FILE - Baltimore Orioles general manager Mike Elias speaks prior to a baseball game between the Orioles and the Tampa Bay Rays, Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, in Baltimore. Elias was voted Major League Baseball's Executive of the Year on Tuesday, Nov. 7, after the team finished with the American League's best record for the first time since 1997. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
Friday Bird Droppings: The Orioles hit the road to face a surprising Pirates squad
The first road trip of the year sees the Orioles face an early surprise team, the Pirates
Did you make good use of the Orioles having an off day yesterday? Hopefully the O’s themselves did, not that I know what they really might have needed to do. It’s easy to point at players who have struggled at the plate over the first two series, like Austin Hays and Ramón Urías, and assume that more work is the solution, but it’s probably not that simple. As Adam Jones once memorably said, sometimes you just suck. The O’s are 4-2 early on even with that, so that’s not too bad.
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We can turn our attention today to the Orioles heading out on their first road trip of the year. The first leg of that does not take them very far, as they’ll be in Pittsburgh for a 4 o’clock(ish) game this afternoon. The early start time is because it’s the Pirates home opener.
I’ll be back on the site later today for a more in-depth preview of the coming series. In brief, the Pirates are a surprising 6-1 so far, and hopefully are due to cool off upon facing the O’s. Grayson Rodriguez is scheduled to start for the O’s, with prospect Jared Jones making his second-ever MLB start for the Pirates. Jones had some back quarter of top 100 lists stock heading into this season.
Triple-A Norfolk was in action yesterday and they did it again, or at least their offense did, with another big night of scoring. We’ll also have a separate article about that here on Camden Chat later on Friday morning. For starters, Heston Kjerstad and Coby Mayo homered again and Jackson Holliday was on base three times. Between that team’s performance and the four wins for the Orioles, it’s been a fun week to be a fan. Fun week? Heck, at this point it’s been a fun 21 months, give or take a few days in the middle.
Around the blogO’sphere
Meet the Orioles fans who waited out a five-hour rain delay (The Baltimore Sun)
Beat writer Jacob Calvin Meyer went out into the concourse towards the end of Wednesday’s rain delay to ask people why they’re still here. There were so few people there that everyone had a unique story.
