Fistbumps on Hold

To my four or five loyal readers:

I won't be posting in fistbumps, at least not any game recaps, for the remainder of the road trip. Why? Well, because I'll be doing recaps for Orioles Hangout until the O's get back into town. So I'm not really going away. You can still get recaps from me. Just ones without any foul language.

The Most Fun I've Had With A Game Since Beating The Yankees 12-2: Orioles 13, Yankees 4

First off, a quick aside: Yeah, I didn't give you guys anything at all over the Angels series. And you got no series preview for the Yankees series. I had a busy, busy weekend. I went to the game on Friday, and was just running all over the place on Saturday and Sunday. I may not always do a great job of keeping this blog up and current, but damn it I try. ;)

But this is reader Drektunes' only place on the internet where he can cuss. And I'm not about to steal that ability from him. So I shall strive to keep this place updated more frequently. Except, possibly, the entire next week, where I may be posting elsewhere filling in. I'll let you all know.

Without further adieu, a big hearty "Fuck you" to the New York Yankees, Adam Jones style.

I mean, we knew we had a good match-up for this game, yes? Even though Jeremy Guthrie's struggled against the Yankees in the past, he's still been a fantastic pitcher this year. And Mussina's getting it done with smoke and mirrors at this point. He's lost velocity, he doesn't have an out pitch, he refuses to pitch righties on the inside half of the plate, mostly because he doesn't have the velocity to challenge them... say what you want, but Mussina's been fluky this year. He's not going to keep this shit up. If the Yankees do end up making the playoffs, I personally guarantee that Mike Mussina gets absolutely obliterated in a first round match-up. And hopefully, this happens in the clinching game of a series. It couldn't happen to a better mercenary. Anyway, how is Mussina 13-7 with a 3.56 ERA this year? He's walked 17 in 126.1 innings. That's a good start. Are you paying attention, Garrett Olson, Radhames Liz, Brian Burres, and Daniel Cabrera? Good things happen to you if you don't walk guys. Look at Mussina! He's 39 fucking years old, is striking out 6 per 9 innings, and has given up 139 hits already this year. His fastball tops out at 87, and the best thing he's got is that curve. How is he doing it? He doesn't fucking walk guys.

Anyhow, let's get into the game. Hell, you know what? Screw it. Let's just get to the part where the Orioles started beating the Yankees around and made the most obnoxious fans in professional sports (don't worry Red Sox fans... you're catching up and will have that title soon enough). It all started in the 2nd inning, after Mussina escaped a very rocky 1st due to a bad decision by either Juan Samuel or Brian Roberts to try to score at home. Melvin Mora, who has literally been on fire this entire month and is somehow suffering now symptoms common with being aflame, led the inning off with a single. Luke Scottwalker followed him with a single of his own, and Mora made a... sit down first, what I'm about to tell you is very strange and possibly shocking... Mora made an intelligent base-running decision by going for third the entire way. Are you okay? Good, I'll continue. That put runners on the corners for Millar, with a grounder or a fly ball scoring a run. Millar decided that driving in a run wasn't fucking good enough, though. So he jacked a homer out to left field to put the O's ahead 3-0.

Ramon wasn't to be outdone, even if his "I drive a run home everytime J.D. is at a baseball game I play in" streak is over. He followed Millar's homer with a homer of his own to center field, in the deepest part of the stadium. Orioles 4, Yankees 0. Mussina would retire the next three batters to get out of the inning, but the damage had certainly been done.

And then things would quiet down for a while. Guthrie was SO good that the Yankees didn't even reach base off of him until the 4th, when Damon led off with a single. Not that it mattered because Jeter's double play wiped it off the board. He walked Abreu in the inning as well, but got A-Rod to ground weakly out to the catcher.

The Orioles would add onto the lead in the 5th. Roberts started the inning off with a double down the right field line. Adam Jones then crushed a triple to right-center to plate Roberts to expand the lead to 5-0. And as a quick aside, just watching Adam Jones this season has been an absolute joy. He's 22-years old. He's one of the better defensive center fielders in baseball already. The book on him earlier in the season was that you could fool him with a breaking pitch on the outside portion of the plate. He's stopped swinging at them. He waits for his pitch. Somehow in the time from April to July, Adam Jones has turned into a patient hitter that runs the count up and can be incredibly dangerous if you make a mistake. That's what I want out of my #2 hitter.

Kakes followed all this with a ground-out. Huffnpuff drove Jones in with a fly-out to center to put the score up to 6-0, and Mora grounded out to end the inning.

So, 6-0 in the 5th. Guthrie had allowed two base-runners all damn game. Mussina was certainly not coming out for the 6th. I mean, I've seen too many games fall apart this year to feel great about a 6-run lead... but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel at least good about things. Guthrie mowed through the 5th inning pretty routinely (aside from hitting new Yankee Xavier Nady with a pitch, which was fun. Remember Nady? We saw him as a Pirate not long ago), and that brought things to the 6th inning. The inning in which the Orioles made a statement.

David Robertson, of the sub-2.00 ERA, came in to relieve Mussina, who clearly just wasn't doing his job well last night. Robertson's a young pitcher. Definitely has some upside. But... dude had a bad inning. Luke Scottwalker started off with a single that was just crushed down the right field line. Unfortunately, Bobby Abreu's got a really good arm and Scottwalker doesn't run fast... otherwise it would've been a double. Fortunately, Robertson felt badly that Scottwalker didn't get the double that he deserved, so he uncorked a wild pitch to advance him. Millar followed by slapping a ball to short that Mr. Perennial Gold Glove Derek Jeter could only dive and stop, so Millar reached on an infield single (Jeter barely stopped that ball, by the way, because he's actually a shitty defender with one of the worst ranges in the American League, but whatever... keep giving him awards he doesn't fucking deserve). With runners on first and second and no out, Ramon Hernandez did his duty of flying out to center to allow Scott to tag and move up, because Cabrera has nothing for an arm. Juan Castro followed and... well shit, he did the same fucking thing that Millar did. Sharply hit ball to short, Jeter dived for it, gloved it, couldn't transfer the ball from his glove to his hand, everyone safe. Scottwalker scored, Millar was safe at 2nd, Castro was safe at first. 7-0 Orioles. When Juan Castro's getting into the act... you're in trouble. Robertson had to regain his composure, or he was looking at a really, really long inning.

He didn't. He walked Roberts to load up the bases for... (I'm now switching to wrestling play-by-play voice, because the situation warrants it)

OH MY GOD!!! THAT'S ADAM JONES' MUSIC!!! HE'S GOT A BAT!!!!!! OH GOD!!! HE'S COMING FOR THE YANKEES!!! HE'S GOT NO BUSINESS HERE, GET HIM OUT OF HERE!!! (Adam Jones hits a grand slam off of David Robertson) HE JUST DEVISTATED ROBERTSON!!! HE'S STOMPING A MUD HOLE IN HIM AND WALKING IT DRY!!! HE'S CLEARED THE BASES, AND THE YANKEES ARE GETTING THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!! ADAM JONES IS A PURE PSYCOPATH, WITH NO FEELING AND NO SOUL!!! DAMN YOU, ADAM JONES!!!!

And we're back. 11-0 Orioles off of the first career grand slam by Jones, and just the second one hit by an Oriole all year. Oh, and I'd like to point out that the Orioles to this point, to borrow from Gary Thorne, had a 1-RBI homer, a 3-RBI homer, and a 4-RBI homer. So they were a 2-RBI homer from the elusive (I think) home run cycle. And Jones? He had the hardest two parts of his own personal cycle already taken care of. So yeah. Craziness. Edwar Ramirez would come on and get out of it, but I have no problem stating for the record that at 11-0, I felt damn good about the outcome of this game.

Guthrie finally allowed his first base-runner to reach 2nd base in the 6th inning, but worked out of a bases loaded, 2-out jam unscathed. The Yankees would finally reach the O's starter in the 7th, though. Xavier Nady followed a Robinson Cano strike out with a solo homer to deep center field to make it 11-1. That ended Guthrie's outstanding night with a line of 6.1 IP, 3 hits, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 Ks. Lance Cormier (pronounced "Corm-wahh" from now on) came on in relief and... well shit, he let up more runs. Melky Cabrera reached on a Roberts error to put a man on and one out. Jose Molina doubled out to right to put runners on second and third, setting the stage for Johnny Damon to continue to try to kill the Orioles one game at a time. And he delievered by crushing a homer out to right field to make the game 11-4. Yeah, still a 7-run lead. I'm not worried. Cormier was pulled for the AMAZING RANDOR (just imagine it with an echo... it sounds awesome), who despite looking incredibly shaky, worked his way out of the inning. The highlight? Striking out Madonna Rodriguez to end the inning.

Unaware of the slaughter rule being in effect, the Orioles piled on a few more runs off of Kyle Farnsworth in the 8th. Roberts struck out, but Jonesy hit a single (leaving him a double shy of the cycle) to get a runner on. Markakis struck out, but Huffnpuff made up for that by hitting a homer down the right field line (literally... it hit the foul pole) to drive in two more runs, complete the home-run cycle, and give the O's a 13-4 lead.

That would do it. Jones would get another at-bat and hit a ball that looked like it was going to drop in for the double, but whatever scrub the Yankees threw into center field to give Melky Cabrera a break managed to track it down. Otherwise, the 9th was relatively uneventful. The Orioles walked out of Yankee Stadium last night with an impressive 13-4 victory. Now, honestly, is there anything as sweet as laying a 9-run beat down on the Yankees?

I Have a Worse Feeling...: Orioles vs. Angels

Remember where I said that I had a bad feeling about the Toronto series, and that I'd be thrilled with a series split, and then we went out and lost 3 out of 4?

Yeah. I've got a much, much worse feeling about this series.

The Los Angeles Angels of the Greater Orange County Metropolitan Area are coming into town for a 3-game set to end the 11-game homestand, and they're bringing with them the best record in the Major Leagues at 62-39. They also have the Majors' best road record at at 31-18. It's actually better than their 31-24 home record. I'm not making this shit up. They're really good.

Surprisingly enough, they're only 10th in the AL in runs scored, with 448 on the season. Their pitching is 6th in the AL with a 3.85 staff ERA. The starters are 3rd in the AL with a 3.79 ERA, while the pen is 10th with a 3.99 ERA. The O's, by the way, are 6th in runs scored and 12th in team ERA. So obviously, the pitching is severely slanted in the Angels' favor.

And before you get sick of hearing this a lot over the next three games, let me just warn you. The announcers are going to gush about the "pesky" Angels and their ability to "manufacture runs." And they're going to say that that's how they're winning their games... with their tenacity and heart. They're winning games because the pitchers are really good.

Anyway, here's the ridiculously unfair pitching matchups.

Pitching Matchups:

LHP Joe Saunders (12-5, 3.05 ERA) vs. LHP Brian Burres (7-6, 5.02 ERA)

RHP Jon Garland (8-6, 4.12 ERA) vs. RHP Radhames Liz (4-2, 7.19 ERA)

RHP Ervin Santana (11-4, 3.37 ERA) vs. LHP Garrett Olson (6-5, 6.11 ERA)

That's right. The average ERA for the three O's starters in this series is 6.10. For the Angels? 3.51. I'm not going to break down these match-ups any further. We have the advantage in zero of these games. Obviously, Garland is the one starter that we can get to, and we can touch up any of them if the offense is really clicking. But then you have to count on our guys and their tendency to try to extinguish fires with flame throwers.

Players to watch:

Vladimir Guerrero- Long story short with Vlady: he fucking kills us. I'm not exaggerating this. Since 2005, Vlad's hitting .382 with 8 homers and 34 RBIs against Baltimore with a .448 OBP/.676 SLG/1.124 OPS. That's sick. The only AL teams he hits better is Seattle (1.164 OPS) and Texas (1.356 OPS!!!). I'd say that it'd be a good idea to stay away from him, but I don't think I can possibly emphasize that enough. Do everything possible not to pitch to him. Seriously. Good Lord. On the year he's hitting .283 with 17 HR, 53 RBI, .342/.484/.826.

Torii Hunter- You might not have heard much about him this year, but the former Twin is having a fantastic season in... well, in Anaheimish. He's hitting .272 with 13 homers, 44 RBIs, and a .334/.458/.792 line. And he still plays a fantastic defense in center. Don't sleep on Hunter. He's a really good fastball hitter, and none of the Orioles' starters this series, save for Liz, have particularly good fastballs.

Howie Kendrick- The guy just flat out hits. Seriously. I'm not going to go into depth with him too much, because his stats do just about all the talking for him. He's hitting .341 with 3 HR, 32 RBIs, and a .361/.514/.875 line. He's got 23 doubles in 56 games. He hit .322 last year, so it's not exactly a fluke. The ONLY plus side to him is that he doesn't draw a lot of walks (he's got 5 in 208 ABs). At the same time, he doesn't strike out much either (37). He's a dangerous guy at the top of their line-up.

I could throw Chone Figgins in here just for the speed factor... but I won't. He's hitting .269 with an OBP of .368. He's got 17 steals in 24 chances this year. He can hurt you with speed, but he's not hitting well enough this year to have him as a top concern.

Oh, and there's that Francisco Rodriguez kid and his 42 saves out of 45 opportunities on the season. He's on pace to break Bobby Thigpen's record of 57 saves. And his ERA is just 2.18. If he comes into the game, it's pretty much over. Luckily, K-Rod's the best they have out of the pen. Jose Arredondo is impressing in his rookie season with a 1.33 ERA and 27 Ks in 27.0 innings (with just 9 walks). Justin Speier is used often (40.2 IP), but his 5.09 ERA shows that he hasn't been that reliable for them. Scot Shields has been reliable as their 8th inning guy, putting up a 2.95 ERA in 39.2 IP. Darren Oliver is the other reliable arm that they have, with an ERA of 3.30 in 43.2 IP.

Yeah, I think I'm going to be pretty thrilled if the O's can take a game from this series. Anything more than that, and I'll be really pleasantly surprised.

What a Rough Two Days: Blue Jays 5, Orioles 1; Blue Jays 7, Orioles 1

Well then.

I went to both of these games. That included Wednesday's hurricane that decided to pass over the city, bringing with it frequent lightning, high winds, and heavy torrential downpour rains. Yours truly was sitting outside, getting drenched, risking life and limb in hopes that they would be able to get the game in (okay... I was really sitting in the Camden Club getting drunk, but whatever... don't question me). They didn't. They postponed the game around 11 PM, and announced that they were finishing the game on Thursday morning at 12:05 PM, and then play out the game that was originally scheduled on Thursday.

Following? Games got rescheduled, and I'm a liar. Good.

It's a shame, too. The game on Wednesday night was really good, all 6 innings of it. Burnett and Guthrie were both on their games. The Blue Jays struck first in the 3rd inning, after Guthrie let Lind lead off the inning with a single. Lind stole second because Ramon can't throw runners out, and for no other reason at all. Lind isn't a swift runner. John McDonald, of the sub-.200 average, singled to move Lind over to third. Joe Inglett grounded out to move McDonald over to second and put a big out up on the scoreboard. After him, Marco Scutaro performed the dreaded ground-out RBI to perfection, grounding to second and allowing Lind to score on the play. Guts would get Rios to ground out to end the inning.

The O's tied it in the 4th after Huffnpuff smashed a triple (yes, a triple... yes, THAT Aubrey Huff) to left-center that Inglett sorta-kinda misplayed. Mora hit a ball to short, and for some reason McDonald took his sweet time getting the ball to first... long enough to allow Huff to score and Mora to reach on an infield single. After that? Scottwalker flied out to left, Millar fouled out to first, and Mora was picked off of first and caught in a rundown. Way to keep the rally going and all.

It was about at this point that the clouds rolled in. Really dark, really puffy clouds. Lightning started flashing in the sky, but it wasn't reaching the ground (what most people call "heat lightning"... what us weather dorks call "cloud to cloud lightning"). It provided for a really interesting backdrop. It was really obvious that both teams were needing to score to try to win the game and not have the game made up. The Blue Jays would be the team that would strike in the 6th as the raindrops started falling. Rios singled to center, and then stole second because Ramon can't throw out base-runners... especially good ones. Lyle Overbay cashed that run in by singling to center... and then he advanced to second on the throw to the plate. Barajas would ground out to short to move Overbay over, and Stairs would ground out for the second out in the inning. Scott Rolen came up, took a ball, then the sky opened up, big time.

And that... well, that was that for Wednesday night. And it ended the game for Guts and Burnett. Guthrie pitched pretty well, too. He went 5.2 innings, letting up 2 runs on 6 hits while striking out 4 and walking just one. Burnett went 5 innings giving up a run on 6 hits, but he struck out 7 and walked no one. You're not reading this wrong. A.J. Burnett didn't walk anyone.

I didn't want to miss the completion of a 2-1 game in the 6th, and hey... I got a game and a half for the price of one on Thursday... so I played hooky from work and bought myself a ticket. Front row, section 16. Boss tickets. Anyway, Lance Cormier came in to start the Thursday portion of the game and got that Scott Rolen guy out... that at bat took FOREVER.

Meanwhile, the Toronto pen pretty much shut the Orioles up. Seriously. I already told you that the final was 5-1. Cormier pitched the 7th okay, but ran into trouble in the 8th. Lyle Overbay started the inning off with a double. He got an out forcing Barajas to pop up, then the Orioles decided to walk Stairs intentionally to set-up the double play. But would they let Cormier get it? Nope. They brought in the Amazing RANDOR (there's a Star Wars Rancor joke somewhere in there...). And I can't really blame Randor Bierd for what went wrong. I blame Fat Millar.

Lind grounded to first, and Millar fielded the ball cleanly. He had plenty of time to beat a slow Overbay to the plate with his throw, so of course Millar calmly set his feet and fired to home, right? Nope. Of course not. He rushed the throw and airmailed it over Ramon's head. Overbay scored easily, and Stairs (who is the epitome of slow) tried scoring from second. All Ramon had to do was throw cleanly to Bierd... but of course, Ramon's throw was off line as well, Stairs scored, and The Jays took a 4-1 lead. John McDonald would hit a sac fly to drive in the third run of the inning before Bierd would work out of it.

Yeesh. Nothing happened after that, the Orioles couldn't hit Carlson, Camp, or Downs. It seemed like anytime that the O's got a scoring chance, someone grounded into the double play. Just an awful way to finish off a pretty solid game.

Game 2 got ugly. Real ugly. I mean, you figured it might with Halladay, who is nigh unhittable, facing off against D-Cab, who is pulling his Jekyll and Hyde routine again this year. Well, Hyde showed up.

The O's best chance against Halladay came in the first. Roberts led off with a single, but Jones followed with a pop-up. Markakis struck out for the second out, but Huff came through with a single to move Roberts over to third. Mora? He politely grounded out to second. End of inning.

Cabrera actually managed to match Halladay... until the 3rd. He started things off magnificently by hitting Inglett in the shoulder with a 94 MPH fastball. Inglett stole second off of guillermoquiroz' Ramon Hernandez impression, then advanced to third on a Scutaro single. Leave it to Daniel to make things easy... he uncorked a wild pitch that allowed Inglett to score pretty easily, putting the Jays up 1-0. Rios flew out for the first out, but that Overbay guy came through with another RBI, a single this time, to score Scutaro and put the score at 2-0. Danny got Stairs to fly out before striking out Rolen to end the inning, but against Halladay and the way that Halladay was getting grounders... the impression that I got at the game was that a 2-0 hole was going to be really difficult to climb out of.

The Orioles decided to just keep on digging that hole, though. In the 4th, Lind (who just murdered us all series) started off with a double. Brad Wilkerson smacked a single to right to score Lind, though Wilkerson was nice enough to run himself into an out trying to advance to second. 3-0 Jays after the 4th. Deeper hole achieved.

Oh, but it got worse. The Jays would add a run in the 5th off of an Overbay sac fly. Then they blew the game open in the 6th. Rolen led the inning off by hitting a single. Lind, of course, hit another single to put runners on first and second. Danny threw ANOTHER wild pitch to move the runners over, but it didn't matter since he just went ahead and walked Wilkerson anyway. Then Rick Dempsey's Nephew (Gregg Zaun) singled to right-center, pushing Rolen and Lind across to stretch the lead to 6-0. Scutaro would tack on a sac fly to put it to 7-0, and with Halladay not having thrown many pitches to that point, what I should have done was get up and walk out of the stadium. But I didn't. I have the sunburn to prove it.

Anyway, I don't really care how the O's managed to score their run. They fucking lost 7-1 and 5-1 on the same day. Ramon? He didn't play in the second game, but he failed to drive a run home in either half of the first game, which ended his streak of "driving in a run in games that J.D. attends" at 8. It was nice while it lasted. At least I have the memories. Who's this Ramon guy again?

That also drops my season record to 6-6. One day and I sink back to .500. Which was a better day than the O's had, sinking to 5 games under .500 at 48-53. Ouch. Did I mention that Toronto (51-51) isn't exactly a wonderful team? Yeah, but they still came into the Yard and took 3 out of 4. That's rough. And the Los Angeles Angels of the Greater Orange County Metropolitan Area are coming in for a 3-game set starting tonight, bringing the best record in baseball with them. So it's not like it's getting any easier.

At least this is happening shortly before the trade deadline. Maybe they'll move some pieces and continue the rebuilding thing after all.

Not Talking About Last Night's Game

That's right. I'm not talking about it. If you watched last night, you understand why. Losing winnable games against mediocre teams is agonizing. I'm going to pretend like last night didn't happen. La la la la la la la lamoving on.

Also, I was crazybusy at work today. But it's mostly the not wanting to talk about it thing.

I'll have something tonight/tomorrow morning after the game tonight that I'll be attending. So you can pretty much bank on Ramon driving in a run.

At least Burnett won't shut us out.

So I'm Real Late On My Game Recap: Orioles 8, Blue Jays 3

I'm real late on this. Like ridiculously late. But I got sucked into an Orioles Hangout forum debate and well... the time pretty much flew. So you're not getting the real-deal recap from me today. You're getting the short, finer point version. And you'll like it. Damn it.

For as much as everyone's new favorite thing to do is beat up on Ramon Hernandez, how about a few minutes to give the guy props? He hit a 2-run homer last night to drive the nail into the coffin of the Blue Jays. He hit the game-tying homer on Saturday against Detroit off of Joel Zumaya, who, in case you didn't watch the series or the Tigers at all in the last three years, is a really good pitcher. He's hit .283 with 3 homers and 12 RBIs and a line of .339/.491/.830 in July, which is outstanding production from a catcher. I mean yeah, sure, his defense is still less than good. But his offense right now is more than making up for it. Dude has an .830 OPS in July. Recognize.

Radhames Liz was "effectively" wild last night. And by that, I mean that the Blue Jays really missed opportunities to hammer him. He gave up six walks, a season high for him. So yes, as wild as Liz has been this year, he was his MOST wild last night. And he gave up 3 runs in 5.2 innings. Don't ask me how he did it. I just know that he did.

Finally, Adam Jones is basically telling the Orioles that he doesn't want to leave the #2 spot. At all. His opposite field 2-run homer was overdue, but he's just absoluetly invaluable in that spot. He's now hitting .282 on the year with 6 homers, 43 RBIs, and a .325/.412/.737 line. So the hitting's coming around for him, the speed is there, and the defense has been there all season. I mean, he's a more natural fit for the #2 spot than Markakis is. So why not leave him there?

I Gots A Bad Feeling About This One: Orioles vs. Blue Jays

So yeah, I know... you all missed me. I took a break over the All-Star Break. And then I extended it to cover the Detroit series. Because hey, when you have to scramble all over the place to attend three of the four games, and you're physically exhausted, there's only so much blogging you can do.

I'm not trying to make excuses. Just asking for a little understanding. I know I'll get none of it. Whatever. You people are mean.

A short little recap of the important stats from the weekend: The Orioles are now 6-4 in games that I attend. And Ramon has now driven in a run in eight of the ten games I've attended. Two of those games were guillermoquiroz games, so those don't count. Ramon's a stout 8/8. That's no fluke, my friends. That's influence. I call him before the games to alert him to my presence. I only wish that I was serious about this.

Anyway, I feel really poorly about this upcoming series. Mostly because the Blue Jays have the #3 pitching staff in the American League. And we got swept by them in Toronto not that long ago. And while they don't hit particularly well, they hit our starters well enough and always seemed to get that timely hit. The Orioles still haven't won a series since the Wrigley series. I feel the need to mention this because Gary Thorne doesn't miss an opportunity to mention it. And if it's good enough for Gary, it's good enough for me.

What's that? You want empirical evidence about how poorly the pitching match-ups fall for us in this series? Okay. You asked for it:

Pitching Matchups:

Jessie Litsch (8-6, 4.16 ERA) vs. Radhames Liz (3-2, 7.57 ERA)

Shaun Marcum (5-4, 2.65 ERA) vs. Garrett Olson (6-5, 5.79 ERA)

A.J. Burnett (10-9, 4.84 ERA) vs. Jeremy Guthrie (6-7, 3.70 ERA)

Roy Halladay (11-7, 2.89 ERA) vs. Daniel Cabrera (6-5, 4.57 ERA)

Yeah, I count one pitching match-up in the Orioles favor. Guthrie has been a better pitcher than Burnett all season. Otherwise, it's a laugher. Litsch against Liz? Marcum against Olson? Halladay against Cabrera? Yipes.

The ONLY bright side to this whole mess is that Vernon Wells, who has done a fantastic job of destroying Orioles pitching this season, is currently on the 15-day DL. He's not coming back until after the series, more than likely. That's definitely a big plus... but that's outweighed by the O's not missing Roy Halladay this series. I mean, is there a bigger contrast of styles than Halladay, a guy who has outstanding control, and Cabrera, a guy who walks a ton of batters even with his improvement this season? I didn't think so.

And while their offense has been weak all season, it's been good enough to beat the O's, especially last series. Aside from Vernon Wells, even.

Blue Jays to watch out for:

Alex Rios: I know the guy has had a down year, but he's still hitting .285 with 5 homers and 42 RBIs. His .336/.411/.746 line isn't shabby, either. And he has enough speed to mess with you. Oh, there's also the fact that he's OPSing .880 against the O's this year, driving in 11 runs and hitting .323. So while the numbers might suggest that he's having a rough year, he's trouble. A big steaming heap of trouble.

Scott Rolen: Yeah, this guy was prominently involved in two of the Blue Jays' late inning rallies last series, including a game-winning hit. He's hitting .268 with 6 homers and 29 RBIs this year (.361/.430/.791), but he's getting on base at an insane clip, even for him. He's had it rough against the O's so far (.678) but he's one of those bats to watch out for. Oh yeah, he's still a REALLY good defensive third baseman.

Lyle Overbay: He had one of those other game-winning RBIs against the O's last season. And again, the numbers don't jump out at you. He's hit .273 with 6 homers, 36 RBIs, and has a .374/.404/.746 line. He's OPSing .732 against Baltimore this year, but he's still a danger.

Adam Lind: When he's been in the line-up, he's punished the Birds. He's hitting .417 against them with an OPS of 1.084, including 3 doubles out of his 5 hits. His season numbers aren't shabby either. He's hitting .273 with 4 homers, 19 RBIs, and a line of .298/.489/.764. Don't sleep on the young guy. He has power and he drives the ball well. I don't enjoy seeing him at the plate.

Oh yeah, their bullpen's really good, too. Scott Downs and Jesse Carlson have ERAs below 2.00. B.J. Ryan proved to be fairly unhittable against his former team, and does have 18 saves so far on the season. Tallet and Camp can come in and get the job done as well, though not to the tune that Downs and Carlson have. Really, Downs and Ryan make it a 7-inning game. And with the starting pitching that they have, that puts a really big strain on the hitters the first two times through the line-ups.

I'll be ecstatic with a split. I'm just not feeling that great about it.

Oh, and while I'm at it, congrats to Luke Scottwalker for being named the A.L. Player of the Week. His homer onto Eutaw Street on Saturday to win the game in the 10th was just epic, my friend. I was incredibly fortunate to be at the game, losing my voice because of that blast.