Freddy Garcia said he’s done all his work in between starts to start on schedule on Monday. Buck hasn’t announced starter yet. #orioles

— Eduardo A. Encina (@EddieInTheYard) May 19, 2013

O’s have 3 quality starts in last 10 games- all by Chris Tillman. O’s 1-2 in those games b/c blown save in one & lack of runs in other.

— Mark Viviano (@MarkViviano) May 19, 2013

Time to clean it up. Pretty simple yet extremely difficult #StayHungry

— Adam Jones (@SimplyAJ10) May 19, 2013

I’m glad my positivity runs off on ppl. It’s easy to be negative in this world. Rise above and smile

— Adam Jones (@SimplyAJ10) May 19, 2013

But clean it up in the process. Always a constant process in life. Aim for greatness

— Adam Jones (@SimplyAJ10) May 19, 2013

Showalter hoping Flaherty can ‘get his legs back under him’ at Norfolk sns.mx/6ksMy7

— Matt Wieters (@MattWietersFans) May 20, 2013

Freddy Garcia will start tmrw, Buck said.

— Eduardo A. Encina (@EddieInTheYard) May 19, 2013

This is a tough stretch, 53 games into the season and heading into the hot summer months. The offense and the pitching have both had stretches where they’ve been superior, maybe just not necessarily at the same time. Look at the positives, though. According to ESPN.com, the Orioles are 3rd in runs scored (212), 5th in slugging percentage (.440) and 5th in team batting average (.267), continuing the team-wide improvement. Pitching has been dealing with injuries and lack of a consistency starting rotation, but Jim Johnson has been (almost) lights out. Tomorrow, the team is in primetime on Monday Night Baseball at home against CC Sabathia & the division-leading Yankees, it’s a solid chance for players to shake off the tough start to the homestand and finish May on an upswing.

Ending on a fun note, the 13th seeded Orioles are in the finals(!) of the ESPN.com Battle of the Uniforms. They’re facing off against the top NL seed St. Louis Cardinals after knocking off the top AL seed Tigers and the 2nd seed Yankees. Like Jim Caple said, “As fans of the comedy series “Portlandia” know, the secret to merchandising is to slap a bird on it. And apparently, the same holds true for baseball uniforms.” Here’s the link, vote O’s!

Battle of the MLB Uniforms

Starter Wei-Yin Chen was credited with the win, although he only went five innings in the game. Chen’s line: 5 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K. Chen came out of the game after throwing only 73 pitches through five, and in effect was probably on part to at least pitch into the seventh inning. Chen felt some discomfort in his right side, which the Orioles later diagnosed as a strained oblique. After the game Chen said that he only felt the discomfort during the final at-bat of the fifth inning, and that he thought it was only a cramp. The Orioles can play around with the rotation a bit this week given that they have today and Thursday both as off days, but this is something to watch and with which to be a bit concerned moving forward.

Courtesy of Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

The O’s took an early 2-0 lead when Chris Davis hit a two-run homer that appeared to land all the way in St. Paul, and which appeared to have the Minnesota faithful at Target Field buzzing for some time afterwards. Catcher Chris Snyder collected his first base hit (and RBI) as an Oriole in the second inning which scored J.J. Hardy, and the Orioles led 3-0. Adam Jones later joined the homer parade led by Davis in the third with a home run that hit the outfield wall’s railing and bounced into the stands. Later on it was announced that Jones’ homer was the quickest ball to ever go from someone’s bat into the stands at Target Field. So if all else fails, Jones will have that feat! Steve Pearce would add a solo homer and the O’s would manufacture another run to close out the scoring in the Orioles’ 6-0 victory to take the series.

One very positive sign from this game was also the Orioles’ bullpen. Prior to the game the Birds optioned Steve Johnson back to Norfolk and brought up Mike Belfiore to add depth to the bullpen. Buck Showalter was hoping Chen would go deep into the game, however the injury prevented that from happening. However Hunter, O’Day, Matusz, and Strop closed out the final four innings of the game without incident. Perhaps the most promising of all was Pedro Strop, who appears to be regaining some of his form from 2012. Strop pitched the ninth inning of Saturday’s loss as well as yesterday’s victory, striking out two and not allowing a base runner in both games. Closer Jim Jonson will also have a minimum of three days off given that the O’s lost on Saturday, didn’t need him yesterday (in a non-save situation), and are off today.

The Chen injury situation is something to watch today as well as this week. Given a five-man rotation Chen’s next start could potentially be Sunday, however as I said the Orioles have two off days this week so if they had to I suppose they could skip him in the rotation. The team says it’s an oblique, Chen says it’s a cramp…time will tell. The good news is that if by chance he has to go to the DL, the O’s could potentially bolster their bullpen in the short term given that they don’t necessarily need a fifth starter in the immediate future. However at some point if they needed a starter, I would bet Jair Jurrjens might be the guy to get the call given that he has an opt-out clause in his contract for June 15th. In the mean time, Orioles fans should simply hope that Chen is right when he says that it was only a cramp.

It’s often the small things in games that make a difference. After Morales scored  and Robert Andino stuck out, Michael Saunders promptly got on base with a single. Chen threw a pitch in the dirt to Kyle Seager, which trickled ever so slightly away from Matt Wieters. Wieters was on the ball immediately and fired it down to second base, however Saunders (who was threatening to steal to begin with) was already sliding into the bag. Seager grounded out to short, which in theory would have been a 5-4-3 double play to end the inning. Instead  it brought Kendrys Morales to the plate with two outs and a runner in scoring position, and he delivered with an RBI-single.

Due in part to that long first inning, Chen was only able to go four innings in last night’s game. Chen’s line: 4 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 3 BB, 6 K. However Chen came across as a different pitcher after Jones’ would-be shoestring catch in the first inning. He seemed to immediately lose the command to attack the strike zone, and at one point seemed to totally lose his composure on the mound in disgust with himself. One bright spot for the Orioles was that reliever Zach Clark came in to relieve Chen in the fifth, making his big league debut. Clark was a veteran of eight minor league seasons, who never gave up on his dream of pitching in the big leagues. He’s also a kid with local ties, a UMBC graduate and a native of Wilmington, DE.

Courtesy of Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports

As Adam Jones said in the clubhouse after the game, “…they just beat us.” The Orioles were thus denied winning their fifth straight series. They did attempt to make a game of it, with both Jones and Nick Markakis providing RBI in the sixth inning. Manny Machado also provided a solo homer on the first pitch he saw in the eighth inning. Seattle starter Aaron Harang might as well have been Felix Hernandez out there last night, and until the sixth inning he stifled Oriole bats all night.  Many fans will probably grouse today that to the tune that a good team wouldn’t drop two-of-three in Seattle. For years and years I’m sure that many fan bases said that good teams don’t drop two-of-three to the Orioles. We all know that some nights it just clicks for different teams and different players in baseball. That’s just part of the deal, one way or the other.

The Orioles will now head back to California to open up a four-game series with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Granted the Angels are came out of April with a 9-17 mark (they’re currently 1-0 in May), they had the Orioles’ number big time in 2012. Chris Tillman will get the ball in game one tonight, of course coming off of that great start last weekend in Oakland. This will be your classic boy goes home story, as Anaheim, CA is Tillman’s hometown. This will be the first time that Tillman’s pitched at the “Big A,” a ballpark where he saw a lot of games with family and friends over the years during his childhood. I’m sure that will be a surreal feeling for Tillman, but he has to keep in mind that his job is to put the Orioles in a position to win the game as opposed to just putting on a show for his hometown. Admittedly, that’s a tough line to walk. Tillman will be opposed by Joe Blanton of the Angels.

Programming note: Saturday’s game will be carried by FOX at 4 PM as part of their FOX Saturday baseball program. However the game will not be shown in the entire mid-Atlantic region. The Washington Nationals’ game in Pittsburgh will also be carried by FOX, and thus if you live in the DC television market you will not be able to see the Orioles. Unfortunately FOX games are also blacked out on the MLB Extra Innings program, which means that the O’s game will literally not be watchable in those areas. (The same is true of the Nationals in the Baltimore market.)