Nationals GM: Orioles need to ‘quit whining’ about postponed game

The Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals are still sniping at each other over a rainout that happened a month ago.

On May 11, the Orioles and Nationals were slated to play at Nationals Park, but the game was postponed due to a rainy forecast. It never rained, though, and when the two teams made the game up on Thursday, Orioles manager Buck Showalter took some thinly-veiled shots at their rivals. Some Orioles privately believed the Nationals, who made the decision, were trying to get out of an unfavorable pitching matchup, and Showalter noted that Orioles stars Adam Jones and Manny Machado were out of the lineup for the makeup game due to minor injuries, which had not been the case a month earlier.

“Lot of byproducts of the cancellation,” Showalter said, via Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post, before peering at the beautiful weather. “I think it’s marginally better tonight.”

Nationals GM Mike Rizzo was not having Baltimore’s complaints.

“It rained all day that day, and the forecast said it would rain until 9:30 or 10,” Rizzo said. “I sat in Buck’s office at 6:30, and we talked about it for 20 minutes. He was 100-percent on-board. He didn’t say anything about not canceling the game.

“Their GM [Dan Duquette] was nowhere to be found for three, four hours. We wanted to play the next day. They refused to play then, so the next [open] day was [Thursday]. They drove 32 miles to get there. We flew 3,000 [expletive] miles, and we beat their [behinds]. So quit your whining. Quit whining.”

It’s not uncommon for teams to gripe publicly when something like this happens. Maybe the Orioles do have something of a point, but it’s not like Washington could have known Jones and Machado wouldn’t play in a month.