DONE DEAL: The Houston Astros have paid $195 million to acquire a top pitcher from the Baltimore Orioles, officially making history. However….

Rodriguez was good enough for the Orioles to win yesterday, but the bullpen wasn’t

Hello, friends.

The combination of sitting around at Camden Yards for the duration of a nearly three-hour rain delay plus the game that the Orioles went on to play after that delay has got me feeling grumpy about the team as I sit down to write this article. It doesn’t help that there was at least one beat writer openly wondering about a three-hour delay where it was never raining all that hard.

It could have been a fun game anyway, with Grayson Rodriguez taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning and only losing it on a seeing-eye single, with Rodriguez ultimately striking out seven batters across six innings as he returned from the injured list. The Orioles bullpen had other ideas, with all of Danny Coulombe, Albert Suárez, and Yennier Cano contributing in different ways to an eventual 4-3 O’s loss to the Mariners on Saturday. Check out John Beers’s recap of the game for the not-so-lovely totals.

In the big picture, it’s still just one loss. The Mariners have a great pitching staff and there’s no shame in only scoring three runs against them while getting just six hits. They’ve done it to other teams this year and they’ll do it again. This wasn’t some “get dominated by a scrub” outing from Seattle’s Luis Castillo. He’s pretty good. So was Friday’s starter Bryce Miller, who the O’s did do well against, and so is today’s Mariners starter George Kirby.

It still wasn’t fun to see the Orioles offense revert to its trend of May struggles. Everybody put money and time into going to see that and that’s what we got! It’s the risk inherent in rooting for any sports team or going to any sporting event, but you don’t have to feel good about it when you come up short. The team eased the sting of this a little bit by announcing that all fans will receive a voucher good for a future Monday-Thursday home game. Then again, Suárez allowed the game-tying run to score immediately following that announcement, so nobody stayed un-stung for long.

The other thing that’s not fun about the bullpen meltdown and loss is that these things happened on the same day that the Yankees got to feast on a pathetic White Sox team again, so the Orioles are now two games down. There is plenty of time to overcome this between now and season’s end, but every game matters the whole way through and it’s a shame that the O’s couldn’t capitalize on a good Rodriguez outing.

That’s a familiar feeling for today’s Orioles starter, Corbin Burnes. The team has lost the last four Burnes starts, with Burnes pitching to a 2.59 ERA over those games, going a minimum of six innings in every start. The Orioles were shut out in two of these games and they scored two runs in the other two games. Let’s, uh, find a way to reverse that trend, O’s hitters. Again, it won’t be easy – Kirby is good.

The finale is set to get under way at 1:35. To everyone attending, I hope you have better fortune with weather and our favorite baseball team’s play than I did today.

Around the blogO’sphere

Hyde on Baumann being DFA’d: “It’s been a gloomy morning” (School of Roch)
The skipper didn’t feel great about sending Mike Baumann packing, and with how Baumann has pitched lately compared to Cionel Pérez, I don’t think I feel great about it either.

Orioles roster depth is so good it just got painful (Baltimore Baseball)
…having written the above, I’m not sure I’d go so far as Peter Schmuck does to proclaim this “painful.” They may have to make some painful choices before year’s end, though.

On the subject of Orioles who were designated for assignment, there was news yesterday that Ryan McKenna did not go unclaimed on waivers this time around. He was plucked away by the San Francisco Giants.

Even with 6-man rotation, Orioles plan to keep Corbin Burnes on schedule (The Baltimore Sun)
They can say that this is the plan, or this headline can say that, but the fact remains that the first opportunity the Orioles had to keep Burnes on regular rest even in an apparent six-man rotation, they didn’t do it. On schedule for Burnes would have meant pitching yesterday.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Today in 2006, the Orioles officially signed Melvin Mora to a three-year contract extension. It felt like a good idea at the time.