Baltimore Orioles’ starter John Means wasn’t in the game for very long tonight. But he was outstanding when he was Mean hung one pitch, and in reality it was the only one that counted. Means’kine: 4.2 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 4 K.
Means surrendered a solo homer with two outs in the fifth to Miami’s Cervelli. And manager Brandon Hyde popped out of the dugout immediately to relieve him. Now to be fair, Means started the season out injured. This is also only his second start. So perhaps Hyde being careful with him is understandable.
But it just seemed to me to be a fairly quick hook. Especially with a guy in Means who had pitched as well as he did to that point. This doesn’t mean that Hyde’s a bad manager. I actually like how he’s coming along in that department. And managing the bullpen is probably the toughest thing that a manager needs to learn. But especially with a doubleheader tomorrow, I wonder if it wouldn’t have paid to leave Means in the game further.
Miami’s Berti would smack ab RBI-single in the sixth. Miami would later load the bases, and a third run would score on an E5. Miami would add an insurance run in the eighth in the form of a solo homer by Aguilar.
Miami’s pitching obviously shut down Oriole bats tonight as well, and that’s to their credit. This is an Oriole team that was soaring coming out of the weekend, and it would have stood to reason that would have continued given that Miami had to assemble an almost new team. But their pitching shut the Orioles down. And that can sometimes happen.
It almost took divine intervention to get the game off at all. A tropical storm blew through Baltimore in the first part of the day, and then later on there were issues with some COVID tests on Miami’s side. But better to be safe than sorry. The game was delayed 45 minutes and all was eventually well.
The O’s and Miami will play a doubleheader tomorrow at Camden Yards , with the Orioles as the visiting team in game two. Alex Cobb gets the start for the O’s in game one, and he’ll be opposed by Miami’s Elieser Hernandez. In game two Asher Wojchiekowski gets the start for the Orioles, and Miami’s starter is TBD. Game one begins at 5 PM, with game two beginning approximately 30 minutes after the completion of game one.
Birdland Crush 