Series Preview: Orioles vs. Rangers

The O’s (5-1) head into a tough series against the Rangers (6-0) on a great win last night.  However, the Rangers are on fire, still undefeated, and really good. Can the O’s prove to be a tough team and get at least a win out of this series? Let’s take a look.

Pitching Match-Ups

Friday April 8

Orioles- Zach Britton, he was called up from the minors last Saturday to pitch against the Rays due to Matusz being put on the DL.  He pitched 6 innings allowing only 3 hits and 1 run with a 1.50 ERA and he got the win.  To me, he is looking to be the O’s ace in the next few years.

Rangers- Colby Lewis, so far this season he pitched 6 innings allowing 6 hits and 3 runs with a 4.50 ERA.  Last year, he went 12-13 with a 3.72 ERA.

Saturday April 9

Orioles- Jake Arrieta, in his first game this season he pitched 6 innings allowing 6 hits but only one run.  Last year, he went 6-6 with a 4.66 ERA.

Rangers- Matt Harrison, in his first game of the season, he pitched 7 innings and only allowed one run on 5 hits.  Last year, he went 3-2 with a 4.71 ERA.  This looks to be a very good pitching match-up!

Sunday April 10

Orioles- This is tricky.  Guthrie is scheduled to start and should be able to so I’m going to assume he is.  When he pitched opening night against the Rays, he had a brilliant game pitching 8 innings allowing 3 hits but no runs.

Rangers- Derek Holland, he’s pitched for 6 innings this season giving up 7 hits and 3 runs.Last year he went 3-4 with a 4.08 ERA.

Who’s Hot/Who’s Cold

Hot Orioles:

Well, this is tough. There’s a lot of them because of last night.

Brian Roberts, he has 8 RBIs, two 3-run homers, and has been on base in every game of the season (5 out of 6 games he has a hit).

Vlad Guerrero hit his first home run last night as well as hitting an RBI single.

Adam Jones has had a slow start, but he’s coming alive.  Last night he hit a 2-run homer as well as scoring another run.

Hot Rangers:

Pretty much all of them.  The lowest amount of runs they have scored in a game has been 3 whereas their highest number of runs scored in a game is 12.

Nelson Cruz is batting .350 right now and has 4 home runs from his first 4 games already on the season.

Cold Orioles:

Matt Wieters didn’t get on base at all last night, despite having a pretty good start to the season.  Derrek Lee, though he hit his first home run Wednesday, he’s only batting .182.  Lee needs to up his On Base Percentage (.280) at the number 3 spot so Guerrero can do his job at the clean-up spot.

Cold Rangers:

Adrian Beltre is only batting .125 right now and Josh Hamilton has yet to hit a home run this season even though he hit 32 last season.

With all of that being said, this looks to be a very exciting series with two of the best teams in the American League so far.  The O’s look to hand the Rangers their first loss of the season and prevent them from going 7-0 (the last team to do this was the Rangers in 1996).