AL East Notes: Orioles, Martinez, Lowe, Posada

Hector Noesi got his first MLB win in unconventional fashion yesterday, pitching in and out of trouble through four innings of scoreless relief against the Orioles. Here’s the latest on the Yankees, the O’s and their division rivals after a bizarre game in Baltimore…

• Orioles president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail and manager Buck Showalter are likely weighing a variety of options after the extra-inning game and Jeff Zrebiec of the Baltimore Sun explains them.
• John Tomase of the Boston Herald argues that letting Victor Martinez leave as a free agent last season was the right decision for Boston. Though the Red Sox will likely miss the backstop this year, they’ll also miss his decline years.
• The Red Sox are in ‘hang-in’ mode with Tim Wakefield and Alfredo Aceves starting and John Lackey and Daisuke Matsuzaka on the disabled list, according to Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe. The Red Sox have inquired on Kevin Millwood and Cafardo suggests we should keep an eye on Derek Lowe, though he appears unavailable.
• Though Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter helped the Yankees win five championships, keeping the veterans in pinstripes when they’re no longer elite players has its consequences, in the opinion of Les Carpenter of Yahoo Sports. “The price of relative stability, of naming cornerstones and leaving them in place,” Carpenter writes, “is the inability to get rid of them.”