So let me get this straight...Buck Showalter comes into town riding on his white horse, and the Orioles respond by sweeping the L.A. Angels at home? Who among us wouldn't take that?! The highlight of the series finale for me was the effort put forth by Jake Arrieta, who pitched 7.2 innings, giving up two runs over four hits (for what it's worth the two runs crossed the plate after Arrieta had departed). The problem was that Tori Hunter ended up tying the game at four with a three-run homer in the eighth, which prevented Arrieta from getting the win. This is part of baseball, however it shouldn't dim the fact that Arrieta pitched his guts out.
However this gave us the opprotunity to see how a Buck Showalter-led team would respond to just a bit of adversity. I think we all know that previous installments of the 2010 O's might have given up and probably let another run cross the plate, costing the team the game. After Hunter's homer, Jason Berken reached back and immediately struck out Hideki Matsui, ending the inning. While the damage itself was done, Berken was able to minimize it in the sense that he didn't put the team behind. Matt Wieters led off the ninth with a double, and was immediately taken out in favor of the quicker Julio Lugo. Corey Patterson sacrificed him to third, and Caesar Izturis singled him home for a walk-off win for the Orioles.
At some point the Orioles are going to lose under Showalter, however the crispness with which they've been playing has been refreshing to see. I'm sure that there's a certain amount of adrenaline that goes with having a new skipper as such, but hopefully the Orioles can continue to keep up this kind of play. What we're seeing is a team that's starting to put it all together now. Granted it would have been nice had this happened a couple of months ago, however now that many of the injured players have returned and there's a bona fide manager in place, perhaps putting everything together is actually possible. The O's got stuck in a perfect storm of sorts, but we have to hope that it's now past. Nevertheless, this weekend the Orioles open up a series with the Chicago White Sox, where they'll have yours truly in attendance in my normal perch in section 17 on Sunday. So that means that they'll be playing against the White Sox, and Ozzie Guillen's mouth, right?!
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