See 2009 Seattle Mariners, who had a luck # of 10 per baseball-reference (should've been 12 under .500; finished 8 over .500). O's luck # 9 right now.
Orioles with an astounding streak of winning their last 11 extra inning games. Basically winning 11 coin flips in a row.
Make that 12 extra inning wins in a row. O's defeated the M's in 14 innings tonight. Were down 7-2 in the 6th.
Orioles Magic exists, y'all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mr7mQuGmp0
Who would have thought that the 2 best records in baseball on August 8th would be the Reds and the Nationals? 2 teams that finished below .500 last year. I guess the Nationals were expected to be much improved with a full (or almost full) year of Strasburg...
Noteworthy that ESPN gives the O's a probability of 14.5% of making the playoffs, lower than the Red Sox, who are below 0.500 for the season.
The Nationals OTOH have a probability of 93.9% -- yikes! I dunno -- no post season since 1933.
sagegrouse
'Yeah, I know that probabilities are not expressed in percents but in decimal format -- 0.149, e.g. -- but ESPN reports them this way'
sagegrouse
All you need to know about the Os is as follows
12-2 in extra innings
23-6 in 1 run games
44-0 when they lead after 7 innings
51-3 when they are tied or lead after 7 innings
In short, their bullpen has been sensational...absolutely sensational
The 8th / 9th innings are in lock-down mode with Strop and Johnson. The set-up men Lindstrom, O'Day, Ayala and PAtton have been super
Cool story here.
Steve Johnson (not our Steve "Insert" Johnson) picked up his first major league win in his first big league start tonight. Steve is a Baltimore native and his father, Dave, picked up his first major league win exactly 23 years ago today. Johnson pitched 6 innings, allowing 2 runs on 5 hits while striking out 9. This dude is a big fan favorite.
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index...recap&c_id=bal
Apparntly Johnson was an emergency callup from Triple A.
The scheduled starter for Wednesday night's game was forced to warm up Tuesday night in the Orioles 15-inning victory. Unwilling to start him 24 hours later, the Orioles called up Johnson from Triple A to make the start. Not sure, but the guys at MLB (including Billy Ripken, who ought to know) said it was simply a case of stealing the scheduled starter from the Triple A team ... that Johnson was not necessafrily the team's most-ready prospect.
Johnson was not the emergency callup. He replaced Zach Brittan in the rotation, a talented hurler who still needs seasoning in the minors.
The emergency callup was Miguel Socolovich, who has been up and down from Norfold several times this season
Johnson was lights out his last 4 starts at AAA. He...much like Miguel Gonzalez and Chris Tillman...has really turned the corner under the tutelage of Rick Peterson. Peterson is a real cutting edge guy, who relies heavily on biomechanical analysis thru a joint venture with famous sports orthopedist Dr. James Andrews.
White_House_Sweep.jpg
You know what that is? A Washington sweep, baby! :-)
The Nationals have now won 6 in a row and 16 of their last 21. They're 69-43, matching their 2010 win total in their 112th game. Their .616 winning percentage gives them the best record in baseball by 3 games over the Rangers and the Reds. The math is getting really ugly for the rest of the NL East, excepting the Braves. The Mets are in 3rd place at 54-58. If the Nats play .500 ball the rest of the way, they finish at 94-68. To match that, the Mets would have to go 40-10. The Marlins and the Phillies have it even tougher. The Nats are 4.5 up on Atlanta, so that's still a pretty good race to be run. They're 8 games up on St. Louis, who are the first non-playoff team in the Wild Card standings. That's probably the stat of most concern at this point. The Nats could certainly fade enough to lose the division to the Braves. And the way the Cardinals can score runs, an 8 game lead on them to stay in the playoffs doesn't feel safe yet.
Still, it's a nice place to be. Look at the view from here! :-)
JBDuke
Andre Dawkins: “People ask me if I can still shoot, and I ask them if they can still breathe. That’s kind of the same thing.”
It's quite awesome. Another outstanding performance by Zimmermann. Morse is coming around with bombs and Werth is contributing which is a nice surprise after last year. If Harper can get on track, their lineup is imposing, even the pitchers who are hitting well as a group.
It has to be really frustrating to the Braves to be playing so well (12-3 over their last 15 games) and they are making up ZERO ground on the Nats! Argh!!
--Jason "Braves have 6 games left with the Nats... will likely need to go 4-2 or 5-1 in those games to have a chance at the division, I think" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Somebody has been reading Federal Baseball.
I'd like to know Jordan Zimmermann's odds of winning the Cy Young Award at this point.
Also, fun note: if you're a starting pitcher and can't win NL Pitcher of the Month AND hit a Major League homerun, you are at best the 4th best starter on the Nats.
No. i believe Oly had it right. Hunter was scheduled to start the next night, but warmed up in the 14th. So, they called up Johnson to start. See:
http://www.masnsports.com/school_of_...-go-on-dl.html
Socolovich was called up to replace Flaherty (also reported on Roch's blog).
Somewhat true...but not really
Brittan was sent down immediately after the game....Johnson was getting the call to replace him as the fifth starter in the rotation based upon his stellar performance at Norfolk...he had 4 straight stellar starts at AAA. This was not a one time deal as an emergency starter. Now, you are correct that Hunter could not go after warming up that night, and Johnson could fit seemlessly in. Johnson was sent back down because his next scheduled start fell on an off day and they want him to get his work in. He will be back up when it is his turn to pitch again as the fifth starter.
The bottom line is this...Johnson is the 5th man in the rotation, not an emergency starter.
Zach Britton. Lol sorry had to correct that.
Anyways, back to what the title of my post suggests...yesterday, O's called up top prospect Manny Machado from Double-A. Manny collected two hits including a triple in his first game last night and two home runs in his second MLB game tonight.
The bottom line is this ... Johnson was an emergency starter, not the (scheduled) 5th man in the rotation ... due to Hunter's warm-up. SJ may end up being the 5th man going forward (when recalled from the minors, again), but the timing of the initial feel-good start was an emergency.
Austin Jackson, inside the park HR against tx ranger!
Love that.
Wow. Just a complete smackdown of the Giants by the Nats last night with a 14-2 win at AT&T Park. I went to bed when it was 11-0 after just 4 innings. The Nats didn't do it with the long ball, either - just one HR in their 21 hits. Yowza. And this was against NL ERA leader Vogelsong. And Gio Gonzalez shut the Giants potent offense down for 6 innings until the game was already out of hand.
I'm not so blinded to think this will continue, but what a great run this team is on, and what a great ride for us Nats fans!
JBDuke
Andre Dawkins: “People ask me if I can still shoot, and I ask them if they can still breathe. That’s kind of the same thing.”