When you finish a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox by scoring the winning run in the 10th inning off All-Star closer Jonathan Papelbon, some of the moments that led to Ty Wigginton's game-ending double tend to be forgotten.
But I thought Orioles manager Dave Trembley leaving left-handed specialist Will Ohman in the game with two outs in the ninth inning, a man on and a right-handed hitter at the plate (Adrian Beltre) deserved another mention.
If Beltre hits a ball in the gap and scores J.D. Drew, then Trembley is the goat for allowing Ohman to face a right-handed hitter. If Ohman retires Beltre, which he did on a strikeout, then Trembley is lauded for being gutsy and unconventional.
By the way, I don't want this to become a bash-or-applaud-Dave-Trembley post. We sure as heck have had enough of those in the previous two weeks.
With right-hander Matt Albers ready in the bullpen, I think most people who have watched the Orioles this season expected Trembley to yank Ohman. Instead he walked to the mound and said, "Get this [son of a gun] out," and then turned around and headed back to the dugout. Short, sweet and to the point.
"He didn't say anything to me," Trembley said. "I said something to him. I told him what I needed. And he told me he could do it. I said, 'I need you to get the guy out.' He had great stuff. He had power stuff. He had probably the best fastball I've seen him have, and he had a put-away slider. And our situation has been, we've been taxed out of the bullpen. Albers has been good, a lot of those guys have been good coming out of the bullpen, but the first hitter that a lot of our guys have faced out of the bullpen, they've given up hits, and I'll be darned if that was going to happen again."
Ohman said that he was ready to plead his case if Trembley wanted to pull him out, but he didn't have to.
"I don't think you re going to see any ballplayer, any red-blooded male, that is going to say, 'I want to plop down; take me out because I don't want to face this guy,'" Ohman said. "To get the opportunity and to get the vote of confidence means a lot. You always want to test yourself."