Blue Jays try to continue mastery of Orioles

Baseball Betting Lines

07/27/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Plenty of teams have given the Baltimore Orioles trouble over the course of this season, but none has proven to be a tougher opponent than the Toronto Blue Jays.

Having won all 10 meetings between the American League East foes so far in 2010, Toronto will attempt to extend that astounding streak when it continues a three-game series with the hapless Orioles tonight at the Rogers Centre.

The Blue Jays maintained their recent mastery over Baltimore with a 9-5 triumph in Monday's opener of this set. The win was also Toronto's ninth in a row against the Orioles at the Rogers Centre, where Baltimore has now lost in 14 of its last 15 visits.

Toronto used its trademark power to prevail last night, with Jose Bautista, Aaron Hill and Adam Lind all hitting homers to pace a 13-hit attack. Bautista's blast, a three-run shot off O's starter Brad Bergesen in the fifth inning, gives the 2010 All-Star a major league-best 28 round-trippers this season.

Lind had a solo homer later in the fifth and finished 3-for-4 with two RBI, while Hill had two hits and knocked in three runs to help the Blue Jays to their third win in four games.

"It's been a season of adjustments and trying to figure things out, hopefully, it's starting to come together," said Lind, who's still batting a subpar .222 for the year. "It's been tough, a lot of work. I'm just going to come back [Tuesday] and try to do it all over again."

Jays starter Brandon Morrow (7-6) added six solid innings on the mound to win on his 26th birthday, with the hard-throwing righty holding Baltimore to two runs and striking out six batters.

Bergesen (3-9) wasn't nearly as effective, as the Blue Jays pounded the second-year major-leaguer for eight runs and 10 hits over the first five innings.

"It was a tough one tonight," said Bergesen afterward. "Obviously, that's one you want to get done with and put it behind you. They jumped on me in the fourth inning and got the timely hits they needed."

Baltimore did homer three times in its latest loss, with Matt Wieters going deep twice and driving in three runs. Luke Scott, named the AL's Player of the Week on Monday, had a two-run shot in defeat.

The Blue Jays have now swatted 152 homers on the season, far and away the most of any team in the majors. Twenty-one of them have come in the club's 10 wins over Baltimore.

Ricky Romero has had a hand in two of Toronto's victories over the Orioles this season, and the talented young hurler was quite impressive in both of those outings. The left-hander, who draws the assignment for the Jays this evening, fired a complete-game six-hitter in a 6-1 besting of Baltimore at the Rogers Centre back in May, then yielded just two unearned runs over seven sharp innings to deal the O's another loss on July 16.

Although he won 13 times during a strong rookie campaign in 2009, Romero did have the same success against Baltimore he's enjoyed this season. The former first-round pick went 0-2 with a 5.47 earned run average in four encounters with the Orioles last year, while surrendering five homers in a combined 26 1/3 innings.

Romero followed up his July 16 victory over the Orioles by working a solid seven innings this past Thursday, even though it resulted in a loss to the Detroit Tigers. The 25-year-old was touched for three runs on seven hits that day.

Kevin Millwood gets the call for Baltimore tonight, with the seasoned veteran set to make his second start since returning from a short stint on the disabled list. He managed to pitch 6 1/3 innings in the comeback appearance, but was still hung with a loss after allowing five runs to the Minnesota Twins last Thursday.

The defeat brought Millwood's 2010 record to 2-9 and raised his ERA to 5.82, the highest of his 14-year tenure in the majors. Two of those setbacks have come at the hands of the Blue Jays, including a May 28 loss at the Rogers Centre in which the 35-year-old was reached for five runs (four earned) and gave up a pair of homers over six innings.

Millwood has struggled on the road throughout the year, bringing a 1-5 ledger with a 5.82 ERA in nine away starts into tonight's clash.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.