I'll start with a correction, I got a little ahead of myself yesterday when I said we had a one game lead on the Yankees. As we sit currently we have a half game lead on the Yankees and now we wait on tonight's Yankees vs. Redsox game to see if we will have sole possession of first place.
Moving to Manny and his impact on this team over the last two days Manny has basically won two games for the Orioles and it is more prevalent with each game how important he is to this team. In yesterday's game he made a key play to end the ninth. When he had runner coming from second base and he faked a throw to first to pull the runner off of third then quickly spun and got the ball to JJ Hardy who got the runner into a rundown with Matt Weiters eventually applying the tag. That was a play that I don't think I have ever seen and it shows how smart Manny is as a defensive player. On the other side of that JJ had to be in the right place as well and that shows how hard this team has worked to improve their defense. It seems like more and more players are in the right place at the right time and even though we are still leading the AL in errors we don't look like that kind of a team anymore. Of course Manny was first up to bat after his great defensive play and he came through with a single to set Robert Andino up with the opportunity to sacrifce which lead to Nate Mclouth's walk off single. It was a great game and one that only builds on Manny's already great story.
That lead to today's game which unfortunately I couldn't see but did get to listen to most of it. While last night's game ended in a ninth inning walk-off today's took extras to the toon of a 14 inning epic with what sounded to be a great crowd especially for a Thursday afternoon game. I don't have much of the details but I know it ended up with Manny at the plate and him delivering with a walk-off single and once again he was the hero. The commentators mentioned his defense on the day so I can only assume that he had an all around game once again. We could not have asked for more when the O's decided to bring this kid up and it is awesome to see just what kind of things he can do. He has cut down on the errors from the left side of the field and proven that he can be leader at the plate as well.
So now we make the trek to Oakland and go up against a very good A's team. I know the A's lost today but until then they had one six straight and have a pretty firm hold on the number one spot in the wild card. With all that success you hope to maybe get them in a slump of some kind. But it is going to take more good defense and hitting to make this a good road trip. Of course these games don't start until 10 on my coast so I don't know how much I will see live but I think this team has the character and stamina to take a game like today's and turn it in to momentum heading into another big series with PLAYOFF implications (I love saying that). Let's GO O's!
No comments:
Post a Comment