And not one complaint from an Orioles announcer

By Mke Burke

Anybody who says they saw any of this coming as it pertains to the 2020 Major League baseball season needs to just get off the bus right here, because nobody in the world could have foreseen any of what we’ve seen since the never-before-seen 60-game regular season opened at the end of July.

Nobody knew what to expect and the season of unknowns has not disappointed in that regard, as teams have been shut down for extended periods of time due to COVID-19 outbreaks (hard to believe with groups of 40 traveling around the country together over a two-plus month span of time), seven-inning Rec League games constituting doubleheaders and softball rules being used to start extra innings.

Yes, even for a season we were even lucky (others would say foolish) to have, Commissioner Rob Manfred has been doing his utmost to make the great game of baseball disappear before our very eyes once and for all. Too bad the same cannot be done with him.

Here in Maryland, the Baltimore Orioles originally opened work in February in Sarasota, Fla., preparing for what everybody believed would be a 162-game schedule since we had been assured from on high that there was nothing to see here, that this annoying little virus would merely disappear within a matter of days and that we should simply carry on being our old self-indulgent, greedy American selves.

In the meantime, with few if any expectations to begin with, the 2020 Orioles received an early jolt right out of the box, as their best player, right fielder Trey Mancini, was diagnosed with colon cancer and immediately left the team to begin treatment.

On Monday, Mancini completed his six-month chemotherapy treatment and he and the Orioles have maintained throughout the process that he could have a full recovery and be available for the 2021 season.

Without their best player, and with an over-under Vegas win projection of 20.5, the Orioles opened their season Friday, July 24 at Fenway Park with a perfectly dreadful, yet not unexpected by many, 13-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox.

The Opening Day beatdown by the Sawx was so brutal that it prompted Red Sox color analyst Dennis Eckersley to get a dig at his good friend Jim Palmer, who is an Orioles analyst, by saying on the NESN broadcast, “You know what would be a tough job? To be an announcer for the Baltimore Orioles.”

Sixty-one days later, on Tuesday night, as the Orioles begin the final week of their regular season with a three-game series in Boston, Baltimore stands in fourth place in the American League East with a 23-31 record, while the Sox find themselves sitting in fifth place of the five-team division with a 20-34 record.

Thus, the teams will take it down to the wire these final six games to determine whether it will be Eckersley, or Palmer, who has only been on Orioles games via a feed from his home, who will have had the tougher job this season.

That the Orioles are already 2.5 wins over their Vegas win projection (the Sawx, conversely, open the series at minus-11.5 on theirs) and find their magic number for avoiding last place (any combination of Orioles wins and Red Sox losses over the final six games) at four, is nothing to sneeze at, though there is certain to be a nip this week in the New England night air.

Manager Brandon Hyde and general manager Mike Elias have done a terrific job keeping the Orioles watchable and, most importantly, competitive this season, particularly when you consider all of their games have come against the American League East and the National League East.

Sure, there remain a couple of teams that, in the words of the great Jim Bouton in “Ball Four,” that the Orioles “have no business scheduling,” such as the New York Yankees (3-7 this season) and the Toronto Blue Jays (1-6), but, as we’ve always known, you can’t pick your family or who’s in your division.

Granted, the Orioles did end a 20-game losing streak to the Yankees a couple of weeks ago, but with the way the teams are constituted at this point, the Yankees and the Blue Jays are just not good match-ups for the Orioles and, frankly, have not been for some time.

Maybe that is finally changing, at least toward a more competitive plane, as the Orioles have finally begun to promote players from their revamped and highly improved farm system to the big-league level, including at least five young plus-tooled outfielders and four to five quality starting pitchers, all of whom have made not-bad to impressive major-league debuts over the past month.

Rome was not built in a day, of course, and the Orioles have shown throughout the season that while they are capable of hitting, they are not very good at hitting in situations – such as runners in scoring position with less than two out. Their defense is also pretty bad and their baserunning has been even worse.

So, yes, naturally, there is a way to go for this team as far as being a contending team is concerned because Elias’ plan to make the Orioles that contending organization is to do it completely from within, and that means by stockpiling as much talent as possible at all levels of the organization, not just at the major-league level.

Still, regardless of what happens over the final six games, Orioles fans have to like what they’ve seen during this miserable little shell of a baseball season. For not only has this team competed to the final out in most every game this season, there have been enough flashes of genuine, young baseball talent on display in just about every game to tempt you to get that How Many Days Until Pitchers and Catchers Report countdown started even earlier than usual.

And then, I suppose, just continue to wait for this virus to just magically go away.

Mike Burke has been writing and covering sports since 1981. Write to him at [email protected], or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeBurkeMDT and listen to him, Matt Gilmore and Lydia Savramis on their “You Don’t Know Jack” podcast. Follow “You Don’t Know Jack” on Facebook as well.