Ben McDonald, 1990 Score Rising Stars #93

I've been talking up the O's hitters lately, so let's give a little love to Chris Tillman. He's been excellent ever since a disastrous one-inning, five-run start in Texas on June 5 that pushed his ERA to a season-worst 5.20. Last night the righty shut down the White Sox over eight innings, allowing one run (a first-inning home run by Jose Abreu) on three hits and striking out nine. He improved to 10-5 with a 3.55 ERA, and now has a streak of 14 straight starts with no more than three earned runs allowed. The last time an Orioles starting pitcher pulled that off, it was Ben McDonald in 1993. That was Ben's best full season in the majors, as his 13-14 record was offset by a 3.39 ERA (132 ERA+), seven complete games, and 171 strikeouts. But unlike McDonald, Tillman might be pitching in the postseason this year.

Gregg Olson, 1990 Score Rising Stars #32

Now that the Orioles have put "Baltimore" back on their road jerseys and returned the cartoon bird to their caps, I think their next step should be to bring back stirrup socks. It's a much better look than solid black socks, says I.

Dave Johnson, 1990 Score Rising Stars #43

I may not be a talk radio star/baseball analyst like former O's pitcher Dave Johnson, but I think I did alright for my first try at it. Last Thursday, I was Dave Gilmore's guest on the brand-new Baltimore Sports Report podcast. Our 49-minute discussion was posted today, and if you're so inclined, you can give it a listen here. Just to give you an idea of how dangerous it is to give me a platform to talk baseball, Dave had originally given me an estimated duration of 20 minutes for the podcast! We covered a lot of ground and worked in a lot of plugs for my NumerOlogy website as well as this humble little blog, and topics included Opening Day, retired numbers, the Orioles Hall of Fame, "cursed" uniform numbers, and my wild guesses for the numbers that'll be worn by the next generation of Orioles. I tend to be critical of my own performance when listening to recordings of myself, but I didn't really cringe on the playback until I started talking about Baltimore's long baseball history near the end of the podcast; I must have said "you know" about a half-dozen times in 30 seconds. But hey, I was probably mentally fatigued by that point. Enjoy, and feel free to offer feedback!