The E-5 tour

Ryan and I mapped out our baseball travel this year (five new stadiums for him, four for me), and he's calling it the E-5 tour because based on ESPN's season-opening power rankings, we expected to be subjecting ourselves to some pretty awful baseball (opening day ranking in parentheses).

• Twins (28th) at White Sox (27th)

• Brewers (25th) at D-backs (22nd)

• Reds (29th) at Padres (30th)

• Reds (29th) at Braves (23rd)

• Athletics (26th) at Phillies (24th)

Petco Park absorbed that old warehouse. 

Several teams have surprised us though: the Twins and Brewers were both in first place for their games, the Diamondbacks were contending, and even the Reds have not looked entirely dismal (to borrow one of Marty Brennaman' favorite adjectives).

We still haven't picked our Camden Yards game this year, so maybe there's hope for a matchup of the Orioles and an exceptional team. Although at this rate, even a ridiculous O's optimist like Ryan might agree that the E-5 tour has morphed into E-6. Ryan and his cousin Matt have been commiserating over texts about the last month being the worst stretch of Orioles baseball since the Sydney Ponson era.

Here are a few pictures from E-5 Tour stop #3 at Petco Park in which the Padres beat the Reds 6-2.

Our seats in the right field bleachers offered a great view. 

The Padres jumped all over the Reds in the 1st inning with four straight singles ... 

... and stole a few bases ...

... and made the Reds have a lot of these. Ryan said former Oriole Scott Feldman's pitching performance looked familiar, much to my dismay. 

You can read about our visit to Chase Field in Ryan's post. (The Padres, by the way, had a more traditional/less scary mascot.)

After this season, Ryan will be missing only seven of the current 30 MLB stadiums. He has seen both L.A. stadiums and I haven't, so I will still need nine more.