week 14 and through the all star break

go on, discuss, brag, complain, win that best writer award!

D-Rays split a two game series with the yankees and then split a 4 game series with cleveland. The bats really need to stop underachieving. Carlos Lee has a .716 OPS? that really shouldn't be. Tampa is currently 7.5 out of the division and 2 games out of the wild card. According to pythag records, tampa should be leading the wild card.

I was hoping for a much better week heading into the All Star break, but the O's put up a disappointing 3-3 week. I'll blame it on there being some distractions though, as the O's sent 4 players to the All Star game, matching their total from the previous 4 years combined. This year the All Star team featured 3 IF starters from Baltimore.... Ryan Howard at 1b, Ruben Gotay at 2b, and Edgar Renteria at SS. Ryan Keefer was also a member of the AL bullpen.

We started off by losing 2 of 3 to Texas at home, then went on the road and took 2 of 3 from the Angels. As I mentioned a somewhat disappointing week, making about 3 weeks of disappointing play that saw the O's go 9-10. This has allowed the Yankees and TB to stay somewhat close despite not playing particularly well. Currently NYY are 6 GB, and TB is 7.5 GB

As a bright spot here are the #'s for the Baltimore All Stars:

Ryan Howard .287 ba, 36 HR, 98 RBI
Ruben Gotay .372 ba, .439 oba, .640 slg, 20 HR 82 RBI
Edgar Renteria .316 ba, .391 oba, 77 runs scored
Ryan Keefer 3.18 ERA, .229 baa, 7-2

Also another note, Ruben Gotay was the leader by far for Votes received, as he got 2,583,000 , which was over 500k more than Lance Berkman who was 2nd with 2,019,000.