The O’s rolled out an inexplicable lineup for their series finale, with predictably disastrous results.
There’s a running joke in Birdland about the Orioles’ “Sunday Forfeit” lineups, based on the club’s perceived tendency to start their backups on the closing day of the weekend and guarantee a loss. That belief, of course, isn’t particularly grounded in reality; there’s no evidence that the Orioles play any worse on Sundays than all other days (just two years ago, for instance, the O’s won 14 consecutive Sunday games).
But maaaaan, today’s lineup — in an eventual 4-1 loss in the rubber game to the Royals — was a Sunday Forfeit if I’ve ever seen one. Against southpaw Kris Bubic, manager Brandon Hyde benched youngsters Heston Kjerstad and Jackson Holliday, who have both been hitting well of late, and Cedric Mullins, who has been on fire all season.
The kicker: Bubic is a reverse splits guy, who has fared worse against lefty batters in his career (.305/.388/.513) than against righties (.262/.335/.420). Wasting the DH spot on the light-hitting Gary Sánchez while benching Kjerstad, Holliday, and Mullins certainly lends credence to the idea that the O’s weren’t putting their best lineup out there.
Worse yet, the Orioles’ insistence on getting every right-handed bat in the lineup led to an absurd defensive arrangement that put Jorge Mateo in center field for just the fifth time in his O’s career, a decision that immediately backfired in the most spectacularly brutal way imaginable.
The second Royals batter of the game, Bobby Witt Jr., tested Mateo’s defensive chops. Actually it would be generous to even call it a test. Witt swatted a hard-hit but routine fly ball to right-center field. Mateo broke late, then gave chase, lifted his glove, and…just missed it. Just flat out whiffed. The ball rattled onto the warning track and the speedy Witt easily arrived at third with a gift triple. In reality, it should have been an error. That’s a play that would have easily been made not only by Mullins but by any major league outfielder. Just not by an infielder miscast as an outfielder.
Seriously, why? Why start Jorge Mateo in center field? To get his bat (0-for-11 this season after today) in the lineup against a lefty with reverse splits? It was Hyde who, two days ago, lamented the Orioles’ ongoing defensive struggles, especially in the outfield. And then he does this? What did he expect to happen?
I hesitate to say that one play ruined the entire game for the Orioles, but it certainly set the tone. Not only did the gift baserunner promptly score on Vinnie Pasquantino’s sac fly — which would have been the third out if Witt’s fly ball had been caught — but it extended the inning and allowed for a further Royals rally against a rattled Cade Povich. Salvador Perez and Mark Canha both singled, and Michael Massey doubled them both home on a fly to right that Tyler O’Neill seemed to pull up on. The Royals had a quick 3-0 lead.
It was as if all the air was deflated from the Orioles’ balloon. They trailed for the remainder of the game and never came anywhere close to making it competitive. Their Sunday Forfeit lineup was hapless against Bubic, who threw 6.2 dominant innings and struck out eight. Mateo, Sánchez, and Ramón Laureano — the three guys who started in place of Kjerstad, Holliday, and Mullins — were a combined 0-for-8 with four Ks. Maybe next time just let the lefties start?
Gunnar Henderson continued to struggle since coming off the IL, going 0-for-4, and usual lefty-masher Tyler O’Neill took an 0-for-4 as well. The only capable O’s hitter was Ryan Mountcastle, who had three of the Birds’ five hits and was the only batter not to strike out. Mountcastle scored the Birds’ lone run in the seventh, when he led off with a triple and scored on a wild pitch. By then it was too late to matter.
I will give a hat tip to Povich, who recovered from his shaky first inning (for which he wasn’t entirely at fault) to throw six innings, becoming the first O’s starter not named Zach Eflin to go six. He wasn’t fooling many batters, though, as the Royals pounded 13 hits against him, eight of which had a 100+ mph exit velocity. Freddy Fermin’s RBI single in the second was the last run the Royals scored against him.
The Orioles limped to the finish, going seven-up, seven-down against relievers Hunter Harvey, Lucas Erceg, and Carlos Estévez, wrapping up their second straight series loss and falling back to two games under .500. The O’s have had quite a few ugly defeats already this year, but this one felt particularly self-inflicted.