The Orioles played a hangover game and looked exactly like you thought

The 2023 AL East champion Baltimore Orioles are not going to win 103 games this season. They had the exact kind of game that you might expect as the hangover game after their division championship partying on Thursday night. Honestly, the fact that they played the way they did last night makes it all the more amazing in retrospect that the Orioles were able to win the two games in Houston after their first celebration. This is the kind of game I really expected after the wild card clincher.

Though John Means had a nice game to continue shaking the rust off before the postseason, allowing just two runs on four hits in 6.1 innings, the offense recorded just three hits over the course of a 3-0 loss to the last place Red Sox. That’s a tough way to win a game.

If it wasn’t for Shintaro Fujinami laboring through a ninth inning that probably didn’t help his chances of getting on the postseason roster, as well as an unauthorized field intruder gumming up the bottom of the ninth, the game could have been played in something ridiculous like less than two hours and ten minutes. Boston batters, who got just four hits, were not much more interested in playing a long game.

. The Orioles remain at 100 wins. They are, however, now guaranteed to finish with more wins than the Rays. The Rays lost to the Jays on Friday night, getting blown out 11-4. Under the old rules where tiebreaker games still got played, it would have taken that loss for the Orioles to clinch the division. Much better that they got to celebrate after Thursday’s win, wasn’t it?

The Orioles will be back in action trying to rack up win #101 at 7:15 tonight. That’s an unusual start time because this is going to be the national Fox broadcast. They probably thought the Red Sox would be relevant when they picked this game. The last place Red Sox are not. Kyle Gibson and Kutter Crawford are the scheduled starting pitchers.

Around the blogO’sphere

Details of O’s lease deal fall short of dramatic announcement (The Baltimore Banner)
We learned on Friday that the lease isn’t actually done, just a nonbinding memorandum of understanding is. No one should fret as if the process will fall apart entirely. It’s just annoying to me that they got everyone excited that it was done when it isn’t. Only done is done.

Orioles have clinched, now face conflict with Billy Joel concert at M&T Bank Stadium on Oct. 7 (The Baltimore Sun)
There is not yet a solution to the conflict, it seems. At least the Ravens are away on October 8, so there’s not another conflict to worry about figuring out.

Notes on rotation plans and late lineup scratches (School of Roch)
As MASN’s Kevin Brown dryly noted last night, there’s “something going around the Orioles clubhouse” that caused Adley Rutschman and Ramón Urías to be scratched from the originally posted Friday lineup. After the loss, manager Brandon Hyde said they would “probably” be available today.

Pay up, Vegas, the Orioles beat all the odds (Baltimore Baseball)
Anybody who bet the Orioles 50-1 to win the AL East on April 24 has gotten themselves a pretty good payout. Hopefully they didn’t lose all that money on other, less successful bets.

Tyler Wells’ Orioles celebration comes ‘full circle’ from bayside restaurant to champagne-soaked clubhouse (The Baltimore Banner)
One of the little things that I think the Orioles do that maybe not everyone else would can be seen in Tyler Wells’s anecdote about how the players who had been in Baltimore this year but were at Norfolk for the wild card clincher were called up specially to thank them for what they’d done.

Hundreds of minor leaguers have shrunk (FanGraphs)
An MLB initiative aimed at paving the way for better automated balls and strikes in the minors has resulted in some more accurate official measurements for a number of prospects. On the list are three Orioles prospects who “lost” an inch and three more who lost two. A number of players dropped as many as four inches. Seems a little sus.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Today in 1989, the Why Not? Orioles were officially eliminated from winning the division with a loss in their 161st game, a 4-3 defeat to the Blue Jays that put them three games back. A win would have set up the possibility of tying for the division lead with a win on the season’s final day. Dave Johnson’s seven inning outing with just two runs allowed was not enough.

In 2012, the Orioles clinched their spot in the postseason when the Angels lost the second game of a doubleheader to the Rangers.

There are a number of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2017 outfielder Seth Smith, 1995 outfielder Curtis Goodwin, 1995 two-game pitcher John DeSilva, 2002 reliever Yorkis Pérez, and 1962-65 pitcher and baseball Hall of Famer Robin Roberts.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: poet Rumi (1207), chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. (1861), drummer Buddy Rich (1917), Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel (1928), actress Fran Drescher (1957), actress Jenna Elfman (1971), author Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975), rapper T-Pain (1984), and Formula One driver Max Verstappen (1997).

On this day in history...

In 1139, an earthquake believed to be measured at 7.7 struck territory of the Seljuk Empire within the Caucasus Mountains, killing as many as 300,000 people.

In 1520, Suleiman the Magnificent became sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which he went on to reign for 45 more years.

In 1888, Jack the Ripper in separate crimes killed his third and fourth victims of an eventual five.

In 1947, that year’s World Series got under way. Among the firsts experienced during that series: The first African-American player to play, the first to have six umpires on the field, and the first to have a pinch-hitter deliver a home run.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on September 30. Have a safe Saturday. Go O’s!