not that he hasn't tried to make that difficult to figure out as possible. You can make the argument that the O's shouldn't have made the canceled-at-the-last-minute Roberts for Adam LaRoche trade. I would have done it, but it's not a Bowden vs. Bavasi slam-dunk. But this particular non-trade isn't the problem. Boz:
What Angelos refuses to grasp, no matter how many times he is told, is that the issue is not the merit of any particular trade, free agent signing or draft pick. The problem, and it is absolutely central to the Orioles' organizational disaster, is that Baltimore is cursed with a billionaire who is constantly injecting himself at the last minute to reverse decisions that have been made after long labor and best judgments by his baseball people.It's really a shame. I'm not exactly an Orioles fan, though my marital status, my hatred for a fair number of the O's divisional rivals, and Buck Martinez make it so that I'm rooting for them more often than not, and it would be nice to see them win half the time. It's going to be tough going a whole year without seeing one meaningful game on MASN that doesn't have Frank Robinson playing right field.
Speaking of MASN, Dick Heller has a column I didn't read about how much we should hate it because it means mad scrilla for Angelos. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, 300 more baseball games on basic cable is awesome. ¡Livan!-level awesome. On the other, though, I've learned what can happen when you make a deal with the Devil. The Green Angels, for instance, sold out for mainstream pop success, and they got it. But look what happened with the bill came due:
1 comment:
holy crap. I actually got that comic pamphlet in college by some religious wacko. With "Lou Siffer" the manager. One of the band members turns to vampirism. Priceless. Had no idea it's been translated into so many languages. Why Disney hasn't optioned that puppy is beyond me.
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