Daniel Cabrera takes the loss to go to 4-7.

Really not many positives in this game. It was tied 1-1 going into the 6th inning. Then all hell broke loose. Our pitchers gave up 6 homeruns combined. Cabrera gave up one in the 6th, Chris Britton gave up one in the 6th, Sendy Rleal gave up one in the 7th, and Bruce Chen gave up 3 homeruns in his 2 innings of work. Chen needs to be Designated For Assignment as soon as possible. There is no reason for him to take up a roster spot right now. I would DFA Chen and bring up either Eddy Rodriguez or Brian Burress from AAA. Also need to trade Rodrigo Lopez (Mets interested?) and release Russ Ortiz, and insert Adam Loewen back into the rotation and Hayden Penn for the first time this year. Britton struggled tonight for the first time in a while, but his ERA is still under 3. Rleal hasn’t been good, but I’d keep him in the pen for the rest of the year to prepare him for next year. Hes pretty young and he had success in the minors. Cabrera continues to not deliver on his enormous potential. One of these days…

The hitting could only manage one run, and there were only a small handful of players that did anything productive. Ramon Hernandez went 2-3 with a double, glad to see him start hitting again after a little slump. Brandon Fahey went 1-2 with an RBI and 2 walks. Hard to argue with his production of late, but don’t set your expectations too high, hes likely to come back down to earth at some point. Nick Markakis went 1-3 with a double. Markakis continues his slow development as the season progresses. Brian Roberts didn’t get a hit, but he walked twice. Maybe thats a sign that hes seeing the ball better and is about to break out of his slump.

O’s need to bounce back tomorrow against the same lineup. Matchup is Kris Benson (9-7, 4.79) against Kevin Millwood (8-5, 4.83). No prediction this time…

Kurt Bikrins gets the win to go to 4-1. Chris Ray gets his second save in as many days, his 22nd.

Rodrigo Lopez startedthe game and actually pitched alot better than his line would indicate. He gave up 4 runs in the second inning, but only 2 were earned and none of them should have actually scored. With two outs Ben Broussard hit a double. Then Lopez got Jhonny Peralta to hit a line drive right at Corey Patterson… but Patterson didn’t see the ball and it went right over his head as he was charging in. The play resulted in a triple. A double and a walk later, Lopez got Grady Sizemore to ground out to Brian Roberts… except Roberts booted the ball and another run scored. Then on the next pitch the ball got away from Javy Lopez behind the plate and the 4th run scored. It was ruled a wild pitch, but it looked pretty catchable to me. Other than that inning, Lopez pitched a good game. He had 6 strikeouts in 5 innings and scattered 4 hits in the other innings besides the 2nd. The bullpen pitched 4 scoreless innings, including another scoreless appearance from Chris Britton and Chris Ray’s 22nd save.

The offense was helped out by the Indian’s pitching/defense, but did enough to get the win. Brandon Fahey wen 3-4 with a triple and a walk. Javy Lopez went 3-4 with his 7th homerun, and Miguel Tejada went 2-4 with a double and an RBI. We scored the final 2 of our runs on a wild pitch and a passed ball. Brandon Fahey is starting to make me look lik an idiot. He’s been hitting very well in the 2 hole recently and his batting average is up to .285. I still think his role should be as a utility player in place of Chris Gomez or a stop gap shortstop if we trade Miguel Tejada for other pieces.

Speaking of Chris Gomez, the Orioles activated him from the disabled list and sent Ed Rogers back down to the minors.

Grade: B

Simple choice to make when Rogers is hitting .200 in limited at bats and Gomez has been a nice asset for a year and a half as utility guy. Gomez can play any infield position fairly well, while Rogers can’t play left field without trying to do magic.

The futures game was today an both Nolan Reimold and Radhames Liz got into the game for brief appearances. Liz pitched to two batters, recording a strikeout and a flyout before he was pulled. He was touching 97 on the radar gun. Looked good. And I called i yesterday, one of the batters he faced was our own Nolan Reimold. Reimold was the batter who flew out to fairly deep left field. He worked the count full before he got out. I liked what little I saw of our Orioles futures.

The Orioles get the next 3 days off and I’m sure they’re happy about it. They should take the time to just relax and forget about all the troubles of the first half. Get ready to go out there and turn the season around. The front office also needs to go out there and get make some moves to improve the club. If you can get anything of value for the following players, you gotta trade them:

Jeff Conine, Rodrigo Lopez, Javy Lopez, Kevin Millar, LaTroy Hawkins, Todd Williams, Chris Gomez, Russ Ortiz

Tomorrow night is the homerun derby and Miguel Tejada will be participating in it again. I’m rooting for him to win his second derby as an Oriole, but at the same time I don’t want him to wear himself out for the second half. I think he’ll make the second round but lose to the eventual winner, Ryan Howard.

We might as well be called the Baltimore Bedards, since we only win the games he starts. He improves to 10-6 on the season with last nights win. Chris Ray gets the save, his 21st of the year.

Erik Bedard is 5-0 with a 1.29 ERA and 38 strikeouts in his last 5 starts. And 4-0 with a 0.62 ERA and 32 strikeouts in his last 4 starts. Since his start against the Mets on June 16th, Bedard has lowered his ERA from 5.69 to 4.28. If he keeps up this level of performance we don’t need to look any further for our much coveted ace. Its nice finally having a pitcher that you know is going to give you a good chance to win every time out. Something that us O’s fans haven’t had since Mike Mussina left town. I don’t want to jinx Bedard, so I’ll just say we’ll continue to see how he does after the all-star break.

The only pitching performance that was bad in yesterday’s game, besides Jeremy Sowers’, was LaTroy Hawkins. He gave up 3 runs on 4 hits in less than an inning. It is now beyond time for Chris Britton to take over the setup man spot. Trade Hawkins for something if he has any value. At least have him pitching in less important innings at this point.

The offense actually came to life last night. 3 hitters had multi-hit games and everyone had a hit except for Corey Patterson. Brian Roberts went 1-3 with 2 walks and 2 stolen bases. Melvin Mora went 1-2 with a 2-run homerun and a walk before leaving with a strain which is said to be minor. Jeff Conine went 2-5 with 2 doubles and an RBI. Ramon Hernandez went 2-5 with 2 RBIs. Javy Lopez went 2-4 with an RBI. Miguel Tejada brought in the other run, going 1-5. Especially surprising was that this offense outburst ,if you will, came against a lefty starter, which has been our weakness for what seems like 10 years.

Well I guess the Luis Matos era is over as it seems the Orioles have put him on release waivers. Can’t say I’m disppointed. Even though he was my favorite O’s player after the 2003 season, I stopped liking him after he continuously showed lack of effort and lackadaisical play. Remember when him and Larry Bigbie were going to be part of our core? Ah, those were the days…

Today the O’s try to win the series against the Indians at 1:05. Rodrigo Lopez faces off against Jake Westbrook. I’m going to guess we win a high scoring affair and win the series. I hope Rodrigo has a solid start so we can trade him ASAP. Go O’s.

Also, don’t forget to watch the all-star futures game at 4 o’clock. The O’s have 2 prospects in the game, Nolan Reimold and Radhames Liz. Reimold is a power hitting outfielder that plays for AA Bowie, he’ll be on the US team. Liz is a hard throwing right handed starter for A+ Frederick, he will be on the opposing World team. It would be cool to see Reimold face off against Liz, but I’m just excited to see them play against some quality competition.

So I go away for 9 days and it looks like I didn’t miss much. Hopefully with me returning home to watch, we can put it together from here on out.

I’m gonna take a look at each players performance over the 9 game stretch I missed and give them a grade, but keep in mind I didn’t watch or listen to any of these games and I’m going off of strictly stats.

Brian Roberts: .216/.237/.270 with 3 runs, a double, 3 RBI, a walk, and a stolen base. Grade: D

Melvin Mora: .222/.263/.306 with 4 runs, a homerun, 4 RBI, and 2 walks. Grade: D

Miguel Tejada: .270/.270/.432 with 4 runs, 3 doubles, a homerun and 3 RBI. Grade: B minus

Ramon Hernandez: .107/.107/.143 with 2 runs and a double. Grade: F

Jeff Conine: .278/.278/.388 with 4 run, a double, a homerun, 6 RBI, and a stolen base. Grade: C

Javy Lopez: .143/.200/.214 with a double and a walk. Grade: D minus

Corey Patterson: .290/.290/.484 with 3 runs, 2 homeruns, 3 RBI, and 2 stolen bases. Grade: B

Kevin Millar: .296/.345/.407 with 4 runs, 3 doubles, 2 RBI, and 2 walks. Grade: B

Nick Markakis: .476/.500/.524 with 4 runs, a double, 2 RBI, a walk, and a stolen base. Grade: A

Brandon Fahey: .316/.435/.421 with a run, 2 doubles, an RBI, and 4 walks. Grade: A minus

Luis Matos: .222/.222/.222. Grade: D minus

Ed Rogers, Howie Clark, and Luis Terrero went a combined 0-9.

Erik Bedard: 1-0 with a 1.13 ERA in 8 innings, 2 hits, a walk, and 7 strikeouts. Grade: A

Kris Benson: 0-2 with a 12.38 ERA in 8 innings, 19 hits, 2 walks, and 6 strikeouts. Grade: F

Rodrigo Lopez: 0-2 with a 11.36 ERA in 10 1/3 innings, 19 hits, 2 walks, and 4 strikeouts. Grade: F

Daniel Cabrera: 0-1 with a 5.40 ERA in 11 2/3 innings, 11 hits, 10 walks, and 13 strikeouts. Grade: C minus

Russ Ortiz: 0-1 with a 8.71 ERA in 9 1/3 innings, 17 hits, 6 walks, and 2 strikeouts. Grade: F

Kurt Birkins: 1-1 with a 8.71 ERA in 3 1/3 innings, 3 hits, a walk, and 4 strikeouts. Grade: D minus

Bruce Chen: 0-0 with a 7.14 ERA in 6 1/3 innings, 11 hits, 5 walks, and 9 strikeouts. Grade: D minus

Sendy Rleal: 0-0 with a 6.43 ERA in 7 innings, 9 hits, 2 walks, and 4 strikeouts. Grade: D

Chris Britton: 0-0 with a 0.00 in 5 innings, a hit, a walk, and 4 strikeouts. Grade: A

LaTroy Hawkins: 0-0 with a 0.00 ERA in 3 innings and 4 hits. Grade: B plus

Todd Williams: 0-0 with a 13.50 ERA in 2 innings, 5 hits and a strikeout. Grade: F

Chris Ray: 0-0 with a 9.00 ERA in an inning of work. One hit against. Grade: D

Nick Markakis has been on fire lately, raising his average from .230 to .271 in a week. Erik Bedard continues his impressive pitching since learning to throw a better changeup. Chris Britton has been pretty damn good since coming back a second time from the minors.

I’m so tired from driving for 5 hours back from vacation. More to come…