Cabrera puts forth a solid effort, but Toronto clinches series win

Twenty-two year old Jesse Litsch, pulled up from Toronto's AA affiliate because of Cy Young Award winner Roy Halladay's appendicitis, gets the win in his first major league start tonight...and you can't help but feel good for the kid, especially with his old man watching and cheering him on like it was a little league game.

I counted 21 ground ball outs coming off of Orioles bats...that statistic attests more to Litsch's great outing than the Orioles abysmal hitting approach...besides Roberts, who was consistently working the count out there tonight? But there really wasn't much we could do offensively...our best chance for a big inning came in the first, but Tejada's GIDP (the first of two) took the wind out of our sails, on the first pitch no less! That first inning was our only real shot at getting to this kid...he looked rattled and nervous that inning, and instead of capitalizing on that situation, Tejada swings at the first sinking fastball he sees. Aaron Hill also displayed some stellar defense to aid the young hurler's first win.

Jim Hunter called Daniel Cabrera's stuff "dominant" tonight during the post game, but really how dominant was he? Sure, he only gave up two earned runs and pitched an eight inning game, but, once again, the walks caused the loss. The difference in this game was that one of his walks scored the winning run...that doesn't seem so dominant to me. He pitched well enough to win, but I wouldn't call it dominant, Jimmy. If he pitches like that 9 out of 10 games he gets the W, but I feel like the bad karma of the past two games carried over into this one tonight. Who would have thought that a 22 year old Irish kid would come in and dominate an Orioles line up littered with players who have some serious power, especially when playing at the Rogers Centre where my sister could crank one out over the right field wall...and its not like he had overpowering stuff! His fast ball was hovering around 89-92 mph all night long. It was just perfect location, changing speeds, and some great defense behind him.

It's just plain bad luck...that seems to be the story of the year for the Orioles' deflated pitching staff. It's the little things that kill this team...situational stuff like walking the lead off batter and not throwing first pitch strikes when runners are in scoring position; although, first pitch strikes should be a common occurrence no matter the base running situation if this pitching staff wants to be successful. Our staff has recently not been throwing first pitch strikes, from Bedard to Ray, and that is something you won't find in the box score that is really hurting this team and directly correlates to all of the free passes and the last four losses.