Orioles will try to stay in wild card chase in Cleveland

The Orioles are dragging their 27-39 road record to Progressive Field tonight to begin a three-game series against the Indians, their wild card hopes still alive but the rotation fighting them again.

Wade Miley gave the team six innings in his last start against the Blue Jays, offering four scoreless before allowing a run in the fifth and sixth. Quality has eluded the Orioles since that game.

Orioles starters have registered a 5.62 ERA this season in 140 games. Only the Reds at 5.68 are worse. And manager Buck Showalter is counting on Miley, Gabriel Ynoa and Jeremy Hellickson to keep the team engaged in Cleveland.

Anyone who can track the order of the rotation also is sitting on a cure for every major disease. Spill it.

The need to provide extra rest is a factor. So are ailments and ineffectiveness.

Just when Ubaldo Jiménez thinks he's out of the rotation, the Orioles pull him back into it. Chris Tillman is in, out, in and out again. Ynoa came out of nowhere.

Showalter is pairing Jiménez with the Blue Jays on Monday night. Jiménez blanked them on two hits over eight innings on June 29 at Rogers Centre and is 8-5 with a 4.12 ERA in 19 career games against them. Don't automatically flip out just because he's getting the ball.

Miley lasted five innings against the Indians on June 22 and allowed four runs and eight hits in a 6-3 loss. He owns a career 5.03 ERA and 1.983 WHIP against them in four starts over 19 2/3 innings.

In his only start in Cleveland on April 19, 2016, Miley surrendered three runs and nine hits and walked four batters in 3 2/3 innings.

Edwin Encarnacion is 6-for-13 (.462) with two doubles, two home runs and seven walks against Miley.

The Orioles won two of three games in Cleveland last season. Hyun Soo Kim hit his first major league home run on May 29 and it gave them the lead in the seventh inning in a 6-4 win. They haven't swept the Indians in a three-game series on the road since April 1987.

The Indians have won a club-record 15 games in a row, the longest streak in the majors in 15 years, so they're due to lose. I mean, who runs the table in September?

One of my biggest social media pet peeves is reading accusations that the Orioles have quit after falling behind in a particular game. That they're just going through the motions. That they lack heart and don't care.

It's a lazy and inaccurate complaint.

Teams can look bad on any given night. The third inning of Tuesday night's game against the Yankees should have come with an NC-17 rating. But Adam Jones didn't drop a fly ball because he stopped caring. Hellickson didn't lose his command because he was disinterested. And Kevin Gausman didn't last only three innings yesterday because he already booked his vacation plans.

You don't post 12 walk-off wins if you're a collection of quitters.

Please come up with something else. Blame the rotation or the lack of patience at the plate. Blame the weather. Second-guess the manager and front office. But it's ridiculous to say that they aren't trying.

I'm going to make an interesting segue here with a quote from Showalter about the varying levels of intensity. It's not the same as giving up. It's just the reality of a long season.

"It's impossible to play with the same sense of urgency for 162 games," he said. "Anybody that says, 'I'm giving 105 percent or 110 percent,' spare me. You're lucky if you're giving 70-80 sometimes, or are able to physically. It's just spoken by a lot of people who haven't done it.

"It's like pitchers that coast certain parts of the lineup. They have to. You do it a lot easier in the National League. You don't coast much over here. That's why the strain is so much, and you add a run to the ERA when they come over.

"It's tough. I marvel at the intensity that some of them play at."

Yesterday was one of the toughest in Showalter's life and it had nothing to do with the outcome. He lost his close friend and mentor, with Gene Michael passing away at 79.

Michael hired Showalter as Yankees manager before the 1992 season. Showalter was fired as third base coach three weeks earlier in anticipation of Stump Merrill's replacement wanting his own staff. It's one of the many stories that Showalter has stored in his vault, always teasing that they'll all be "in the book one day."

"It wasn't his idea to start with," Showalter said. "He called me the week before and said, 'Hey, I just want you to know we're going to go in a different direction with the manager. Going to give the new manager the freedom to have the staff that he wants.' He said, 'You might want to look around for a job.' That was tough walking back in the kitchen. Then, a week later he calls and says, 'Hey, we're going to have a press conference tomorrow. You're going to be the manager.' One-year contract.

"A week or 10 days into spring training, he walked into my office and says, 'OK, this is going to work. I think you can do this.' It gave me a great confidence. I said, 'OK, I've got one less thing to worry about.' Now whether he meant it or not, it sure gave me a lot of confidence. He knew what managers went through, especially with Mr. (George) Steinbrenner. He'd check in. 'Hey boy, what are you doing? What did you screw up today? Mess anything up? It's early. You will.' He goes, 'I messed up three things today, most of them at home.' I could write a whole book.

"I can talk about Gene forever. I don't know if I can hold up. Good man. Going to miss him."

As Showalter spoke again to the media following a 9-1 loss, he wore a black band on his left sleeve across the Orioles Maryland state flag patch.

"He didn't take himself too seriously, either," Showalter said earlier in the day. "He used to sneak off late in the afternoon in Fort Lauderdale and try to play nine holes. Mr. Steinbrenner found us one time. There was a cart guy coming around the seventh hole and (Michael) goes, 'Well, he found us.' He had contacts on every course within 15 miles."

Angela Showalter called her husband with the news of Michael's passing shortly after he left their house en route to Camden Yards.

"You hear things that make you pull off the road, that's one of them," Showalter said. "It's a loss for everybody. He's the first one I heard say, 'Friends are people who know all about you and still like you.' Last time we were in New York, he told me that. 'Hey, I know you. You ain't gonna fool me.'"