O's Notes, 4.4

4/4/2011

Orioles 5 (4-0), Tigers 1 (1-3)

Oriole Park @ Camden Yards

SP: Jake Arrieta

Sorry for the lack of O's Notes for the first 3 games of the year. Truth is, I was out of town for my bachelor party this weekend and lacked both the sports nerdiness and the sobriety to watch a baseball game in the casinos, so I figured I would be better off to wait until I had seen a full game before running my mouth about it.

Great win on an absolutely gorgeous Opening Day. The middle innings were shaky with some shoddy defense and poor hitting, but B-Rob's three-run homer put us on top to stay. Relief was great and Wieters went 2-3 with a walk. What's not to like?

Notes:

- Markakis looks absolutely locked in and is really driving the ball.

- Vlad is just about the exact opposite of Nick at this point. He looks terrible at the plate, chasing everything and displaying very little patience.

- Arrieta, despite the good result, still needs to work on his control and putting batters away. It seemed like he got in a ton of 0-2 counts that ended up as walks or hits. Starts like this don't often end up like this - the Tigers were hitting it right at our fielders, and hard.

- Adam Jones looks like he's pressing badly - and three fly balls and a strikeout attest to that.

- Derrick Lee looks awesome at first base - very solid.

I know the 4-0 start won't last, but it is really exciting to see so many fans enjoying Orioles baseball. It really does seem like we've turned a corner.

Tim gets the Munchies

Every time I think Tim Lincecum can't get any more awesome, he somehow goes out there and shows me that, YES HE CAN. According to MLB.com beat writer extraordinaire (I'm sure) John Schlegel, "Giants Ace Tim Lincecum is Chewing up Hitters, Food at a Hefty Pace" (yuk yuk yuk).

The two cool points: apparently Tim has topped out at a bulky 168 lbs., and his typical order from In and Out Burger (his favorite eatery after a Spring Training start) is as follows:

Three double-doubles, two orders of fries and a half-chocolate, half-strawberry shake.

When questioned about the nutritional validity of that diet, Tim responds, "That's probably not the best form of nutrients but I've always kind of just eaten what I've wanted to and worried about it later...Nothing's affected me now, so I'll stick to it."

Which is, of course, exactly the kind of thing that a 26-year old stoner says. Go get 'em, Tim!

The Best Way to Start Your Week: Baseball Rap!

Sometimes, I just don't know what to say. The long-time reader of my blog will remember when I posted last year about Scott Stapp writing a 'song' about the Florida Marlins. When I showed it to a number of my friends, many of them made the comment that they thought it was a joke or a well-done parody of some kind. I knew better - it was so perfectly Scott Stapp and so perfectly bad that it had to be real.

And then something like this comes along:

What is that? What the fuck is that?

I mean - that has to be a joke, right? No one would rap that poorly about a baseball team with as short a history and as poor a fan base as the Florida (soon to be Miami) Marlins and make a video of it in real life, right? Why would anyone produce this video? Who is this guy? And my biggest question - why do the Florida Marlins have not one, but TWO completely retarded and poorly made, cliche-ridden songs made about them?

My guess is that the Marlins must have some twenty-something ironic hipster Public Relations guy who hires these no-talent assclowns to produce these crappy videos so that he can post them on YouTube under the guise of being a 'promotional video' when in reality he's just laughing his ass off confusing the hell out of guys like me.

(kudos to Kresh on the video find)

It Takes Two

My boy Ryan 'Heartbreaker' Adams continued his solid Spring Training for the Orioles last night, crushing a two-run homer off Pirates' closer Joel Hanrahan. He did not Go Easy, rather he hit a Firecracker that rung Hanrahan's Answering Bell.

I think it's time to start the Ryan Adams watch - I'll try to keep his stats updated as we go through the season. He'll probably spend most of the year at AAA, so this will be a labor of love. Just remember Love is Hell.

Living in the Future

Holy crap.

As if the times that we are living in aren't crazy enough technology-wise, the Japanese apparently have developed a technology that will allow holographic representations of sports games to be able to be shown in front of fans live in stadiums. I mean - that is freaking AWesome.

Seriously? We've already arrived at the watching-sports-via-holodeck phase? What's next? Holographic chess games with Wookies?

Steroids - Simple, Right?

One of the things that I both love and hate about the world is that nothing is ever as simple or as complex as it seems. Nothing is black and white. Personalities, leaders, and politicians love to reduce issues to black and white, as they become much easier to deal with at that level, but simply casting aside facts or ignoring findings in order to reach a conclusion is not a stance that enhances the human condition - it just get things done.

Steroids are a perfect example. Journalists and talking heads love to throw down a hard line about steroids - immediately scapegoating anyone unlucky enough to have been associated with them. But it's stories like this that make it impossible for me to take such a stance.

Basically, the story makes the case that people (including athletes) have been known to test positive for the steroid clanbuterol after eating beef from cows that have been injected with the substance. This is a fairly common practice in places like China, Mexico, and most of South America. So maybe some of the Latin players who have tested positive in the past actually didn't knowingly inject steroids. Really.

Sure, the guy probably actually did take steroids. But it's stories like this that have to at least put the seed of some doubt in any rational head. It wouldn't be fair to punish a player who tested positive if they had a false positive from eating the wrong steak. Would it?

I'm sure some people will say that yes, it is fair. You have to draw the line somewhere, and the person that tested positive is on the wrong side. That's not a line I'm going to be responsible for drawing.

Lulz

I just have to say - I'm not sure how I got so lucky, but goddamn I'm glad that the Internet has brought together so many baseball-loving twenty-something stat nerds who love the 80's, pop culture, are funny, anti-establishment, and who write well.

I mean, it's all of my favorite things, rolled into one. Thank you, Brandon Stroud (the Dugout). Thank you, FireJoeMorgan.com. Thank you, Craig Calcaterra. Thank you, people of Camden

Chat.

But these days, it's mostly thank you, Carson Cistulli and the brilliant team at NotGraphs.

Especially because of this: the Amazing Adventures of Joe West.