Erik Bedard recieves the hard luck loss, his 7th.

The only runs Orioles pitching allowed to cross the plate yesterday came in the first inning. Adrian Beltre hit a 2-run homer off of Bedard in the top of the first to put the Mariners in the lead for good. Other than that Bedard pitched like his normal self. He went 5 and a third innings, giving up 4 hits, those 2 runs, and 3 walks. He had 5 strikeouts. Julio Manon, Chris Britton, Todd Williams, Tim Byrdak, and Chris Ray combined to pitch the other 3 and 2/3rds of the game without allowing a run. I think Erik Bedard deserved to get the win, but the offense couldn’t hold up their end of the deal.

We could only manage one run and six hits against the Seattle pitching corps yesterday. There were no multi hit games and only one extra base hit. Corey Patterson hit his second triple of the year. Melvin Mora went 1-2 with 2 walks and scored the only run of the game for us. Jay Gibbons knocked him in, he also had a walk. We were facing the pre-season rookie pitcher of the year, Felix Hernandez. He only went 5 innings and we couldn’t score any runs off their bullpen. It was extremely hot yesterday, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Markakis watch: 1-4 (.297)

Rumor has it that the Red Sox are making a move to trade for Javy Lopez if and when he clears waivers. If our front office don’t somehow mess this up, we should be able to get a pitcher from their minor leagues. I’m all for a trade.

Our next game is tomorrow night against the New York Yankees. This will be the closest we get to dreaming of Bobby Abreu playing right field at Camden Yards. The first pitching matchup of the series will be Bruce Chen (0-6, 7.07) against Randy Johnson (11-9, 5.07). I’m going to guess Chen gives up at least 2 homeruns and we lose something like 8-5. Heres to hoping I’m wrong. Go O’s.

Rodrigo Lopez gets his 8th win of the season, Chris Ray gets his 27th save.

Well, Rodrigo Lopez owns the Seattle Mariners this year. In his 2 starts against them, Rodrigo has not given up a run and has 2 of his wins. I’ll bet some teams are kicking themselves for not landing Rodrigo before the deadline yesterday. I don’t think he can pass through waivers, so I’m hoping he pitches great for the rest of the season and we trade him in the offseason. No matter how he does I would like to see us trade him in the offseason. He only gave up 4 hits in and 2/3rds innings tonight, striking out 5. These are the kind of starts that Rodrigo seems to have from time to time to get our hopes up. I have no doubt he’ll bomb his next time out. Tim Byrdak pitched the rest of the 8th and got out it in one batter. Chris Ray sat ‘em down in the 9th, 1-2-3, earning his 27th save. I’m gonna say he finishes with between 35-40 saves on the year, if we can get the leads to him.

The O’s hitting was sparse and spread out, but it was enough to get the win tonight. I love how we score 11 runs the other day and lose, and score 2 runs tonight and win. Love how that works. Everybody but Javy Lopez and Kevin Millar got a hit, but nobody got more than one. The one key hit of the night was a Nick Markakis ground rule double to bring in a run. Fernando Tatis also had a double, and Melvin Mora had the other RBI. Javy Lopez has been crying to the media that he wanted to be traded and is unhappy he wasn’t. He indicated that he wanted his release if we didn’t plan on playing him regularly. This is the guy who lost his catching job to Ramon Hernandez, his DH spot to Jay Gibbons, and whose back spasms kept us from resting Hernandez at all during a rough stretch not too long ago. Yeah, we’ll give you your release… because you aren’t good enough to play on the team. It would be nice if we could clear him through waivers and trade him for something though. Jason Varitek just got sidelined for 5 or 6 weeks, maybe they could use Javy. We couldn’t find anyone to take him before the deadline. And tonight he went 0-4 with 2 strikeouts. Good effort Javy, good effort…

Markakis watch: 1-3 (.298)

Tomorrow afternoon Erik Bedard (12-6, 3.87) goes up against the greatly hyped Felix Hernandez (9-9, 4.60). I feel good every time Bedards on the mound, no different this time. Go O’s.

Adam Loewen loses his 3rd game of the year, despite holding the Mariners scoreless through 6 innings.

Loewen pitched outstanding through the first 5 innings. Then he struggled a bit in the 6th, but still got out of it without letting up a run. He was obviously tired after the 6th, but Perlozzo ran him out to start the 7th anyway. And thats when he blew up. Without getting an out in the 7th, Loewen was charged with 5 runs (4 earned). Recently brought up Julio Manon came in for Loewen and got through the inning, but not before allowing a walk and a hit. We were still in it at that point, but then Eddy Rodriguez came in. I’m going to have to admit I was wrong about this guy. I guess there are pitchers that can dominate at AAA, but can’t even be decent at the Major League level. He pitched the final 2 innings of tonights game, and gave up 5 runs on 5 hits and a walk. That included 2 homeruns. So don’t rush to judgement on Loewen’s performance tonight. He actually pitched really good. I would be more critical of Perlozzo’s decision to leave him in to start the 7th.

The offense was solid. Not too many notable performances, but we actually hit some homers tonight. Brian Roberts hit his 3rd homerun, Melvin Mora hit his 12th, and Nick Markakis hit his 4th. Roberts and Markakis also each had singles in the game. Everyone else except for Brandon Fahey and Ramon Hernandez had a hit. Markakis’ homerun brought us back into the game at 5-4, but then we brought in Eddy Rodriguez, and the rest is history.

Markakis watch: 2-3 (.297)

The other big thing for today was the trade deadline. And the Orioles did absolutely nothing. Which is unreal to me, since it was reported something like 14 teams had interest in Rodrigo Lopez, 11 in LaTroy Hawkins, 5 in Jeff Conine, and 5 in Miguel Tejada. And we didn’t trade anybody? Theres no excuse for it. I guess we’ll see if we can pass these guys through waivers and see if we can still deal them. I’m guessing Conine, Kevin Millar, and Javy Lopez would pass through, while Rodrigo, Hawkins, and definitely Tejada would not. In other notable deals around the league the Dodgers got Greg Maddux and Julio Lugo, the Royals got Ryan Shealy, the Yankees got Bobby Abreu, Cory Lidle, and Craig Wilson, the Rangers got Kip Wells, the Padres got Todd Walker, and the Tigers got Sean Casey.

Tomorrow night is game 2 against the Mariners. Rodrigo Lopez (7-11, 6.57) inexplicitly is starting for the O’s against Oriole killer and soft tossing lefty, Jamie Moyer (6-9, 4.21). It doesn’t look good yet again for the Orioles chances tomorrow. Can’t wait until september call ups… Go O’s.