He may be a Red Sox mascot, but he's OUR Red Sox mascot.  

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LUUUUUUKE!

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and St. Guts with his best outing of the year!

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Have I told you lately that I love you
Have I told you there's no one else above you
Fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness
Ease my troubles, that's what you do

For the morning sun and all its glory
Meets the day with hope and comfort too
You fill my life with laughter, somehow you make it better
Ease my troubles, that's what you do

TOP FIVE MOST BIRDLAND, IN THE OPINION OF YOUR COBRA COMMANDER

1. Jim Johnson: Never lets you down! 1.31 ERA! Pretty crappy strikeout-to-walk ratio (shhhh!) but no one is getting any hits off of him.

2. Nick Markakis: Uh oh, someone's gotten red-hot.

3. Jeremy Guthrie: Also never lets you down. No, he's probably not going to contend for Cy Youngs with gaudy numbers, but dude's looking like he can legit anchor a staff.

4. Daniel Cabrera: Hasn't been very good at all in three of his last four starts, but hold on loosely. And don't let go.

5. George Sherrill: Seems like he has a tendency to make it exciting, but the numbers are rock solid. 2.83 ERA, a WHIP just over 1, and a sub-.170 BAA? I'll take it.

WHAT'S JEREMY GUTHRIE GOTTA DO TO GET SOME RUNS IN THIS JOINT?

Our boy went out and dealt again yesterday. Seven innings, six hits, three runs, no walks, four strikeouts. All he got in return was a two-run homer from Melvin Mora in the fourth inning.

In his last three starts (20.2 innings pitched) the Orioles have given Guthrie exactly those two runs off the bat of Melvin Mora.

He's got a 3.64 ERA, a 1.21 WHIP, batters are hitting a paltry .236 against him, and he's 2-6.

This is getting ridiculous. Jeremy "Hard Times" Guthrie gets no love from his teammates, despite him generally giving them a chance to win every time he starts.

Come on, guys. Help the brother out. Daniel Cabrera's having a pretty similar season and he's 5-1. Daniel Cabrera might make the All-Star team! He'll probably be the only Oriole that does make it if things stay the course, but is he really any better than Guthrie? No.

The good news is we took two of three from the Yankees, making us 5-4 against New York so far. I mean, yeah, it's not really the greatest thing in the world considering New York is 22-22 against everyone else, but it's a nice trinket to put in our pocket.

The O's are off today before we start a four-game set in Boston Baltimore on Friday. The current matchups for the first three games are Cabrera-Beckett, Olson-Lester, and Burres-Colon. Ol' fatso Colon has looked pretty good in his first two Sox starts, though he did face Kansas City and Seattle. Of course, he'll just be facing the Baltimore lineup next. I think batting average is pretty worthless, but when your leading hitter is coming in at .271 (Roberts, heating up) and it's not a lineup filled with walk machines, things ain't goin' so great.

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I've said this before, and I'll say it again, I'm sure. It's one thing to come into this season with low expectations, and knowing the team is going to compete for Worst Team in Baseball, and knowing how rocky and downright bad it's going to be, but it's another thing to actually sit and watch it happen.

The O's came out for 2008 with another surprisingly fast start, ending April in contention. We're a week into May, 16-16, and now we're in fourth place. And brothers and sisters, it's only going to get worse.

We're a half-game up on Toronto, and the Jays are riding a five-game win streak. It's only a matter of time before we get settled in the cellar.

I'm not being negative, I'm being realistic. Think about some of the guys starting for this team. Luis Hernandez and his .542 OPS, weak arm, and frequent boneheaded baserunning mistakes. Ramon Hernandez and his .581 OPS, detrimental alleged defense behind the plate, and frequent boneheaded baserunning mistakes. Luke Scott (.778 and nosediving) and Jay Payton (.642 and steady) are in a left field platoon.

Our starting first baseman is OPSing .672. Nick Markakis is in a massive slump right now. Our number three hitter is Melvin Mora -- .729 OPS.

This offense is offensive.

And it kind of makes you feel bad for a starting pitching crew that is performing a lot better than most would have expected. Jeremy Guthrie (4.06/1.24) is doing his thing again. Daniel Cabrera (4.06/1.35) seems to have found a balance between power pitching and trusting his stuff enough to let people try to hit it. Brian Burres (2.87/1.28) has been terrific. Garrett Olson (2.08/1.08) has been great in two starts since being called up. Steve Trachsel is a waste of time, so let's not even bother talking about him right now.

The bullpen has been a little inconsistent, but they've held their own for the most part. There's not much more you could ask of this pitching staff than what they've given us, to be totally fair.

And then there's the boneheaded baserunning and fielding and other assorted screwery. It's hard to watch a team make so many fundamental little mistakes that wind up costing them games. The A's had no business winning last night. They shouldn't have scored a run.

But then the Orioles shouldn't be making two outs on every hit-and-run they attempt and gloriously fail to execute. The Orioles shouldn't run into so many outs. But Dave has them running, despite their constant presentation of evidence that they don't know how to run the bases. Roberts is a fantastic baserunner. Markakis is a really good, savvy baserunner, last night's boner notwithstanding. But guys like Luis and Adam Jones, while they have speed, aren't good baserunners. It's one of the few times I'll go out of my way to praise Derek Jeter, but that guy is a magnificent baserunner. It's not just speed, and we all know that. Markakis isn't terribly fast, but, like Jeter, he has good instincts and rarely screws himself over.

And it's not just on the bases. It's in the field, too. Melvin Mora, God bless him, makes more idiotic mistakes than anyone I can think of. He also makes a lot of highlight reel plays. His tendency to look to get a glory out and wind up getting nobody out is a little high. Luis Hernandez? I can't really blame him. He's not really a Major League shortstop. He does not have the arm for the position.

I'm not mad about them being bad, and I'm not upset about it, and it doesn't depress me or anything. But it's hard to watch a team so bad on so many levels. They try hard, there's a lot of moxy, and there's plenty of grit. They've got some gamers. That's super.

They stink, though. We all knew they would.

(And Aubrey Huff has been fine.)

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O's WIN 4-3!

I didn't watch the game, but here's a place to chat if you did. Notable:

• what slump? Nicky goes 2 for 4 with 2 runs and 2 RBI!
• Guts finally gets his first win since July 27 of last year
• Mora bunts home Luis Luis, so expect to see more bunting from Melmo. Mora is also caught stealing, so expect to see .... more stealing from Melmo.
• The Orioles lead the majors in one-run victories with a record of 8-2. 

You KNOW who's pitching today. I will try not to jinx him by naming him here. 

I said the same thing (more harshly and with more "f-words") in the comments of the game thread, but let me say it now.

Of all the times for Dave Trembley to not go to the bullpen, he chooses a 2-2 game with the bases loaded in the eighth inning with Jeremy Guthrie clearly well out of gas, having nearly hit Adrian Beltre to walk him and load the bases in the first place.

It's not really Guts' fault. Guthrie is a pitcher. Pitchers don't want to be taken out. He looked over at the dugout and said, "I've got him," in regard to Vidro. Vidro hit a two-run single. That was it, as the Orioles couldn't score on JJ Putz.

Now, listen. There's another reason it's not Guthrie's fault, and that's because he should've been pulled when Raul Ibanez came up BEFORE Beltre. Trembley wastes 37 guys an outing sometimes, but when there's a tight ballgame and a totally rested bullpen, he sticks with Guthrie? Is his excuse going to be something as asinine as "Well, we wanted to get him the win"?

Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Ibanez can't hit lefties. Jamie Walker was just hangin' out in the bullpen. He walked Beltre. HE WAS DONE. Of course he said he wants to stay in!!! So did Pedro that one time!!!!!!!!!

GOD. CAN IT BE ALL SO SIMPLE?

Note: The site will be going down for maintenance and bug fixes and the like at 2am ET, and could be down for up to two hours. Sorry, night owls. Or weirdos who live in uncivilized time zones.

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OK, so it wasn't a homer. But Adam Jones' game-winning single off of Boob Logan in the bottom of the 10th inning will suffice. The O's are back in Birdland, if only for now.

Chicago went up 2-0, and the O's tied it at two in the bottom of the sixth. Leading off the seventh against Jeremy Guthrie, Carlos Quentin homered. Then Joe Crede homered. Goodnight, Guts, 4-2 Sox.

Quentin homered again in the eighth, making it 5-2 Chicago, but the Birds got one back in the bottom of the inning, then wailed on Big Fat Bobby Jenks in the ninth to tie it up.

Dave Trembley was faced with a dilemma. Payton had pinch-hit for Luis Luis, so Fahey was in. Then he decided to send Ramon up for Fahey in the ninth, which meant we were out of reserves and we had no shortstop.

Here's what I would've done: Mora at SS, Millar at 3B, Ramon at 1B.

Here's what Dave did: Huff at 3B (sacrificing the DH), Mora at SS.

The first way would've been more fun, but oh well. Despite Huff's best efforts to single-handedly lose this game (0-for-5 with three strikeouts), young Adam Jones singled home Kevin Millar in the tenth for the win. Booya! Game over.

George Sherrill got the win, and we're now 9-7.

HEY, YANKEES!

YOOOOOOOOU!

Once a year or so, it's good to update these. Players come and players go, much like the asinine nicknames that generally spring out of the game threads. So here's a quick primer for anyone who's new and might not know what in God's name we're talking about during certain points of a game.

Albers, Matt

• Fat Albers

This is not in any way intended to be mean. Honest. I know the dude's a little pudgy, maybe still carrying some baby fat, or maybe he's just like most of the rest of us and likes to reward himself for a fine day's work of breathing air and being a cool dude by wolfing down a Baconator or six. I'm not here to judge Matt Albers. It's just something that happened in my head and then I put it on a blog. Hey, hey, hey!

You gotta do it right though. Listen for yourself, if you're unfamiliar. It starts loud, so be prepared. That site is long faded as far as being funny goes, but whatever. RAN-DOOOOOR!

Bradford, Chad

• ChadBrad
• Chadwick
• Chadstache

Ain't found a way to kill me yet

Eyes burn with stingin' sweat

Seems every path leads me to nowhere

Wife and kids, household pet

Army green was no safe bet

The bullets scream to me from somewhere

Yeah, they come to snuff The Rooster

Yeah, here come The Rooster

You know he ain't gonna die

Walkin' tall, machine gun man

They spit on me in my homeland

Mora, Melvin 

• MelMo
• Melly Mel
• Melvin Moron
• Playoff Hero Melvin Mora

Did Babe Ruth ever slap at someone's glove while they tried to tag him? Did Mickey Mantle? Did Hank Aaron? Did Cal Ripken? Did Dane Iorg? Did Kiko Garcia? Seriously. He's a player to admire, but a total weiner.

That's why I prefer "Brian Bob."

Sarfate, Dennis

• Dennis the Menace

So I get bored sometimes, which leads me to think of music, the Orioles, and the combination of the two.

Since we've got a few hours until the double header at Texas, part of which I'll have to miss, I decided to kill some time by coming up with theme songs for all of the O's in their current states.

DISCLAIMER: Not all of these songs are safe for work or for your kids' ears. Play with discretion.

The team gets four songs on this playlist: "Orioles Magic," of course; Saliva's "Click Click Boom" because that is, somewhat sadly, what they come out onto the field with these days; "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," of course; and "Right Back to Where We Started From" by Maxine Nightingale. In addition to having some parallels to Major League, the team is also sort of Slap Shot-y, which is a natural since Major League is just a baseball version of Slap Shot in many ways. Whenever I think of improbable, goofy winning streaks for bad teams, I think of Maxine Nightingale and the Charlestown Chiefs bus.

Luis Hernandez kicks off the player set with the timeless "Theme From Greatest American Hero (Believe it or Not)" by the beloved Joey Scarbury. Believe it or not, he's starting at short. I never thought he would ever be-he-he. (It should've been somebody else.)

Up next is Luke Scott's at-bat music, "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges. What Luke says goes right now. The man is slugging .800 and getting a hit every other at-bat.

We dip into the somewhat melancholy for Brian Roberts. The title of this Dylan track says it all: "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." Odds are, Brian's still going to get dealt this season. This is one of those guys who is definably our player. Remember when he was a slap-hitting little guy? Now he drives the ball with authority to the gaps, steals bags, has become one of the team's leaders, and man, THAT'S OUR BOY. This ain't free agent Tejada or too-frequently-hurt Bedard. This is Brian Roberts. OUR player.

Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry" could only represent one man: Aubrey Huff. God bless the guy, he's trying really hard to do and say all the right things, including pounding the crap out of the ball. He has won a couple of games for us already, and went 4-for-4 the other night in Texas. He made a mistake. He's sorry. He's playing his ass off. He's part of the team. He's sorry. So sorry. Please accept. His apology.

Ain't no joke, whenever I think of Bocephus' "A Country Boy Can Survive," the first thing that pops into my mind is Jamie Walker. His entire career is proof that a country boy can survive, really. He throws slop, gets people out, and does his damn job, damn it. Jamie Walker rules just as hard as Hank, Jr. I think he might take that as a fine compliment, and I mean it as such.

Razor Ramon gets "I Feel Good" by James Brown. The only nice thing we've heard about Hernandez lately is he's in good shape. He's certainly not hitting. Maybe, like the song, Ramon will start kicking ass quickly.

Bruuuuuuuce! Melvin Mora's "Glory Days" may be behind him, but it's not all bad. He can still play a little bit, still can have a good time, still can remember hitting .340 or the wink of a young girl's eye.

Daniel Cabrera gets two songs. Good Daniel Cabrera gets the classic Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs hit "Stay," which is a song I frequently sing when I get bad drunk, because I remember being a kid, reading a Lewis Grizzard book, and he said he did that. It's just something that pops in my head. And yes, I was reading Lewis Grizzard books when I was a kid. I was a weird kid.

Bad Daniel Cabrera gets Ray Charles' "Hit the Road, Jack." Because seriously.

In the late 1980s, Public Enemy was awesome and I bet Jay Payton was a hell of a high school ballplayer. In the 1990s and beyond, Public Enemy had moments of greatness among their overall mediocrity and inconsistency, and that's pretty much Jay Payton as a pro player at his peak. Last year, Public Enemy released another album, and it had only one great song -- actually, it had only one good song, which also happened to be great. "Harder Than You Think" is the sound of a group that was phenomenal 20 years ago throwing all their eggs into one basket. Jay Payton also stinks now, but he's making the best of his chances so far this season.

Scott Moore is willing to play "Whenever, Wherever." That is also a song by Shakira. Also, it's lucky that Moore's breasts are small and humble, so we don't confuse them with mountains.

I didn't want to leave Frederick Keys catcher Matt Wieters out of the party, so he gets "Get Ready" by The Temptations, which was quite excellently sampled by Fergie, too. Sorry, Fergie's great. It's the law.

Another future star, Adam Jones, is already starting in Baltimore's center field, but man, "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." Ha! I love this shit. I feel like Tom Verducci or Roch or Jeff Passan. But it's true. Jones might hack away a little in the earlygoing, but so did another current Orioles outfielder before he found his groove. I'm not worried about Dr. Jones.

Blue Öyster Cult's most awesome song is, in fact, "Godzilla," about the movie monster that has a habit of destroying cities and scaring the piss out of everyone in Japan. Greg Aquino thus far has a habit of scaring the piss out of me when he trots in from the bullpen.

This one isn't a real song, at least not in the traditional sense. But comedian Jon Lajoie struck gold with "Everyday Normal Guy," a hit on Funny or Die. Steve Trachsel is just a regular, everday, normal guy. If ya got a pet cat, put your hands up. (I'm not saying the things in this song are true of Steve Trachsel -- not all of them, anyway. He surely has more than $600 in the bank, for instance.)

Kevin Millar has always been really big on "Faith," plus he wore very George Michael-ish jeans when he threw out that controversial first pitch. Sometimes I hear the Limp Bizkit cover of "Faith" and hate it, and sometimes I see Red Sox Millar and hate him. But then I hear George sing the song, and it rules. And I watch Kevin be Kevin as an Oriole, and I forget all that B.S. and remember that I love the guy. Faith-a-faith-a-faith-ah! Baaaaaaa-beh!

New closer George Sherrill gets Semisonic's "Closing Time," which I admit is hardly creative. I don't believe in "guilty pleasures," because you either like something or you don't and you should own the fact either way, but this song would be a "guilty pleasure" for me if I did believe in the concept. I especially enjoy the "ba-chicka-chick-BOW BOW" guitar that is just so absolutely 1990s. We miss you, Everclear, but never come back.

Every time I think of Randor Bierd, I think of that story of him going out and buying a new suit to get on the plane before he even got official word that he'd made the team out of spring training. And every time I listen to Dean Martin, I want to put on a suit, myself, and have a Dewar's on the rocks or fifteen. So Randor gets "Ain't That a Kick in the Head," arguably the swinginest of all Dino's truly swingin' numbers.

Matt Albers and Brian Burres get to share a song, the Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard version of Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho & Lefty," one of my absolute favorite songs. Long story short, Lefty caps Pancho. He only did what he had to do.

I know Brandon Fahey really has no business in the Major Leagues, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get kind of a happy feeling every time I see him in the field or on the bench, in his uniform that still looks too big for him and his NASCAR sunglasses. At the plate is a different story. I try not to focus on him batting. Brandon always looks so hopeful and happy in the field. "Here Comes the Sun" is for him.

Nick Markakis gets Dire Straits' "Walk of Life." Something about the song just makes me happy. I don't know what it is. It can turn a frown upside down. Make grey skies blue-ah. And oh yeah, the boy can play.

As hard as I tried, I couldn't think of anything too appropriate for Jeremy Guthrie, the staff ace. "Ace of Spades"? Too aggressive, doesn't fit his nature. Nelly's "Number One"? Too braggadocios. So he dedicates a song to Markakis.

Queen's "You're My Best Friend."

Guillermo Quiroz gets Wu-Tang Clan's "Wolves." That's just a good song. You think of a song for Guillermo Quiroz, genius.

Cracker's "Low" represents Adam Loewen, partly because that's part of his last name, and partly because that's where he should try to keep the damn ball, for the love of God. Cracker was a really good band lost in the shuffle thanks to bands like Seven Mary Three and Toadies. That has nothing to do with Adam Loewen.

I hate The Vines, but the manic and sloppy energy of "Outtathaway!" fits Dennis Sarfate's pitching style. He seems like a guy who would be uncomfortable to bat against with that mid-90s heat that comes in like a rocket, and the Vines are rather uncomfortable to listen to.

The skipper, Dave Trembley, gets his own tune, too. He's a native New Yorker. He's also an outsider in the managerial ranks, as he's the only manager in the bigs that never played pro ball. "Outsider" was a good Ramones song, but doesn't fit Diamond Dave's personality. Joey Ramone's cover of "What a Wonderful World" does, though -- Dave is genuinely optimistic all the time, always looking for the best thing to say. And he seems like he actually means it. He doesn't sugarcoat garbage like Perlozzo, Mazzilli and even Leo Mazzone used to. No stuff about "puttin' it all together" in a bullpen session. Just pure hope. He's just happy to be here, and doing his best.

A NINTH INNING COMEBACK

DOWN 2-0 INTO THE INNING

LUIS HERNANDEZ GAME WINNING TWO-OUT RBI

THE TYING RUN SCORED ON A WILD PITCH

I HAVE TO GO TO FAMILY DINNER

I'M GOING TO TAG ALL THE COOLEST ORIOLES FOR THIS POST

EVEN YOU, JAY PAYTON

I'M FREAKING RIGHT THE HELL OUT

ORIOLES MAGIC

LUIS IS BIRDLAND