"Our pitching has been giving us a chance," Moeller said. "We've been in these ballgames. We have to take advantage when we get in those situations."
True enough, the Orioles have weapons and can score runs in bunches. They've done that on a number of occasions; though on some of those occasions - as Huff pointed out - a bunch of runs was not enough. It would have taken only a handful Wednesday.
"They made one more pitch," manager Dave Trembley said. "They got one more hit. That's just baseball. It's a funny game. Things just didn't go our way."
Don't know if it will still seem funny when the Orioles get back from the coming road trip to Toronto and Tampa Bay. The series at Rogers Centre opens with a matchup between Mark Hendrickson and Roy Halladay, which is about as close to the proverbial "reverse lock" as you can get.
It isn't all bad. Uehara has pitched well, and the top four batters in the order have produced a ton of runs, which can only bode well for the future. But the defense has performed well below expectations and the sum total of the starting pitching is pretty much as it was advertised coming into the season.
That all adds up to the same conclusion, that this was and is a team that will struggle to win 70 games this year but still has a chance to make real progress over that period to some brighter days in 2010 and beyond.
In short, they are who we thought they were.
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