Fuck you, Raul Ibanez.

(Hip) Breaking News

Hey Guys, the Orioles signed Jamie Moyer today.  He is old.  In fact, he might be older than a lot of the fathers of his current Norfolk Tides teammates.  Except JC Romero, Willie Eyre, Joel Pineiro, Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts, Bill Hall and Nate McLouth.  They are all also old.  Instead of fielding a AAA team it’s like they are trying to field an AARP team down in Norfolk.  Seriously, the average age down there is so old that everyone had to be re-immunized for polio.  But really, when these guys started in the league the main obstacles to reaching the bigs were dysentery and fording the Snake River.

So there it is, get yourself down to Norfolk and catch the exciting Tides baseball club before the inevitable dementia/alzheimers outbreak.

See you at the yard (I’ll borrow Moyer’s bifocals)

~Jjaks Clayton

Trade Target: Chase Headley

Yeah, we don’t write much anymore and I haven’t written in a long time. Come to think of it, it was right around the time I started banging your mother! BOOM!

Anyone who has been watching the Orioles this season knows that 3rd base has been an absolute train wreck defensively. Mark Reynolds clearly has the yips and shits himself whenever a ball is hit in his direction so he isn’t trusted there even when he isn’t hurt. Wilson Betemit is somehow even worse than that.  He has the range of Derek Jeter with hands made of what I believe to be stale bread. Ryan Flaherty looks like he can’t hit himself out of a wet paper bag.  Bill Hall appears to have spent a good portion of the last few months eating other people, and Steve Tolleson is Steve fucking Tolleson.

Endy Chavez Is Really Good

We’ve all heard the age old anecdote “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all” so here are my thoughts on Endy Chavez:

Baltimore: The City That Reads…Stupid Shit On The Internet (And Loves It)

Hello Baltimore, for the most part when I write here I don’t use foul language but I’ve had enough and some is bound to come out in what follows.  It’s been a while since anyone has written anything in this space.  Most of you probably haven’t noticed because no one reads this thing.  In the sparse history that I have written for this blog I have come to realize that the fact no one reads this blog is, to me, a compliment.   It’s a running joke around here that we don’t get many page views (almost ever) and the Orioles season so far has made me very proud that virtually no one wonders when there will be new content on ESH.  That sounds strange, doesn’t it?  Well, I’ll explain.

So Long J. Guthrie

Over the weekend the Orioles traded starting pitcher Jeremy Guthrie to the Colorado Rockies for pitchers  Jason Hammel and Matt Lindstrom.  This is going to be a different kind of post from me, I promise no stats and no research.  Straight from the heart.

I love baseball and more than that, I love the Orioles.  I am an Orioles fan.  The word fan is just a shortened version of fanatic, which means we are all a little crazy.

World English Dictionary

fanatic  (fəˈnætɪk)
—
1.	a person whose enthusiasm or zeal for something is extreme or beyond normal limits

This Is Birdland, Mr. Gutsy

It was a cold and dreary night in Birdland and the city was under attack from an enemy to the north and his army of followers.  The super villain, Captain Jeterus, was executing his plan to flawless perfection by weakly hitting the citizens of Birdland over and over again.  Not strong enough to actually hurt because of his lack of power, Jeterus chose to dink and dunk Birdlandians into an annoyingly soft submission.  It doesn’t take much these days as the metropolis is full of despair after decades of failure in protecting itself from the two evil empires of the north.  Hungering for help and thirsting for a hero, everyone in Birdland is on their last breath waiting to be saved.  A few have stepped up to join the fight, somewhat heroically, but soon learn that they cannot do it themselves.  Birdland is too far gone, too downtrodden and fractured to be saved by just one man.  In making one final push to save all those who call Birdland home and believe in the thought of good over evil, these are the stories of those men:

My Fake Interview with the Bundy Bros

Last night, at approximately 6pm, the Bundy’s joined me for a quick chat at the McDonalds on Eastern Ave.  I don’t know why, but that’s where they picked.

It’s the return of the ESH Poll Question

Unwritten Rules

There has been a lot of uproar lately about baseball’s “unwritten rules” and I’ve come to the conclusion that people don’t have any idea what they are talking about.  Much like fighting in hockey, people think the point is just to punch someone in the face, or throw a ball whizzing past their dome just to get your jollies off.

Brilliant!

Fuck the wave!

In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, the Texas Rangers are taking a hard stand against the travesty that is the wave. Every ballpark should be adopting a similar position. We need to make this happen at the yard, even though all the empty seats usually do it for us.

Vlad The (Rally) Impaler

Yesterday all of Birdland exploded with talk of Vlad Guerrero.  Unfortunately (as a lot of us predicted when he was signed in a publicity stunt) this explosion was not due to how he has been tearing up the league with his offensive pedigree.  No, it is because he has been almost worthless to anyone but opposing pitchers by selectively hunting down Orioles rallies and would be rallies and murdering them with the type of cold-blooded ruthless regularity that you would only expect to find from a comic book villain.  

Vlad Guerrero

He sucks, we told you so.

You (Still) Can’t Spell Mark Without K: A Snapshot In The Season Of Mark Reynolds, Volume II

The Orioles have played 47 games since my last spotlight on Mark Reynolds and his evil strikeouts so I thought it was time to update you all on how strikeouts are still overblown as being an indicator on sucking as a professional batter. In those 47 games, Reynolds has played in 46 of them and struck out 48 times in that span.

He Got Something Right…

I have made it public knowledge that I rarely agree with Kevin Cowherd of the Baltimore Sun but in his latest entry for the paper about some dos and don’ts at OPACY has at least a couple instances where I completely 100% agree with him.

Let’s take a look:

EriK the dick

Tonight’s Orioles game is interesting enough for me to stay up to watch the whole thing. The Orioles are in the midst of a very typical 4 game losing streak in which the starting pitching has been awful and the offense has completely disappeared. The bullpen on the other hand has actually been pretty solid. Funny how this game works isn’t it? So why the hell would I want to watch tonight’s game?

Where to begin…

The Baltimore Orioles look a lot like the Baltimore Orioles these days. Just when you think they might be better, they may have turned a corner, they shit themselves the minute they see Red Sox or Yankees. With two heartbreaking late game losses in a row, we’ve seen this movie before… many times.

Turd Bergesen

With the Orioles offense being unexpectedly TERRIBLE so far this season a lot of pressure has fallen on the starting rotation to carry the team to respectability. For the most part, they have done their job. Guthrie has been solid as always, Arrieta seems to have taken a step forward and Zach Britton has been as good, if not better than you can expect a rookie to be through a month of his MLB career.

Those 3 starters have an obvious stranglehold on a starting spot and give me hope for the rest of the season. This offense can’t be this bad over a whole year, can it? Plus, hopefully in a couple of weeks time we get back last years best O’s starter, Brian Matusz, to add into the mix. Yes, I expect him to be at least very close to the quality he was last year if not a little better. Guthrie, Matusz, Britton, Arrieta and one of Tillman or Bergesen. If you read the headline, you know which way I (and the O’s) should lean. For those of you who still love you some Bergey and consider him a good pitcher…this blog post is dedicated to you.

The Mark Reynolds – Garrett Atkins Comparisons Should End

Raise your hand if you were jumping for joy when we signed Garrett Atkins last year.

Ok.  No one.

Now raise your hand if you were jumping for joy when we traded for Mark Reynolds.

Hmm.  No one.  Well this guy.  Most of you were just nodding your heads slightly in approval.  A tempered optimism.  How could you have more than that?  All you heard for the next 5 months was “200 strike outs” and “strike out king” (whoops, we were guilty of that one too).

So Mark is struggling and there are plenty of theories why.  A new league.  Lingering affects from injury last year.  An overhaul in approach to appease the strikeout cry babies.  The reason doesn’t matter.  He’s struggling.

Now here are the reasons he and Garrett Atkins are not the same:

You Can’t Spell Mark Without K: A Snapshot In The Season of Mark Reynolds, Volume I

It is May 3 and we are a month into the 2011 MLB Season.  The Orioles have played 27 games so far and have a record of 13 wins versus 14 losses.  I wrote a piece a few months ago about Mark Reynolds and how everyone freaks out about his monstrous strikeout numbers and I figured I had a decent sample size from this year to go back and see if I was right or not.