Luke Jones and Nestor reset Orioles weekend after loss to woeful White Sox

Luke Jones and Nestor reset Orioles weekend after loss to woeful White Sox

Luke Jones and Nestor reset Or…after loss to woeful White Sox

Thu, Sep 05, 2024 8:08AM • 35:43

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

talking, injuries, orioles, yankees, game, baseball, play, runs, bullpen, ravens, good, rehab, october, lose, pitching, week, rodriguez, point, pitch, football

SPEAKERS

Luke Jones, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, te, Baltimore, Baltimore positive. We had such a beautiful Baltimore positive day on Wednesday. Mark Viviano joined us at Cocos. Mike rasigliano joined us to start the football season, to kick it off. And we’re going to talk some football around here, for sure. But the baseball team stills playing. And if there was ever a night, Luke Jones for the for the baseball team, take a night off and let the football team either win or lose or do whatever they are. And if you’re listening on Friday, or see this on Friday before the baseball game, a little breather, you know, you just think they have to be the worst team in the history and all that. And, you know, my dude, Suarez, that’s my guy, um, and they didn’t hit the ball again. I which way are you going bad start, or they didn’t hit the ball, or both,

Luke Jones  00:49

both. I mean, Albert Suarez didn’t pitch very well. Gave up three home runs. He’s not someone who typically gives up many long balls. So that was a little uncharacteristic to say the least. The Velo was maybe down a tick, not not overly concerning, not way down, anything like that. But we, we’ve been talking about Albert Suarez and his workload and his background and how far he’s come to get back to the major leagues after seven years. And you know, I don’t want to say the baseball wilderness, because I don’t want to be too disparaging of international baseball, but it’s not Major League Baseball, right? So we’ve been talking about,

Nestor Aparicio  01:24

like, the White Sox,

Luke Jones  01:27

sure, yeah, yeah. I didn’t even mean to do that, but the point was, I mean, he’s, he’s worked a lot this year, and he’s been so huge for them. He had a bad start

Nestor Aparicio  01:38

to happen, right? Like, right? And how many he hasn’t had any of these all year. Picked up. You picked a terrible night to stink. You know, I mean, like, but that’s the way it went. Right,

Luke Jones  01:47

right? It’s baseball. And look, I joked about it on social media. I was texting with you earlier in the evening saying, I’ve never seen a team this bad. The White Sox are markedly worse than the 2018 Orioles, the 1988 Orioles, the 2021 Orioles, go through the list of the really bad teams that have played here, but it is baseball. It does only count for one loss. Maybe it should count for two, losing to the White Sox. But hey, the Yankees lost again in Arlington. They lose the series to the Rangers. The Orioles, even after they’re lost to the worst team, maybe in the history of modern baseball. Yeah, they’re still in first place, and they’re the they have the top record in the Al and everything is still sitting there for them. I mean, I

Nestor Aparicio  02:33

think it loses to the worst team in the history of Major League Baseball on September 4 and have a parade on November 4. You’re telling me, yeah, I mean, what I mean? Like, I can’t jump off the bridge about it. Um, I just keep looking at this and and seeing the significance of these Yankees games coming up. Sure, and if you could go up and win a couple or sweep, you know, you could, you can make a difference or not, but every day is going to make a difference. And I had Barry bloom on this week to promote that he’s wearing his Yankees hat because that, you know, that’s just at this point. This point. He’s 80 years old and doing this forever, just trying to antagonize me. Um, I said, I’m just glad to be antagonized by Yankee hat again, because we couldn’t even compete with him for all these years. But you know, the notion that this team could catch fire in October, we’re sick. And I talked about him, Mark Viviana, and I talked about at length, being a baseball fan that he is, and all that I am, I’m having a hard time being fatalistic about any of this, other than when you and I talk at length professionally, as we do, that’s problematic, right? I mean, it’s problematic in the pitching side, but it’s not going to decide their fate in game one of whatever that is. They’re gonna have a chance at this. You know what? I mean, they’re gonna have a chance to set up pitching, to set up whatever their best options are, in whatever their circumstances, to try to go win a World Series in a couple of weeks. And that’s because they didn’t get swept last week. You know, we’ve talked two weeks ago like, oh my god, the Astros come in here and do a number, you know, like, none of that bad, awful stuff has happened. They’re treading water, as we kind of expected them to do, right? Yeah. I

Luke Jones  04:03

mean, when you look at the number of injuries, specifically the number of pitching injuries, although Jordan westburg, Ryan mountcastle, Ramon Arias now, I mean, they’ve, they’ve taken some hits on the position player side too. I mean, thank goodness gunner Henderson, who broke the single season club record for home runs by a shortstop on Wednesday night. I mean, Gunner didn’t want to lose to the White Sox. I’ll say that much about Wednesday night’s game. I mean, gutter slugged about really well. But look, I’ll keep saying this, even if you doubt the rails and their ability to make a run in October and we talk about the bullpen or the health of the starting rotation, or the up and down nature of the offense. I’ll continue to say then, who someone from the American League is making it to the World Series? Who do you love? Well, look at the Yankees. And we’re talking about the Royals losing to the White Sox. By the way, the Yankees lost to the White Sox several weeks back. You know it it does happen. It is baseball. They have one somehow. The White Sox

Nestor Aparicio  05:00

without winning, though, oh, no doubt somewhere there,

Luke Jones  05:04

believe me, they’re horrible. This is not me. I’m just it’s baseball. They’ve won 32 games somehow, because they are woeful, but they were better than the Orioles on Wednesday night. So you give them credit, and you give the Orioles the you know they’re they’re scorn for one night. But I’ll continue to say this, whether we’re talking about the Yankees. I mean, a month, you know, a little over a month ago, we were talking about the upstart Boston Red Sox. They’re 70 and 70, right? I mean, their playoff hopes are really kind of circling the drain. I mean, they’re not out of it, but it’s such a baseball

Nestor Aparicio  05:40

thing for teams to fall apart after the all star break, right? Like, like that. Just every year, just like in the NFL, there’s a couple of teams to start, eight and three they finished, you know, whatever. And that’s just sort of the nature scheduling. It’s nature of injuries. And it’s, quite frankly, the story of the Orioles have had two seasons, right? The first 70 games in the last 70, you know, like, literally, they were a 600 team and they were 500 team, and that’s what they’ve been and it’s kind of like the crowds. And people were bitching about the crowds on Wednesday night, and people are now on my twitter at least. And, you know, who knows what this maniac that’s running that thing is is doing in this political season, but it’s like the people that go when they’re 10,000 people there, like it when there’s 10,000 people there, and they have a good day, they don’t really want 40,000 there every night. The people that come, and the people there’s 40,000 there, they only come when there’s 40,000 there to get a trophy or get a widget or a freebie or whatever. And that’s their experience standing in line for two hours to get some like there’s there’s different, there’s strokes for different folks in that way. And I think there’s the same thing here for what we’re seeing in, you know, good season and bad season, when you lose these many key players, integral parts, you’re a 500 team. Now, Arizona was all that last year. They played play 700 baseball in October. That’s all that matters. If you can win two out of every three days in October. I keep sort of saying that in some sort of weird way, but I think they’re capable of doing that against any of these American League teams, um, even with Suarez, you know, like, even if they have to, I’m not going to say they’re going to start calling but, but you know what I’m saying? Like, they’re going to find three guys to pitch next month, and we’re gonna hope Westbrook’s back, and there’s been, like, more good news than bad news. I don’t want to say that because urea, but guys are coming back. Right? Like you have some confidence being down there with the press badge, seeing people around. Katie Griggs, hello, that there is some motion toward a Calvary, right? Yeah, yeah. There is.

Luke Jones  07:39

I mean, in fact, on Wednesday. I mean, the best news for the Orioles on Wednesday had nothing to do with what happened during the game, obviously, but Grayson Rodriguez threw a bullpen, threw about 20 pitches mixed in some off speed with his fastball, said he’s feeling good. He’s confident he’s going to be back. I mean, obviously it’s not imminent, but he’s on track to start a rehab assignment here in the not too distant future, and then get back, you hope by, you know, the next, the last week of of September, at least the last week of, you know, the last 10 days of September where he can make a start or two, you know, I mean,

Nestor Aparicio  08:15

he’s felt slow, right? It felt like he might be rehabbing now, right? When it happened, this has felt like, and maybe they’re slow playing it, because, like, let’s be honest, they need him for Game Two, right? I mean, or wherever, game something, right?

Luke Jones  08:29

Well, I mean, it might be game three now, right? Because, I mean, effluent has been so good, where, you know, Grayson, Rodriguez, you don’t necessarily need him to be the two. If efflon is going to be what Eflin has been, which, I mean, you could debate effluga could be the one right now, with Corbin burns being a little more up and down. But look, I think when you’re talking about a lat slash terrorist strain, you know, talking about the lat muscle, I said to you at the time, it’s tricky. And as much as they were optimistic, and they made clear that this wasn’t the three month absence that he had a couple years ago in the minor leagues when he was on the cusp of being caught up, what, June, early June of of 22 but I also, I wasn’t at all convinced that, oh, he’s gonna be back on the mound in three weeks either. You know, this has played out about how I thought it would

Nestor Aparicio  09:17

six weeks or eight weeks, and you’re not in peril of getting knocked out of the playoffs. Let’s go with eight weeks, right? Like little bit more, like four, right? Yeah, yeah, I

Luke Jones  09:24

think that’s fair, but, but I think some of this is also a pitcher can’t pitch it less than 100% or else, 98% right? I mean, if it’s much worse than that, they’re not going to be very good, because that’s the

Nestor Aparicio  09:36

same thing with a cornerback in football. If they can’t run just a little bit, it’s over, they can’t play, right?

Luke Jones  09:42

I mean, you’re talking a cornerback in football might be able to get away with a bump shoulder, because you can put a harness in it, but it but if it’s a leg or a hood or a knee, it’s, you know, it’s not going to be good. So, I mean, the margin for error between the best players in Major League Baseball and guys that are not very good, it’s not much. I mean, it really is. So you’re kind of at the mercy of trying to just get him right physically So, but he threw a bullpen. Danny cool him a couple days ago, threw to live hitters. You know, live batting practice is feeling good again, not imminent, because, keep in mind, he’s been out since June. So again, he’s an he’s another guy that’s going to want to at least probably get a couple games of rehab, if not more than a couple. So late September, I get it, Jacob,

Nestor Aparicio  10:28

right, like we’re getting into the point where you can’t send guys down right, like to some degree.

Luke Jones  10:36

Well, triple A their season concludes September 22 so yeah, the clock’s ticking. You have about two weeks, little over two weeks, you know, right, right around there to get them in. There are other ways to, you know, there are other ways to massage, a rehab assignment. You can, you can do sim games. You can do different things like that. You can have guys at Sarasota, whatever it is, but, but, yeah, the clock’s ticking, no doubt. I mean, but, because I’ve talked about this a lot, Brandon, hi, talked about it earlier on this homestand, that there’s getting guys back healthy, and then there’s they’re back healthy, but you want them to be themselves, right? I mean, you don’t want Jordan westburg coming up and he’s a shell of what he normally is, because he hasn’t had any at bats in two months, and is healthy enough to play, but not healthy enough to thrive. I use that term a lot when we’re talking about, usually in the context of football and the Ravens and someone, someone coming back from a torn ACL or an Achilles or something like that. And I always say there’s healthy enough to play, but you want guys to be as close to healthy enough to thrive as they can be, because

Nestor Aparicio  11:37

thinking about your injury or feeling your injury, or the relative sharpness that you have to have in the acuity. We’re talking about gunner Henderson not being able to hit a fastball after taking three days off, and the shadows coming in October, and he’s perfectly healthy. You know what I mean? Trying to hit a fastball when you have it, there’s a whole different level of that for all of these guys that will come back, you know, if they make it back. And the same thing from the pitching side of it, man, command location, you know, the precision to do what they do when you haven’t done it for a little while. Um, it’s not like riding a bike in that way. And I think that’s really hard for fans, because all they see is the baseball card and the guy, and they say, Who’s Grayson Rodriguez, yeah, but he hadn’t been able to pick up a baseball in a month, you know, like, it’s different, yeah,

Luke Jones  12:27

I think I again, I’m using football because we, we tend to talk about injuries way more in football, right? And it’s football season, and the Ravens are off to, you know, to 2024

Nestor Aparicio  12:36

baseball team gets hurt, and everybody gets

Luke Jones  12:39

hurt, sure, sure, but I think I’ve talked about this with people, even within the Ravens organization, even some football people. I think Madden, you know, the video game that I know, doesn’t mean as much to you, but anyone, even my age, and certainly younger, I mean, from a cultural standpoint, what Madden has meant for NFL fandom and knowing kids love video games all that, but Madden. And I can remember being 13 or 14 years old when I really started playing it on the regular guys would have injuries, and they would be out, and it would say they were out three games, and then when they came back, they were just themselves again, right? I mean, you didn’t even think twice about it’s like, oh, I can’t even remember what injury it was. It’s not a light switch, it’s a dial, you know, now certain injuries, when someone comes back, rarely is there a lingering effect, and then they’re off, off and running, and it’s fine, but a lot of these injuries, it lingers, and they’re going to feel soreness, and they’re not necessarily going to be right. And I just not talking about pitcher arm injuries, because that’s a little bit of a different category. But, you know, Jordan Westberg, for example, he just, he’s now at the point that, the last few days, he has shed the splint and is actually starting to do some light throwing. He’s been doing kind of one taking one handed grounders for a while. I mean, he’s been doing as much as he can to stay in it, but he’s going to get to a point where he’s cleared to start swinging and all that. And I’m not at all suggesting that the fracture will not be fully healed when this time comes, but he’ll feel soreness, and it’s going to be a matter of managing that and seeing how effective he can be, and how much like Jordan Westberg, he can be, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to feel 100% truly, 100% at all the rest of the year. I mean, he’s probably going to feel that from time to time, right? It doesn’t mean he can’t be effective, but that’s part of it. It really is a dial, right? It’s not like rehab, rehab, rehab, rehab, perfect. Never have to do anything again. I’m fine. I’m golden, right? I mean, it’s, it’s not that way. There’s a lot of maintenance involved with all these injuries. So I’m not saying that to be an to make an excuse or to be doom and gloom, but it’s part of the picture. So when you’re looking at at him, or you’re looking at, I mean, Ramona Reus, who knows, uh. Again when you’re still on crutches a few days after it happens. You know, that’s making me wonder if he’s going to be back. I mean, we don’t know. They haven’t said, but, you know, Dean Kramer through a side session on Wednesday. It’s, I think he’s trying to avoid the IL You can backdate three days. I don’t know if he’s making a start this weekend, or if they try to bump it back a couple days, and he makes a start, you know, for not the Tampa series, but the series right after that, but again at Boston, you know, early next week, or he might go on the IL and then you’re making a move. So, I mean, just, there’s a lot going on here. And to your point, I think most of it’s been positive. Ramona Reus, recent injury aside. I mean, these guys are increasing their activity level, you know, Jacob Webb, you know, not, not a good, a terrible statistical rehab outing for Bowie on Wednesday night. But I looked at the box score, inherited runner score, different things like that. I mean, wasn’t disaster, but certainly wasn’t great. You know, do you want to give him one more or is he ready to go? So you’re going to be getting guys back, and you try to integrate them in where appropriate. And you know, in the case of Danny Coolum, when he comes back, is he going to be pitching the eighth or ninth inning just like that? Do you try to ease them in for at least one or two outings? You know, a lot that’s going to depend on how the rest of the bullpen looks at that point in time, so it’s very much a moving target. All of these plans are still in pencil. As Brandon Hyde alluded to the other day, you’re at the point in the season now where you are running out of games, whether you’re talking about rehab assignments at Norfolk or just games on the regular season schedule that, if any of these guys has a setback, and I’ll even throw you know, think back to last year what John means. You know, long before he came back, but when he was in the midst of his rehab, he ended up straining a back muscle going through rehab that that slowed him down. Remember, he was supposed to be back June or July, that ended up being September as a result. So if anything, heaven forbid, anything like that, happens to any of these guys, someone tweaks an ankle, something like that, they’re probably done because you’re just going to run out of time. So it’s again, it’s in pencil. There are positive, favorable, encouraging updates. These guys are getting closer and closer. I mean, like I said, Danny, cool, I’m throwing live batting practice that’s getting pretty close. Grayson Rodriguez throwing a bullpen where he’s mixing in his off speed stuff and not just throwing fastballs. That’s getting pretty close. That doesn’t mean next week, but you’re hoping, you know, two weeks, two and a half weeks, because, again, you’d love to get these guys into at least, least a couple.

Nestor Aparicio  17:47

There’s three. Yeah, right. Yeah, we

Luke Jones  17:48

are right. I mean, you don’t, you don’t want grace and Rodriguez going from throwing bullpens to start in game three, right? Well, it is

Nestor Aparicio  17:55

getting late early, but the other part of this is they just keep winning games enough to win one, lose, one, win, two, lose one that you know, like, first place every day. You know, still waking up first place the day the Ravens kick off the season. So I, um, you know, and nobody’s coming to get them in that way. And I don’t think anybody’s coming to get them in any three game starting pitching matchup either, right? Like, and if they get bounced, they get bounced. And we’ll all look back and say they had all these injuries. I would just say you gave me a hell of an infirmary there, right, like that whole list, and you ended with Webb, who might be the first one to come back right. Of all of these names that are there to your point, they’re not all going to be available on October, 2, third, fourth, or whatever, when they have to go play baseball. Some of them might, but all of them won’t be. It’s better make sure it’s westburg. You better make sure it’s Rodriguez. You know what? I mean, like the really key guys, no, no offense to any of those guys that are going to pitch an ing or bullpen guys or whatever. But man, you need five innings out of Rodriguez in game 234, whatever it is. You need Kramer to be right. You’re gonna need innings out of him. And I think he’ll be okay. I mean he I mean that thing that happened to him, it’s awful. I think you’ll be okay. Um, by then, I’m worried about by then, everything for me now is who’s starting game one, who’s starting game one. We wouldn’t know that, because our game one guy’s a mess. You know, you know, whatever protection that I saw Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have down in Buenos Aires when they erected this um, sort of SWAT thing around the hotel, when I was down there 20 put that around E, because we can’t have anything happen to him, bubble wrap him, but he’s got to go out and start right and stay sharp, and all of these things. Um, Luke, we’re going to talk football. We get to that. We’re going to do baseball here with all this the bats thing. Do you want to yell about that a little bit more, because, like, when they do lose, even when it’s, you know, nine to whatever, um, when the bats don’t awaken, and this is, this has been a problem for a couple months, much more so than we have a couple of injuries or this or that they just, there’s, there’s not a level of consistency about them hitting the ball that they. Better figure that part out into October, because I’d hate to see them losing games nine to one in the playoffs because they’re not hitting the ball in game three, you know?

Luke Jones  20:08

Yeah, well, if, but if you’re giving up nine runs, that’s different if you’re losing four to one, right? Or something like that. Look, we’ve talked about this. Do they need to be more consistent? Absolutely. I mean, August was rough, although I’ll continue to point this out, because people don’t want to look at statistics. And you know, stats are for nerds, who are the

Nestor Aparicio  20:32

offenses in math, dude, you know what I mean. But I wrote my point involved reading they do. So yeah, there is a point where you just see the games, and then there’s the statistical part, where I’m not a dummy, but I get overwhelmed by how much information. And I think Ben and Kevin and a lot of people in the media do a really good job, and you too, of like, trying to say it’s not as bad as you think it is, right? And that’s where you want to be with it, right, even though it looks ugly and the freaking errors are the amazing that’s the part you’re like, throwing the ball into center field. Like, that’s crazy. But the hitting part of this, I still hold some level of confidence that they can hit their way to a World Series and pitch well enough to hold some water against other meat. They’re not going to see Glavin Smoltz and Avery next month. They’re not.

Luke Jones  21:16

I mean, it’s just, you look at the rest of the American League field, and you just say, look, August was really rough. I get that. I agree with that. I talked a lot about it. I wrote a lot about it. I mean, it needed to be better. But for all the hand wringing about how bad their offense is, there are two teams in the American League who’ve scored 700 plus runs this year, the Orioles and the Yankees. I mean, so who are all these other offenses that everyone wants the Orioles to be more like? Well, they don’t score as many runs as the Orioles. So last time I checked, you don’t need to be a saberman. You don’t need to be Bill James to figure out that the idea is to have more runs than the other team. Now, run prevention and their defense. Yeah, I’ll hear that their defense has been mediocre. We’ve talked a lot about that as well. So it needs to be more consistent. I’ve talked a lot, a lot about Adley rutschman. We talked about gunner Henderson having a not so great August. Gunner Anderson’s looked fantastic again and has come on. You know, we’ve talked about Anthony Santander and the year that he’s had that are missing Jordan, westburg, Colton cowser, who, by the way, is very likely going to be al Rookie of the Year. He’s up and down, and he’s inconsistent, but when he’s going, boy, you love having him. So a lot of this, again, goes back to how are all these guys doing come the first week of October? I mean it, it sounds dismissive. And I don’t say that to mean that the next month doesn’t matter. Because, of

Nestor Aparicio  22:42

course, it does about Lamar and the Ravens over the next four months just it’s like Bill Murray and meatballs. It just doesn’t matter. And I feel that way back September. And maybe that’s why the place is sleepy and there’s not a million people down there to see the worst, even modern Israel, even on a beautiful night, because, like, the playoff ticket, you know, if you you got 50 bucks laying around right now, you kind of want to put it toward game too, if you can make, I mean literally, I think there’s a little of that Raven tickets next week. And like, like, there’s a little bit of these games don’t matter as much. And the big games are happening at the Yankee Stadium. Those games are here. I think we different. I think our fans can go up. There be 20,000 empty seats in Yankee Stadium too, if you want to go up there in the middle of the middle of the week to be pretty good idea for you and me. New York’s nice this time of year. It’s prefall. I got some spots, but I can’t get as worked up about any of this as I can Lamar and the chiefs on Thursday, or the Raiders that you know, like I’m not they’re not playing key games right now. They’re just trying to get healthy. And I think the healthy reports and the day to day of the grapefruit meets pumpkin league. I call this the pumpkin League. It’s important. It’s good. We need it. We need we need to win every other one, you know, at least for a little while here. But getting the guys healthy, that’s our report every day. In addition to, let’s not give up nine runs at score one and get three hits and throw the ball around.

Luke Jones  24:00

No question, no question. But again, you look at the landscape of the American League, the Orioles through the end of the White Sox series, even with an ugly loss to the worst team ever. I mean, they’re awful, but they were going to win another game at some point. And as I mentioned, the Yankees a few weeks back, they lost the game to the White Sox. It does happen. You don’t like it, but you move on. It still only counts as one, even though maybe it should count for two or three. I don’t know. I’ll let other people decide that. But you just look at the landscape, Yankees. They’ve been doing the same thing, right? Two and a half weeks ago, it felt like maybe the Yankees, and I think some people were even wondering, is this the time they’re going to start to take off? Baltimore’s really scuffling all that. I listened to MLB Network radio a good bit. They were talking about that possibility. Yankees have been mediocre since then. Cleveland mediocre over the last 10 games, five and five. Houston, I think you made an interesting point, because you. Talked about, we were talking about it with the Red Sox, and how you see these teams that might have a surge right before the all star break, and the Red Sox certainly did that, and then you see them fall off. I’m not suggesting Houston’s falling off, and I think Houston is still the team that has the most impressive pedigree out of anyone in that Al field, because they’ve done it, and they’ve been the World Series and all that. And

Nestor Aparicio  25:20

that’s what Barry bloom came on and said, he’s like, Yankees can’t beat the Astros. They’re kryptonite all that. Watch out for the Astros, because they’ve been there before, right? No doubt. However,

Luke Jones  25:28

what I will say is they have had to expend so much energy just getting back to the point where they are now. And you’ve seen them the last couple weeks now, they’ve had some winning streaks, and you think, Oh, wow, they’re ready to take off. And then they go five and five, or they lose two series in a row, or something like that. Point is they’re not winning 100 games. And, you know, they’ve already lost 64 you know, through, through, you know, entering Thursday’s play. So it just speaks to there are no dominant teams here. And someone, you do the math, I don’t care whether you are adamant that it’s not going to be the Orioles or whatever, someone in the American League will get through the tournament, get through the bracket and emerge as the Al pennant winner and play in the World Series. It’s

Nestor Aparicio  26:14

going to be a bad, scrappy game, fives and sixes and sloppy starting pitching and maybe bad weather. And it’s going to be all of that. It’s October man. It’s going to be short rest and weird game times and shadow, you know, like, and it’s going to be about James McCann hitting a two run homer in the eight you know what I mean? It’s, it’s all that’s what it is. It’s Tito Landrum, right? And we’ll talk about all of this. But I’m heartened as we sit here, no matter what happens this weekend or even what the Ravens do on Thursday night, I’m heartened that they’re going to play baseball in October, and that we’re at least getting some good news on some of these players that we can envision. Burns game one, effling game two. Burns game one, because he’s fixed, because he pitches well the next pitches well enough the next couple of weeks. Ethn, Game Two, Rodriguez, game three, knowing you might only get three, four innings out of him, you have Kramer ready. You have Suarez ready. You figure out where it is, and you get westburg back in this lineup. You know, I feel like a politician on this, but this is, these are all the thing. Mullins needs to be better, right? The bet, you know, you know what? On the eve of a raven season, I’m gonna use one of John Harbaugh’s favorites. Yes, so many, but one of his favorites is the best versions of themselves.

Luke Jones  27:32

Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ll continue to say it though they need to figure out that bullpen Dean Kramer look as it pertains to October, will he pitch out of the bullpen in a long relief role? Potentially, they need to figure out the bullpen Danny cool, of the players we just mentioned, Danny cool is way more important than than many people realize, because he’s a lefty who can get right handers out as well. And you need that. I’m going to continue to say it. They need four or five guys in their pen. Come the last week of September, you need to identify all right, sir. Anthony Dominguez, yen your canoe. Gregory Soto threw another scoreless inning on Wednesday night. There’s another positive from a otherwise miserable game, losing to the White Sox, but he’s starting to look better.

Nestor Aparicio  28:21

Keep going down the line to make Kimbrel number six or seven, and then you throw them off, right? Like, literally.

Luke Jones  28:26

I mean, Craig Kimbrel, at this point, he would not be in my October bullpen. It’s that simple. I mean, why? But because he used to be good. I mean, that’s why I said to you the other day, he’s running out of time. But the point is, and I’m not trying to pick on Kimbrel specifically, of that group of players that they have, who are the four or five that are going to be okay? These are the guys, you know. You’ve got off days, you know, so you can throw upper levers in just about every single postseason game. I mean, you have enough off days where that is very reasonable to do that. So who are the four or five? Yeah, I get it, believe me. You want Elaine to go as deep as possible. You want burns to go as deep as possible. You want Grayson Rodriguez to be able to be able to go as deep as possible. But when I say as deep as possible in a 2024 modern day postseason game, that’s usually not much more than six, right? I mean, that’s just how that’s how the game operates. 103

Nestor Aparicio  29:15

pitches on October 12, the shadows falling, yeah. Sixth inning. Games three to two, we the bullpen better be there.

Luke Jones  29:24

That’s right, it’s got to be there. It’s got to be there. I mean, we can go off. I love you. We’re

Nestor Aparicio  29:28

talking about, this is fun, man, 15 years we don’t get to talk like, like this, you know, this is, you know, this is, by the way, you said something, because we can break it off and I’ll give you your final, you know, Kumbaya and all this. But you make something about Madden Football, there were injuries in Mad

Luke Jones  29:43

football. What? Yeah, yeah, in fact, see, I’m old enough to remember people now. I mean, you got PS five, and the graphics are unbelievable and all that. I mean, I haven’t played a video game other than I have, like, an old school Nintendo, like one of the, you know, in recent years, they kind. Kids

Nestor Aparicio  30:00

play like zay flowers, Lamar Jackson, that is their cornhole, right? Kind of, sort of, for some of these young people.

Luke Jones  30:05

I mean, I mean, these guys still do stuff like that too, but yeah, I mean, Lamar Jackson loves playing video games. So I mean, and he’s not alone. Most of these guys in their 20s love playing video games. But I can remember playing this like something

Nestor Aparicio  30:17

out of slap shot to me, but go ahead. Go right ahead. I can keep going. I

Luke Jones  30:22

can I can remember playing the Sega Genesis version of Madden. It’s probably like Madden 97 something like that. You know, right when the Ravens became a thing. So it was exciting having the Ravens in a game. But I can remember a player would get hurt. There’d be the little graphic of him writhing in agony on the field, and they would literally have the graphic of an ambulance come out, even if a guy had a sprained wrist or something like that, an ambulance would come out on the field, and they would just, you know, then they drive off. I mean, it was to see, right? That’s so cheap. I

Nestor Aparicio  30:54

mean, again, the graphics are so hold on, dude, I’m older than you, and I’ve been going through this all week with people older than me, like Viviano, who’s in retirement. At some point, I find Jamie Costello get drag him on here too. Dude, when I was a kid, we had the little metallic football kind of looked like the 2018 ravens when Lamar took over. It’s just so you’re familiar then. Dude, 1979 Scott Medora, who was the one that gave me my oiler cap that you can file on eBay now, which is really kind of cool. I had my oiler cap that we got at the Sears and Roebuck in 1979 and this is when the Coleco handheld game came out with the little red dots where you could pass a run. And I became very proficient in this before Pac Man, like right on the eve of Pac Man, sort of asteroids was happening and breakout was happening, not anywhere near Donkey Kong yet, or like a burger time, not nowhere in that. And certainly no joystick Atari that kind of came a little bit later, um, but that little, you know, we had, and then you had the baseball game where you pitch and hit, and you had to get your little fingers in there and do that thing and battery. And it would, it would literally just do that, you know, just die. And so that’s what I had when I was a kid. So I would think that Lamar Jackson, in addition to having, you know, his own real version of football. I did not know there. I’ll say this. There were no injuries in stratomatic, strata, Matic. You know what I mean? Greg nettles never got hurt. He played. So even the guys that did get hurt played stratomatic, you got 162 out of everybody, whether you wanted it or not. So I don’t know you think when I get older I’m gonna want to play video games or read Hemingway? What do you think probably read? Yeah, okay, all right, I’m actually writing this week instead of reading anything else. You want to drop about the Orioles before the weekend, because we’re going to do so much football here. No, I

Luke Jones  32:55

mean, other than, I mean Ray’s coming in. I mean, they’ve, they’ve continued to hover around 500 I think again, the Kramer, you know that I know going into the off day, it was still TBA, the Kramer injury or status was kind of muddying things a little bit. I mean, you’d like to give eff an extra day, right? You know, coming off of coming back. So, yeah, we’ll see how that looks. But take two out of three. Take two out of three. Take two out of three. Take two out of three. I mean, they keep doing that, based on how what I see from the Yankees that that’s going to have them in a in good, in a good spot, at least by the time they get to the Bronx for that series The last week of the season. So, you know, just move on. Ugly loss of the White Sox, yeah, should, probably should count for two, but it doesn’t. So that’s good. And just a matter of these guys continuing to get healthy, getting these positive updates, and fingers crossed that they get most of them back, and that most of them look like themselves when they do come back.

Nestor Aparicio  33:52

Luke Jones is doing double duty. I am writing about how I’m doing my duty. So go read it. It’s out of Baltimore, positive. Uh, it’s not all positive, but it’s honest. It’s truthful. Uh, comes with character and integrity and comes with a lot of text messages and a lot of lot of evidence and a lot of different things. But Luke will be covering the games. I will be writing about the games, covering the games, having oysters every single day for the next 26 days, I want to thank just everybody that’s a sponsor, everybody that’s been involved in this. But starting with our friend Marcella and her crew over Coco’s on Wednesday, they actually put oysters on their menu. I purposely did the crab cake tour. They’re thinking we’d start the oyster tour with John shields on Thursday. And it’s all brought to you by friends at curio wellness. 26 years I’m working on the 26 I’m fighting with Jessica about the oyster crab thing you can imagine on the 26th we’re going to get it right. This week, we’re going to have a new logo and our friends at Liberty pure solutions. I have to hat around here and a bottle of water and all that stuff for Doug. And everybody keeps my water clean for all of our sponsors from wise markets and liberty. Fjord, our friends at the Maryland lottery. I have a handful of Gold Rush sevens that I will have next week at Cooper’s. Crab cake tour is the 13th on Friday. Friday the 13th. How about that? Dave shining is going to join us as well as Chad weaseling, one of my favorites, who’s an NFL agent who lives in Canton, former Tia Terp. So we’re going to do that next Friday at Coopers. Now, although that’s brought to you by the Maryland lottery, conjunction with our friends at Jiffy Lube MultiCare, wow, Raven season, we waited all this time. Now, finally, it’s here, and we still have a baseball problem for wnst AG, in 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stopped talking Baltimore positive. Don’t all look good. My El Guapo shirt. Got a nice burrito there last week. I.