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.