Web Extra: Brett Says Perspective Is Needed After Tuesday Orioles Heart-Breaker

Brett Hollander isn't going negative on Buck Showalter.

The Orioles skipper faced Wednesday morning quarterbacking from across sports media after bringing in Ubaldo Jimenez in extra innings in the sudden death Wild Card Game in Toronto. Jimenez gave up two straight doubles before allowing a walk-off home run to Edwin Encarnacion. WBAL's Brett Hollander says it's a moment that will sit in the pantheon of Baltimore sports disappointments, right there with the Royals sweep in the 2014 American League Championship Series, the abrupt end to the 1989 "Why not?" Orioles season and the Ravens blowing big playoff leads against the Steelers and Patriots.

"In some weird, sick way, you need that. You need those moments to really get the most out of fandom," he says in this web exclusive commentary. "I've been to Yankee Stadium in a playoff game and the crowd was complacent to what was going on."

He said it's the disappointments that make the successes so elating.

"Now will we move on from this?" Hollander asks. "Yeah, of course we will. Did we move on from the Billy Cundiff miss and the Lee Evans drop? Yeah, it's not easy, but that's how it is."

While he says Showalter made a mistake, it wasn't the mistake many are saying Showalter made--Hollander says he wouldn't have brought in closer Zach Britton either.

"My biggest issue with the decisions last night wasn't so much Britton or no Britton in that time," Hollander says. "It was Ubaldo over let's say [Dylan] Bundy, or even Ubaldo to be on the roster at all."

He says what Showalter was probably thinking was that his offense wasn't going to score for at least a few more innings against Jays starter Francisco Liriano, also pitching in relief, so he would match that with a starter out of his own pen. Both Jimenez and Bundy were on the special 25-man roster for the game. He says the decision needs to be put in context of all the decisions that night up to that point--from pulling Chris Tillman when he did to his use of Mychal Givens--and all the decisions over the course of the last few seasons that have allowed the Orioles to so drastically outperform analyst expectations year after year. And in the end, all but one of the teams in the postseason will go away with heartbreak.

"Have some perspective, not only from a baseball standpoint but from a sports and fandom and life standpoint," Hollander says. "One team walks home with a championship. It's really hard. The great Earl Weaver won one championship with one of the best and most talented players in the history of the game. One."

That's why Hollander isn't ready to join the trend of piling on criticism of Showalter following Tuesday's loss, however crushing it was.

"I'm closer to building him a statue downtown than being that guy out there who's trying to run him out of town," he says.