Swept again by those damn Yankees

Again another shortened series by rain and again another 2 game sweep by the Yanks. God this team is just getting painful to watch. Both of these games were pathetic and in two different ways.

Saturday’s game ended in a score of 15-3. Yes, that’s right, the Yankees scored 15 runs, including 5 homers. Bergesen gave up a 3 run homer to Martin. Posada hit a 2 run homer followed by another home run to Martin, a solo shot, given up by Berken. Rapada comes in to relieve Berken and loads the bases. So, Josh Rupe comes in and what does he do? Gives up a GRAND SLAM to Jeter. He also gave up a 2 run homer to Gardner in the 9th. There’s really nothing else to say about this. This is why the team is in last place in the division. It’s where they belong.

It’s so frustrating that the O’s seemed to have actually done something in the off season. They signed some big names and spent some money and O’s fans had a reason to be optimistic this season. It seemed like something was going to change. The first week of the season rolls along and the O’s go 6-1, they’re best start in decades. Fans got even more optimistic and it seemed like it was for good reason. Now, it’s almost the end of the month and the O’s are 8-12, 5 games back in the division. Yes, I know, you’re all saying “it’s only the beginning of the season though, there’s still a long way to go!” and you’re right, but I don’t think fans should get their hopes up. It seems like it’s going to be a while until they’re actually contenders again. Signing veteran and aging players hasn’t worked. And it’s tough to sign good players that still have a few years in them because, let’s be honest, what good player is going to want to come play for the Orioles, who suck year after year and can’t get more than 15,000 fans in the stadium unless the Yankees or Red Sox are in town. When these teams are here, there’s plenty of fans there but they’re all rooting for New York or Boston.

I hate being pessimistic because I, like most Orioles fans, love being optimistic about my team (who I have yet to see a winning season since I’ve been alive). It happens to me and all of us every year, but every year we are disappointed. It’s ironic because the team made so many seemingly promising moves, but the hitting is abominable. Only Andino is hitting over .300 (.310) as a number 9 hitter and the second highest batting average is Brian Roberts .274 at the leadoff spot. Our clean-up hitter, Mr. Guerrero is hitting .265 with only 9 RBIs this season. But, that’s not his fault seeing that Markakis and Lee don’t seem to know how baseball is played anymore.

Today’s game was not much better. The Yanks were up 3-0 because of ANOTHER homer but Reynolds hit a 2-run homer to pull within 1 followed by an RBI double by Brian Roberts in the top of the 9th (Yes, one positive thing is that Rivera blew another save and against US). Andino was sent home and called out at the plate to end the inning (he looked pretty damn safe to me) sending the game into extra innings. After the 10th, the rain delay came for 40 minutes. Finally, the game resumed and it all went wrong for the O’s. The Yankees ended up scoring 3 runs off of 3 infield singles and helped by 2 throwing errors in a row. That’s just wrong and due to partly bad luck and partly bad pitching and good hitting by the Yankees (what else is new).

These past two weeks have been extremely disheartening and there’s really nothing we can do about it. I wish Showalter would play with the line-up a little bit or SOMETHING because somehow, someway, something has got to be changed to get this team back to winning SOMETIMES.