Corbin Burnes was good this evening for the Baltimore Orioles. This in his final start of the regular season. It was a semi-truncated start, and odds are Burnes will start next Tuesday in game one of the Wild Card series. Burnes’ line: 5.0 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 9 K.
End of the day, the Orioles came into this game mathematically still alive to win the division. However even had they won tonight, you’re still putting a heck of a lot of pressure on them to sweep in Minnesota this weekend. And even if that happened, all New York would have needed to do would be to beat Pittsburgh once and it would have been irrelevant. Am I saying the Birds and Brandon Hyde punted the game?
No, at least not directly. But I suspect they weighed the probability, recognized that the odds were against them, and maybe mailed it in a bit. At the very least, they said if we win, great. If not, we’ll see you Tuesday.
Burnes pitched masterfully, giving up a solo homer to Stanton in the second inning. And that’s all he gave up. He was lifted after five with a low pitch count. Again, could he have pitched deeper into the game? YES.
However odds are Brandon Hyde was okay with whatever happened in this game – win or lose. Would winning what’s a DE FACTO meaningless game in the Bronx make up for potentially losing next week? You know the answer to that.
A six-run sixth for New York broke the game wide open. Judge and Verdugo would smack solo homers in the ninth to cap off New York’s division-clinching 10-0 win. For what it’s worth, it was walks that killed the Orioles in that sixth inning. That’s something that can’t continue next week. Emmanuel Rivera would get the O’s on the board in the ninth with a sac fly-RBI.
I would remind folks that the Orioles took two-of-three in this series. They also clinched a playoff spot two nights ago, which is the goal of every regular season. You have to look at the mean of anything, and overall this was a good series for the Birds.
It was also a coming out party for the “put back together” Orioles’ lineup. The Detroit’s or Kansas City’s of the world might not be too thrilled to see that the Orioles’ offense was firing on a lot of different cylinders once again.
The Birds need one win or one Detroit loss to clinch the top wild card spot. You never want to rest easy, especially given that Detroit plays Chicago this weekend. However odds are the Orioles open the Wild Card Series next week at home. They would need to get swept and Detroit would have to sweep Chicago for that not to be the case.
The Orioles now head to Minnesota for game one at Target Field in the final series of the regular season. Cade Povich gets the start for the Birds, and he’ll be opposed by Minnesota’s Pablo Lopez. Game time is set for just after 8 PM.
Birdland Crush 