Pitching, pitching! It’s all about the pitching!

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As the Baltimore Orioles prepare to take to the postseason for the first time since 2016, Luke Jones and Nestor prepare for an ALDS battle with the Texas Rangers and all arms on deck for Orioles pitching staff.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

game, bullpen, baseball, orioles, week, postseason, talking, pitching, series, roster, day, team, pitch, play, flaherty, starter, weekend, wildcard, nestor, avoiding

SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome back, WN S, T, Towson, Baltimore. And Baltimore positive we’re positively into the biggest baseball week we’ve ever had. We’re not going to play a game until Saturday night. Look, Joe joins us now we’re gonna put down the the pigskin at this point and the helmets and the injury reports and complaints about Ronnie Stanley and worries about the Pittsburgh Steelers and who’s going to be their quarterback Mitch Trubisky. This week and talks Memorial baseball look, that damn thing is gonna happen this week except everything’s gonna happen. Right number but it’s been around Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursday. Figure this out. I just want to say from a baseball perspective, it’s the first time since I’ve had the little date minders, where I had to keep October clear, we’re going to do our Maryland crabcake tour next week over drugs city courtesy the Maryland lottery with Jiffy Lube and our friends at window nation. That’s next Friday the 13th. We’ll be there from two to five doing that. I drug city and Dundalk, but I put the month aside and then the weekend and just trying to book us flights next week for the LDS. It started well that’s going to be Houston in Tampa, right what’s got to be champion, it’s gonna be Tampa unless they beat us. And then then all hell breaks loose we have to play on Tuesday. And I started this airline thing about a month ago. And then the Texas Rangers come in and then the Astros who stunk last week, we’re good this week, the whole thing’s been a rollercoaster ride for all of these teams, right?

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Luke Jones  01:26

No question about it. And that’s why if you’re the Orioles, you’d like the fact that you won 101 games, and you’re the number one seed and you can now sit back and which is strange. You know, and we haven’t talked about this part of it very much. You know, we’ve mentioned it in passing, but we talked about the need for the bullpen, and the pitching is tired, and these guys are tired. And they have like 17 straight days, without an off day in September until they finally came home early last week. But they’re gonna sit for five days. And Nestor that’s very anti baseball. You know, that’s very counterintuitive to how you think about the game. So, I mean, it’s a day longer than the all star break, which is the only extended stretch that you get all season long. So it’s going to be fascinating. Look, we saw this last year with Atlanta, we saw this last year with the Dodgers and the National League, two teams who had robust records. And before they know what they’re going home, after the Division Series. So it’s something that Brandon Hyde and Mike Elias, and these coaches and the players they’re gonna have to manage this week, but you’d certainly choose that over the alternative of a Best two out of three that we’re going to see with Toronto, or with Tampa Bay and Texas, we’re gonna see what Toronto and Minnesota where you can have a bad 24 hours, and it’s over for you. So you’ll gladly take that, but it’s just such a unique week, because what are you going to do to keep everyone sharp? I mean, we saw Kyle Bradish throw two innings on Sunday. He’s the probable game one starter, I don’t think no one’s talking about a turn expecting that at this point after the season he had but you know, beyond him, you’re gonna be talking about a bunch of guys that have sat for quite a while by the time they open up this series on Saturday against either Texas or Toronto or Toronto, Texas or Tampa Bay. See all that. All this craziness.

Nestor Aparicio  03:24

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Luke Jones  03:26

I mean, I think you and I were talking a week ago at this time we were thinking can be Tampa and Toronto and ended up at Blue Jays, you know, struggled against the rays over the weekend and

Nestor Aparicio  03:35

Geddy Lee avoiding me is what they say. I’m

Luke Jones  03:37

gonna die. Right, exactly. So, but that’s this best of three. That is the wild card round that the Orioles have avoided. It’s crazy. I mean, my goodness, when you’re talking about I don’t care if you’re how good you are. I don’t care what if you’re 10 games better than your opponent? I mean, a best the three, the two quality teams flip a coin. I mean, that’s really what it is and who’s hot right now and and who’s pitching is in slightly better shape at this stage of the game in October. So, you know, we’ll we’ll be talking about that as we gain some clarity here as far as who exactly the Orioles are going to be facing in the Division Series. But in the meantime, sit back and watch. You can rest Brandon Hyde and Mike Elias align their starting rotation. figure out who’s going to be on the roster. Figure out the back end of the bullpen. I think we know the top four or five, six names in the bullpen. But who’s going to fill it out after that? And you know, it’s very much an unusual feeling knowing that you’ve got some massive baseball but you’ve got five days to not kill time. They’re gonna use that time wisely, of course, but how do you

Nestor Aparicio  04:48

think they’re gonna use it wisely? They don’t really know how to hope wisely. Right. They hope

Luke Jones  04:52

they hope right. I mean, think about this. I mean, think about the hitters. You know, we I think we focus a lot on the pitching especially Talking about the young pitchers and all these guys are over their career max for and

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Nestor Aparicio  05:05

they get their ass kicked this weekend. And somehow they get eliminated quickly. And we like, oh, they shouldn’t have given them week, these guys needed a week off. And I don’t know that the starters needed a week off the way they were blowing by the Nationals in the Red Sox. And I think that’s a little bit of fool’s gold to I mean, it’s like just throwing strikes and working fast and getting through this. But I mean, they are playing teams just wanted to get on a plane to get season over with, right? I mean, so as good as the starting pitching look last week, and you say, Bring it on, let’s play baseball middle of the week, there was a little part for me that I like this rest for them. And psychologically, if they go out, they lose game one, shame on them and whatever. But like, all these things are gonna lose except one of them over the next three weeks, right? That’s the way the tournament works. So I’m not as concerned about that. In my perfect world. This is my perfect world, one seat, take the week off, get people healthy, go take some time. Go fish a little bit, go relax a little bit. You know what’s coming Saturday, there’ll be no problem. getting in the car and driving to the ballpark Saturday after going to BP a couple of days this week. There’ll be no problem getting ramped up to play the Tampa rays on Saturday night, if that’s what you’re going to do. Right?

Luke Jones  06:17

Yeah. And look, I mean, and I’ll take exception to you saying, you know, shame if they lose game one tip of day 199 games, the Texas Rangers for a large stretch of the season look like they might be the best team in the American League. So I mean, it’s not gonna

Nestor Aparicio  06:33

blame it on three days. All right, I’m not gonna blame it on that and say, Oh, they got stale. If they got stale, shame on them, like, you know, that they should have got, they should be about rest, and about getting your head together to play, go play for a month and play hard. And the play the way they’ve played, the way they’ve been capable of playing the way they played every day for six months. They don’t lose series. They don’t get swept. They don’t lose two in a row. They they have all of these. And they have the pedigree to go after Tampa, they’re going to be rested. Tampa is not if they get here at Tampa and Texas might run each other ragged through Thursday night, right? Like that could easily happen. One of these series is going to be one of those right? Yeah.

Luke Jones  07:11

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I mean, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. People don’t want to hear this because everyone wants to think that their teams and control their destiny and like, Oh, we’re so great. We can’t be beat. Just look at LA Dodgers over the last seven years. I’ve used that example. How many different times Nestor I mean, they have dominated the regular season, and they’ve won World Series to show for it. The point is not that the Dodgers are these choke artists or that they’ve done something wrong in October. It’s that it’s really tough to do. And the reality is all these teams are good. And there’s no it’s still a crapshoot at the end of the day. That’s why the best part about this week is the Oreos avoided a best to three, the rest assure we can talk about that. And Russ first rest. And you want to make sure that these guys who are used at 95 mile per hour pitching, don’t sit too much, you know, they bought they need to stay sharp pitchers same thing, they need to stay sharp, but the real benefit isn’t as much the rest. Sure, we can debate that. And that can benefit in some ways. But the real benefit is avoiding playing a best of three series, because we just know the random event that that is, you know, we you can talk about the Oreos, avoiding sweets, and they’ve been amazing, avoiding sweeps. But they lost. They’ve lost series to bad teams this year. The rays of law series, the bad teams this year, tamp up north Texas has lost series the bad teams this year, it’s baseball. So the point is you want to avoid that wildcard round entirely. And the Orioles did, and that right there puts them ahead of the game that puts Houston ahead of the game. It puts Atlanta ahead of the game and La ahead of the game because you avoid that best to three. But on the flip side, there is that very unnatural idea of a buy in baseball that, you know, we’ve only seen that, you know, this is the second year for it not counting the you know the weirdness of 2020 with the you know, the expanded playoff field and everything but there were no buys that year if you recall, so it’s different, but you want to get the rest. You’re going to try to play in our squad games and sim games and live BP and things like that over the course of the week. And then we’ll see how it plays out. To your point. You hope Tampa Bay and if you’re an Orioles fan, you’re hoping Tampa Bay and Texas beat the heck out of each other for three games meaning bullpen overworked and high scoring games and you know they they burn through their top three starters and all of that if you do that, then yeah, you’re feeling good about the Orioles and you’re feeling really good about Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez and John means you know, you mentioned the starting pitching. The one thing I’ll say John means pitching the way that he has since returning from Tommy John surgery. It’s looked a lot like John means now that doesn’t mean Cy Young or anything like that. But it gives the Orioles another viable starter in this rotation

Nestor Aparicio  09:53

now on August 1 When they’re they’re out looking for Flaherty and trying to deal for Verlander Scherzer like whatever was going to be I have we said, Don’t worry, John means we’ll come back. He’s gonna make three four stars in September, he’s gonna carry a no hitter into the city, like all of that, that that if John means it done this all year, they might have 108 games, right?

Luke Jones  10:16

Sure, sure. But you just said it. I mean, and I’ll also say and I’m glad you mentioned this, because I wanted to at least mentioned this in passing. Go take a look at some of the pictures that were down at the trade deadline. Jack flirty, wasn’t the only one who struggled Lorenzini through the no hitter for the Phillies go look at what his era was after that the rest of the way. I mean, to the point where I don’t know how he’s gonna fit into their their postseason plans. Dylan sees there was so much talk about the Orioles trading for him, go look at what his record was what his era was the rest of the way after the trade deadline, Jackson holiday for him. But we’ve talked about this. That’s why I’ve said and it’s no fun and everyone’s you’re just you’re just being a wet blanket about the trade deadline. More often than not, most of those deals end up either not moving the needle, or in some cases, they end up being a negative note, Jack Flaherty mean, at this point, I don’t know if he’s even gonna be in the bullpen on this postseason roster. I mean, that’s just where they are. But there are other teams that made deals, that didn’t work out too well, either. So if you’re trying to project something that at the end of the day is going to be an unknown. And just like the Orioles were hoping Jack Flaherty pitched well, when he did it. On the flip side, they they had no reasonable expectation that John means was going to come back and be look like John means not saying I thought he pitched poorly. But I didn’t think it look as good as it’s looked. And I think what’s encouraging about it, Nestor is I would say, for the most part, maybe this last start, be tough to say it was as good as he was in Cleveland. But for the most part, you feel like he’s gotten a little bit better with each start to and you know, from his first one when he came back, which was solid, it was okay, you know, again, against what the Cardinals I guess it was. But, you know, he’s just he’s looked a little bit better. And the velocities ticked up a little bit, you know, little more swing and miss. And he’s dumped in some breaking balls, which is that was never his biggest strength. I mean, he’s always been fastball change. I mean, that’s really been a means is bread and butter. I mean, that changeup has been his best pitch, you know, from over the course of his tenure with the Orioles. So, but you get a guy who, at this point, I mean, he’s going to be in the postseason rotation is going to start game two is going to start game three, game four, you know, however, they want to arrange their starters. We’ll see how it plays out. My only assumption at this point and Brandon Hyde didn’t confirm this over the weekend. But my assumption is Bradish is going to start game one. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to think that but you know, how do they want to, you know, where do they want to slot Grayson Rodriguez in where do they want to put means, you know, is it Kyle Gibson or Dean Kramer for that fourth spot. So they’ve got they’ve got a week now to figure that out. And a lot of that is going to be dependent on whether they’re facing the race, who they know very well, although the rays even since the last time the Orioles played them, they lost Brandon Lau another, you know, another injury for them. But

Nestor Aparicio  13:13

wondering what I mean, do you really want Texas thinking we want to avoid Tampa or like I I think what, to your point? You want a three game series that ends late in the night on Thursday? And really, really beleaguered winning team is what you want? Sure.

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Luke Jones  13:30

Yeah. I mean, that’s the best way you can frame it. I mean, both of those teams are good. Everyone in the postseason is good. Even the Minnesota Twins Nestor everyone, they’re almost like the punch line to this field. Go take a look at what the twins record has been since September 1. They had a really nice final month of the season, and they pitch well, and they played really well over the last five, six weeks, they had a solid August to do not dismiss the Minnesota Twins even even even though they’re 87 and 75. And you know, they’re the weak link Linka of this field. So we saw this with Kansas City in 2014. The Orioles not not so much the the current Orioles. But Orioles fans know this very well. No one was talking about the Kansas City Royals at the beginning of that 2014 postseason. I mean they were the team that was losing and the wild card game. And before you know it, they’re going to the World Series. So it is all about who’s healthy. Who pitches Well, who’s bats get hot at the right time and just who’s playing the cleanest baseball and who gets hot at the right time and you hope that’s the Orioles and look this team. There’s no reason to think they can’t be that team. But at the same time, just like any other team in this field. They’ve got things that you have questions about you have questions about, you know, do they have enough dominance on the back end of the bullpen, you know, to protect a one run lead against whoever you’re facing, you know, Tampa or Texas or even getting to the ALCS. You know, you have questions about the starting pitching beyond let’s say Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez who by the way I’ve never been on this stage. So even them, how are they going to respond to that? It’s a fair question, just like it is for anyone who’s on this stage for the first time. And, yeah, the offense, we saw an offense that was a little more, felt a little more hot, hot and cold in September, right. They had some stretches where they match the baseball, but they also had some stretches where they struggled to score runs. And I don’t care so much about over the weekend against the Red Sox. I mean, those are spring training games, you know, I mean, they were playing out the string the last three games, Brandon heights primary objective was to get some bullpen arm some work, and to not get anyone hurt over the final weekend. And they they accomplished it. I

Nestor Aparicio  15:36

call it a pumpkin baseball, not grapefruit to sort of the pumpkin League, right? Yeah, there you go. There you go. So

Luke Jones  15:40

not so much that but they did have some periods of time, over the last three, four weeks where the offense was up and down. So you hope that they have an up phase as they get into the Division Series. So it’s a lot of excitement, a lot of unknown, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. And I look 101 wins best regular season Orioles team since 1979. I mean, one of the very best in franchise history in terms of wins and losses. I mean, it’s been such a fun season. But there is no guarantee that they’re gonna play all month either. So enjoy this ride, enjoy this. Don’t take it for granted. Nothing. Just enjoy the ride, because it’s tough playoff baseball. I mean, this is a young team at the end of the day. And that’s not to say that I don’t think they can handle it. But to your point, there’s only gonna be one team happy at the end. And we know that we’ve talked about that for years with the Ravens in the playoffs and how that can go especially how it’s gone, even in the Lamar Jackson era specifically. So you know, it’s about that time and we’ve talked about this, we’ve, we’ve we’ve daydreamed about this my gosh, for a few years, with the this current era with the rebuild, and Mike Elias and all of that, it’s here, the times now for them to try to seize the moment and take advantage and see if they can bring a World Series back to Baltimore for the first time in 40 years, which just to be able to say that it’s very rare when when even even been able to talk about that over the last 40 years, a few times, you can count on one hand and fingers leftover. That’s how rare it’s been. So enjoy this moment. But also realizing that, hey, if this could end very quickly, or it could be that magic ride, not until late October, but even early November.

Nestor Aparicio  17:32

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Alright, so look, because we’re new at this this postseason baseball thing, bring everybody up to speed on when we’ll know if Jack Flaherty is on the roster or what the edges of the roster we’re going to look like. And concerns on the edges of the roster to your point means it’s going to be on the team that’s going to push somebody off that wouldn’t have a month ago, we weren’t even talking about this. And you reset right like players to play this week. Next week. ALCS you played the twins or whatever. It’ll be it’ll be different, correct?

Luke Jones  18:02

Yeah, yeah. You set a new roster for each two areas. They don’t have to do it until that day. I mean, it

Nestor Aparicio  18:08

comes from your right and Jorge Lopez was famously not available right accuracy. They don’t for him too late.

Luke Jones  18:15

Right, right. And anyone that’s not in your basically, buckets, technically, your 40 man roster, but basically, the SUP the practical rule is, every team has guys on the aisle, right? Every team has injured players and even if it’s someone that’s not on your 40 man roster, like Heston curse, that was a good example of this. And look, is he going to be on the roster or not? We’ll find out. But because you’re in a position that you have injured guys and Felix Batista as an example, this week finally learned over the weekend that he officially is going to have Tommy John and not going to pitch. No one was really expecting him to pitch it was a pipe dream all along, as my client said, but as long as someone’s in your organization before September 1. Basically, you can you can make it work that they can be eligible for the postseason. Jorge Lopez, as we said at the time of his acquisition was not I was after September 1, he did not pitch well anyway. And he was def aid over the weekend, I’m guessing chances are he’s probably not going to be claimed. And they’ll outright him to Norfolk. He’ll be in spring training with them next year. I’m guessing that’s what’s going to happen but roster set when the series starts, you don’t have to do it five days in advance or anything like that. So they will, the Orioles are becoming more and more like the Ravens in that way that they’re not going to announce it ahead of time, you know that that’s just not how they’re going to operate. Mike Elias is going to be tactical in the way that Eric caster is with those types of things. You know, the roster, which was 28 in September, it goes back to 26. But keep in mind, the roster construction is gonna be a little bit different in a five game series, you’re only going to have a four man starting rotation. So inherently, you know whether it’s Dean Kramer or Kyle Gibson, whoever you assume is not going to be in the starting rotation for The Division Series, they go to the bullpen, and then you have another pitcher to deploy there. So, because it’s a five game series, and you have you play game one, Game Two, off, game three, game four. Now, you have some off days built in here. So, are you going to have a typical bullpen during the regular season? For the most part, the Orioles went 13 and 13. You know, 13 pitchers, and an eight man bullpen not counting when they went six man rotation? So are you going to have that big of a bullpen? Knowing that odds are whoever that eighth guy is that you know, or heaven forbid, if you have nine? Is that guy really going to pitch? You know, unless the games tend to nothing, that guy’s probably never even going to be in consideration to pitch. So, you know, do you want to go with a couple of extra position players. So these are the things that every team weighs. And you know, the wildcard series is even, you know, even more dramatic in terms of it’s the three game series. So how do you want to? How do you want to structure your roster with just the three game series even though there’s no off days in between those three? So we’re gonna see how it plays out. I think roster concerns or questions on the edges, you know, my question for them because position player wise is, you know, is Heston curse stat on the playoff roster? Or do you go with someone like a Ryan McKenna? Speed and defense off the bench? You know, Matteo, we’ve talked about the fact that he’s been an Oreo for the last two months with this in mind with him being on the postseason roster, because we know he hasn’t played very much otherwise. So you you weigh those decisions. But on the pitching side, you know, I think you look at where they are with their bullpen. And it did come into focus a little more this past week. Tyler wells looked really good. Coming back from Norfolk. He’s going to be in the bullpen. You know, obviously you have Cano you have CNL Perez, who you hope Sunday was an outlier. You can throw strikes on Sunday, kind of looked like the Perez we saw on the first half of the season. So you hope just being a meaningless game that it’s not a big deal. But DL Hall, Jacob Webb, I mentioned wells, Danny coulomb, of course, and you know, then you get down to Okay. I’m for the sake of this discussion. I’ll say that Gibson’s there number four starter that puts Dean Kramer in the bullpen. Now it could be the other way around. And then you kind of come down to that last spot, presumably the last spot in the bullpen? Do you go with Fuji? Thinking, you know, if you get to a point where it’s game three, and your starters haven’t gone very deep and guys are already tired and you roll the dice that you get the good Fuji out of the pen because you need someone to construct someone out. Or do you go with the jack Flaherty and see if he can be better out of the pen? I don’t know.

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Nestor Aparicio  22:50

i A week ago, I

Luke Jones  22:51

would have thought the Flaherty idea in the bullpen had some appeal. But the Orioles didn’t really proceed in a way that made you think that that’s something that was that they were excited about. You know, he you didn’t see him get

Nestor Aparicio  23:03

excited about bringing him into a five four game in the seventh inning. I understand that online. I mean, I just don’t think he’s a guy that especially coming out of the bullpen for guys who aren’t bullpen guys, right. Like psychological. This is something I learned from baseball 30 years ago. Guys that are starting pitchers when you put them in a position and Tyler wells would be a good example, somebody that they took two months working on him to make sure that if they call his number on Sunday, they’re getting what they think they’re gonna get out of him. Right? These are smart guys. The guys that run this team are smart.

Luke Jones  23:36

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No, I hear you at the same time. Zach Eflin pitch really well for the Phillies out of the bullpen last year and still parlayed that into the contract he got with the raise to

Nestor Aparicio  23:43

be a song guys can do it. No, I would. Yeah. Right. And let’s be clear,

Luke Jones  23:49

I’m not saying that I have a high degree of confidence, or a week ago that I had a high degree of confidence in Jack Flaherty in that role. I was looking at him as a wildcard because the thing that I look, I just, I just rang off all those names. You don’t have guys who strike people well, and you’re playing close games in October. And when you’re playing one and two run games, and the eighth, seventh eighth and ninth inning gonna miss postseason games. You got to miss bats. So now it was good to see Cano striker a few more out over the last week. Maybe he’s kind of gotten himself back in a swing and miss mode with some of his stuff. Tyler wells did strike some people out, you know, do holes, got an arm to do it, you know, and certainly he’s capable of doing it. But you know, he’s a rookie, you know? So I mean, it’s, that’s a fair question. You have to question it. You know, Felix Batista, even with a torn UCL is not walking through that door. We know that officially now. So you’re missing that. And that doesn’t mean they can’t win. That doesn’t mean they can’t be successful. That doesn’t mean they can’t get to the World Series. But if you’re asking me to kind of size up and handicap the teams that are best equipped to make a deep October run, typically it’s having relievers who can strike people out And the Orioles. They’d have a couple guys who can do that, you know Jacob Webb has missed, you know a good number of bats since he came over in early August. But, you know that’s that’s where I do have some fascination, you know, maybe. Alright, let’s say it’s not Jack Flaherty, Dean Kramer. Kevin Cosman in 2014 was a starter until the postseason and then they put them in the bullpen. people kind of forget because they had Britton and Andrew Miller and Darren O’Day and Brad Brock and even Tommy Hunter, go back and look Kevin Gasman gave them some good work out of the bullpen in that 2014. postseason. So, you know, it might be a dean Kramer who? Let’s lay out the scenario right now whoever starting Game Two, you know whether it’s Grayson Rodriguez, John means whoever it is. Let’s say they run into some trouble, and they’re pulled in the fourth inning. That would not be shocking. That’s how postseason baseball works. starters aren’t going six or seven innings. They’re just not. In that scenario. Is it that impossible to think about team Kramer coming in and giving them two and a third and striking out four guys, I tell you, if he can do that, boy that helps their chances in terms of making a deeper October run. So you know, you’re you do have to be creative. And you’re thinking that you’re right. You’re absolutely right. Nestor, I agree with you. Not every starter can do that. And certainly, I’m not suggesting Dean Cramer is going to be a guy that’s pitching back to backs and pitching the ninth inning or anything like that. But you know, if you can identify a starter that can kind of be a swing man for you, especially knowing that playoff baseball is handled so much differently from a pitching perspective, knowing that suddenly the fourth, fifth and sixth innings are viewed in a different way than you view them in August or in June. It very much does become interesting to see if you know Dean Kramer who can strike people well, you know, he strikes people out as a starter, put him in a shortened up role that he might be able to contribute to good outings for you in the Division Series. You know if it goes five games, let’s say so, you know, those are the things that you’re weighing right now. And I think you’re Mike Elias and Brandon Hyde. Certainly you have you have to wait and you’re projecting right now. Okay, what are the matchups? What are going to be our best matchups against Texas? What are we going to be our best matchups against the rays? You know, who’s more, you know, who’s more right handed, who’s more left handed with their lineup, I mean, you’re looking at all these different things, and you’re looking at all the splits and all the numbers but you know, a lot of it’s still gonna come down to who was throwing Well, at the end of the season, and who’s throwing Well, coming out of the gate who’s gonna throw Well, after a five day break? You know, we’ve gone back to, to that notion. I mean, there are a lot of variables at work here. And that’s why it’s so difficult to predict. It’s why in baseball, rare, quite often, I don’t want to say rarely, but quite often the best team doesn’t win. And that’s not to scare Orioles fans here to say that I think they can’t win because I think they can but there’s a lot at work here you know, a lot of moving parts and so many guys who quite frankly haven’t been here and that could be their their advantage mind you, you know we’ve How many times have we said all year that maybe these guys are are too young and just ignorant enough to not realize that they’re not supposed to be this good this soon, you know, maybe they can carry that over to October. I mean, my goodness, how much fun would that be? So it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. But between now and Saturday, a lot of decision making a lot of options to weigh in terms of how they want their roster and their pitching staff to look and a lot

Nestor Aparicio  28:28

of baseball to watch as we get ready for the rangers of the Blue Jays and then over on the other side the Astros sit around and wait after what was a choppy year for them. We will be playing baseball here on Saturday afternoon. I guess it Billy Joel is gonna play Saturday night Stevie Nicks. We’ll learn more about that during the course of the week. Any breaking news you get first in the wn st text service brought to you by coons Baltimore fort security Boulevard. This will be here on Thursday from three and five and again on Sunday morning. Before the Orioles game I’ll say on Sunday and before the Steelers game because the Orioles and the Ravens are both gonna play on Sunday that much I’m pretty sure of the other part about this is rain and weather and domes and moving pitching and late night games and all the wackiness that the baseball playoffs seem to always sort of bring at some point weather and it gets colder as the as the month goes along as well. Although it’s gonna be at around here this week would have been nice to play wildcard games here this week. But it’s even nicer watching others play. He is Baltimore Luke you can find him out of Baltimore Luke on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all those places. I am me out on all the places that social media you can find us. We’re gonna be doing the Maryland crabcake tour courtesy of our friends at the Maryland lottery and window nation and our newest sponsor Jiffy Lube. MultiCare. Next Friday, the 13th It’s not bad luck. It’s the day before my birthday. It’s it’s the day before Stacy Keibler. His birthday. West Moore’s birthday is the same day as Jim Palmer next weekend, and Wes Moore got up and applauded a lease that isn’t really a lease and I’ve been emailing with him and I’ll be getting with our governor As well before it’s all over with I will not lose sight on the big picture which is the owners a little bit of a creek don’t think and this will be a time to write to rob Manfred about these things because I’m assuming that the commissioner is going to come see what Camden Yards looks like at some point here if we play enough baseball later on in the month as well. So I have a dear Rob Manford column this coming out as well as a column this off of the Browns game you can read all of Luke’s writings this week, he will be watching batting practice. And Owings Mills practice as it is Steelers week here, but we’re calling it Baltimore baseball week. playoffs. I’m Nestor he’s Luke, we are wn St. am 1570, Towson Baltimore. And we never stop talking Baltimore positive

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