Source:ABC Sports– Orioles outfielder Lee Lacy.

Source:The New Democrat

“1985-07-01 ABC MNB – Tigers at Orioles. ABC Monday Night Baseball.”

From Classic MLB

Going into this game, this looked like a great game, especially for ABC Sports prime time Monday Night Baseball, with Don Drysdale and Tim McCarver with the call of the game. Both teams having great lineups, the game at Baltimore Memorial Stadium, early July, when it’s hot and humid as hell in Baltimore and in the rest of the State of Maryland, and the Orioles had Scott McGregor pitching for them.

But after 1983, the Orioles starting pitching started falling and they became most a power-hitting team, that hit a lot of home runs and scored a lot of runs, especially at home. They added outfielder Fred Lynn, who they got from the Anaheim Angels (as I call them) and added outfielder Lee Lacy, Mike Young, to go along with Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken, to of the best all around players in all of MLB at this point.

But as good as the Orioles offense was in the mid 1980s, their starting pitching was perhaps just as bad, with just Mike Boddicker being the only consistent started that they had.

Orioles ace Jim Palmer retires after the 1984 season, Scott McGregor and Mike Flannagan’s arms were failing them. And when you pitch at Baltimore Memorial Stadium and those other American League ballparks that have short porches and hot and humid summers, you can’t afford to throw hanger after hanger and expect to succeed, especially when you are also walking a lot of hitters as well. Orioles pitcher Dennis Martinez was up and down. When he was up, he was an all star and perhaps Cy Young contender. When he was off, he would struggle to get out of the 3rd inning.

Like I said, this looked like a great matchup going in. But when Scott McGregor was off and he was pitching against a good team, like the defending World Series champion Detroit Tigers, the were Orioles generally got blown out or won it in a slugfest.