Phase 2 of the All-Star Game voting ends today at noon, so get those votes in!
Happy Thursday, Camden Chatters! The less said about last night’s loss the better, am I right? If you must re-live the frustration, check out John Beers’s recap of the ugly totals. If you’d rather think about something else, I suggest that you take a minute to go vote for Adley Rutschman.
Rutschman deserves to go to the All-Star Game. The powers that be at MLB have decided that instead of just having fans vote for the starting lineups once, they will have to do it twice. The first phase, which Rutschman won by several hundred thousand votes, was among players from every team in MLB.
The second phase is a head-to-head matchup between the top two vote-getters, with all the phase one votes wiped out. Rutschman is up against Jonah Heim of the Texas Rangers. After the first update, Heim was leading with 54% of the vote. After the second update yesterday, The lead was down to 52%. How is Adley losing after having such a commanding lead in phase one? I have some speculation, which is as follows.
People’s interest cannot be held over multiple phases! Fans are happy to log in, vote once or twice for their choices, and then go about their day. Especially if a player on their favorite team was worth a vote, they’d go to vote for that player and then fill out the rest of the ballot. Now that it’s down to just two players per position, so many fewer people care or are paying attention.
This theory is supported, in my mind, by the fact that the updates are only showing percentages and not total votes. They don’t want their paltry numbers revealed! If that is true, it’ll be all that much easier to vote Adley in.
I am fully against multiple phases of voting, but I am fully on board with getting our star catcher voted into the All-Star Game. For one thing, the people spoke in phase one. Multiple hundreds of thousands of votes! For another, Adley is an MLB star and he’s an Oriole. He’s our guy.
So. GO VOTE FOR ADLEY! You only have until noon today so just go ahead and do it right now.
Links
Frustrated Orioles fans on shifting streaming models: MASN, Apple, Peacock, where’s the game? – Baltimore Sun
I do feel a level of frustration about the hundreds of dollars I pay for cable to get MASN only to be told that I need to pay for other streamers to watch all of the games. But it’s not really that bad.
How Colton Cowser got his mind (and swing) right – The Baltimore Banner
Jon Meoli would like you to get hyped about Colton Cowser. I’m on board with that.
NY Mets rumors: 3 Max Scherzer trade destinations if he waives his no-trade clause – Fan Sided
Rumor has it that Max Scherzer is willing to waive his no-trade clause to get out of New York. And look, I know the Orioles aren’t going to trade for him. But what if the Orioles traded for him?
Birthdays and History
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! You have a very fun birthday buddy. Today is Gunnar Henderson’s 22nd birthday! Henderson got off to a slow start this year but he’s turned things around and now is playing like the GUNNAR we have all grown to love over the last year or so. Happy birthday, Gunnar!
It’s also the birthday of former Orioles Travis Lakins (29), Pedro Viola (40), and Dizzy Trout (b. 1915, d. 1972).
On this day in 2002, the Orioles defeated the Phillies 11-1 and Gary Matthews, Jr. had five hits including a home run. Matthews played in 150 games for the Orioles in his 12-season career.
In 2013, Chris Davis hit his 29th and 30th home runs in the team’s 82nd game of the season. The Orioles defeated the Yankees and Zack Britton, the starting pitcher, got the win.
In 2019, the Orioles defeated Cleveland by a score of 13-0 for the second straight game. It was their first time winning back-to-back games in a month-and-a-half. I remember these games because I had the bad fortune of attending the third game in the series. The Orioles lost.