A Jewel at the Most Useless Moment Imaginable
It seems that no one told the Baltimore Orioles and the Tampa Bay Rays that their games no longer matter. In a display of pure sports contradiction, Dean Kremer decided that, although the postseason is a distant dream, he can still pitch as if he were in the World Series. On Tuesday, in what was his kind farewell to his home for this season, Kremer gave the fans a movie gem: six and a third innings with only one hit allowed. Yes, you read correctly: a miserable hit. Because what better time to be brilliant than when everything is absolutely irrelevant?
Kremer (who now has an 11-10 record, to make his statistic look nice and balanced) struck out four, hit a poor batter (accident, I guess, or perhaps a message for next season), and most impressively: he didn’t walk a single one. It seems like he was in a hurry to get home, or maybe the game started so late because of the rain that he just wanted to finish quickly. His dominance over the Rays is now a tradition, improving his career ERA against them to a ridiculous 1.64. Could it be that the Rays owe him money? The question remains in the air.
The Offense That Also Showed Up to Work
While Kremer worked his magic on the mound, the Orioles offense, in a rare act of solidarity, decided it could score runs, too. Colton Cowser hit a two-run homer in the sixth inning, because why settle for one when you can have two? Gunnar Henderson, not wanting to be outdone, drove in two more runs with a sacrifice fly and a single, showing that you can be productive in multiple elegant ways. Jordan Westburg and Tyler O’Neill joined the party with RBI hits, because when it rains, it pours, although in this case, the actual rain delayed the start of the game an hour and 11 minutes. A perfect wait for a match that, I repeat, did not change anything in the standings.
On the other side of the diamond, Ryan Pepiot‘s afternoon (11-12) was… well, quite the opposite. In his thirty-first appearance (a figure that sounds like a punishment), he allowed three runs in just three innings. With a 3.86 ERA on the season, one wonders if he was thinking more about his vacation than about Baltimore’s hitters. His performance was the perfect counterpoint to Kremer’s: the definition of “having a bad day at the office” when your opponent is having the day of his life.
To top off the juicy statistic of irrelevance, the Latin American players had a discreet night. Cuban Yandy Díaz and Dominican Junior Caminero went 3-0 and 2-0 respectively, probably wishing the game had been canceled due to rain. For the Orioles, the Dominican Samuel Basallo at least scored one run, which will allow him to tell his grandchildren that he did *something* in this peculiar close of the season at home.
In short, it was a 6-0 win for the Orioles that served as a reminder of what could have been and wasn’t. A overwhelming victory in the void of elimination, a beacon of competence in a sea of indifference. Kremer pitched like Cy Young, the offense connected like a championship team, and all so that the only witnesses were the rain and a few loyal fans. The poetry of baseball, always absurd, always wonderful.
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