AP Photo
With less than one week remaining on the calendar before opening day 2010, the Orioles’ pitching staff appears to be trying to squeeze out every last drop of the six-week long “working out the kinks” process in Sarasota.
Over the last three days, the motto of “better now than later” has been ringing extremely loud for the O’s. A bit TOO loud for this blogger’s tastes, as a matter of fact.
Jeremy Guthrie, set to be the O’s #2 starter heading into the season, started on Monday against the “A” squad of the New York Yankees. He allowed a 3-run HR to Robinson Cano in the first inning, on his way to a 5 IP, 4 ER performance. As Roch Kubatko tells us, Guthrie has surrendered 17 ER and 28 H in 20.2 IP this Spring, and is 0-4 with a 7.40 ERA. He hasn’t went longer than 5 innings in any appearance.
But hey, at least he beaned Mark Teixeira. I can get behind that sort of thing.
Tuesday, things didn’t get much better. Brad Bergesen, fresh off shutting down the aforementioned Yankees last week, had an even worse day. Bergy gave up 6 ER, 5 H, 4 BB, and 3 HR. Two of those home runs, hit by Tigers’ shortstop Miguel Cabrera, may not have landed yet. Bergesen, the O’s projected #3 starter, has a Spring ERA of 5.59.
But we’re not done yet!
Today, the Boston Red Sox decided to change things up a bit. Instead of beating up on the O’s projected starters, they picked on the fresh meat that will be coming out of the bullpen at the Yard in 2010. Jason Berken, projected to be a long reliever, started the game. He was chased after just 2.1 innings, during which he gave up 5 runs on 7 hits.
Next up was Jim Johnson, the O’s set-up man to-be (who I have been a big fan of in the past). The first four batters against JJ went like this:
Single, hit by pitch, single, grand slam.
/facepalm
Oh, and just for good measure, the Red Sox later launched ANOTHER grand slam, this one off Dennis Sarfate.
The scores over those last three games?
Yankees 11 Orioles 7
Tigers 10 Orioles 9
Red Sox 14 Orioles 6
The O’s allow double-digits more often than the Ravens do (or did, anyway).
But hey, let’s look at the bright side here. Which is that THE GAMES DON’T COUNT YET. So, for now, we O’s fans should continue to remind ourselves of that, and repeat the mantra of “they’re just getting all of this out of the way now, instead of later!”
