O's Lose To Jays; Digging Adam Jones

Well, could this be the downfall of the Baltimore Orioles that we all expected, or just a rough patch?

The Orioles started off plain awful – I mean awful. A horrific inning on part of Garrett Olson, bad defense and an impressive output the Blue Jays with two-out hits allowed the Jays to beat Baltimore, 9-8.

Despite the bad inning in the fourth frame, Baltimore came back from a five run deficit, with an aggressive showing in the latter half of the game.

Nick Markakis homered and scored three runs in a three-hit performance while Adam Jones added a three-run homer for Baltimore – his first since June; however, the Oriole rally came up short.

Do you guys think the young pitching along with the bullpen are starting to wilt because of the long season?

As well, one more thing I’d love to ask, what do you all think of development of Adam Jones? He had some growing pains at the start of the year, especially at the plate, but he’s coming along just fine. His average is up, and he’s seemed to at least cut down on his strikeouts.

I like the kid, and personally, I can tell he’s improving and is heeding the advice of all his coaches and staff. At the end of the day, you can’t be anything but impressed. When he plays in center, you feel like the kid is a 10-year veteran, not a second year player.

Despite his numbers perhaps not being all that impressive (perhaps average), he’s learning the game fairly quickly at this venture, and his upward climb reminds me a lot of what Markakis had to go through in his first season.

It’s his inexperience that is hindering him his point. Jones has had less than 500 at bats in MLB and his numbers so far shows that he gets the game, but is still definitely learning at this level.

The experts say you need at least 1000-1500 at-bats to determine a player’s abilities at the plate. He’ll be fine, and at this point, we should be all be impressed that he’s worked himself up to a .281 average on July 10th.

We should not worry, he’ll be someone who’ll grow on us. Boy, once he gets better at recognizing pitches at the plate, he’ll start crushing the ball on a more occasional basis.