It’s Memorial Day and the Orioles have still yet to win more than two straight. Can they find a way to do it today?
Hello, friends.
On one hand, the Orioles are in the midst of a chaotic spiral down into disaster, or what comes beyond disaster. They are 5-15 in the month of May and new injuries are still getting added into the mix regularly, which has the Orioles casting about for any jabroni they can plug in for a day or two.
Just over this long holiday weekend, the O’s placed Ramón Laureano on the injured list, selected the contract of Terrin Vavra, then designated Vavra one day later to bring in some guy named Cooper Hummel. About the 30-year-old with three MLB seasons under his belt, we can say this: He’s bad enough to belong on the 2025 Orioles, with this career batting line: .159/.255/.275 in 235 plate appearances. Hummel is just a placeholder until Colton Cowser’s rehab wraps, but still, sheesh.
There might be one more added in to this pile, with the Orioles having to pinch hit for Adley Rutschman after he took a foul tip to the mask yesterday. Interim manager Tony Mansolino was evasive when asked if Rutschman was in the concussion protocol. If Rutschman needs to miss time, it’s really going to get weird. You might be disappointed in Rutschman’s hitting, but whoever’s going to fill in from Norfolk (almost certainly not Samuel Basallo at this juncture) is going to hit worse.
On the other hand, the Orioles are currently doing something they’ve done precious little of, bouncing back from a couple of stupid losses in a row to string together a couple of decent games. They got some great pitching in Saturday’s second game from Trevor Rogers – really! – and combined solid pitching and hitting to win on Sunday as well. In spite of everything, I believe about this team that if the starting pitching can give them a chance to win, they will still get some wins.
This is the third time this season that the Orioles have won two games in a row. I winced a little bit as I typed out that previous sentence. It’s Memorial Day, almost two months into the season, and not only have the Orioles not won three in a row, they haven’t even won consecutive games more than three times. Of course they haven’t! The pitching staff’s ERA is close to 6. While a few players who’ve allowed a lot of runs are gone – Matt Bowman, Kyle Gibson, and also this weekend, Cionel Pérez – many guys who’ve mostly stunk in 2025 remain.
The latest quest to win three games in a row will run in part through Charlie Morton. Yeah, exactly. The Orioles have yet to win a game this season in which Morton pitched. (That is also true of the since-DFA’d Pérez.) Morton has improved in May, with a 4.40 ERA in 14.1 innings. If that was his season ERA, there’d probably be some light grumbling about why the O’s spent $15 million for that, but it wouldn’t be such a source of angst. A 4.40 ERA from him would be fine.
It’s a 3:05 game start time for Memorial Day, with the Orioles welcoming the Cardinals into town for the start of a three-game set. Erick Fedde – not a lefty – is set to start the game for St. Louis.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
Laureano latest Oriole to land on IL, Pérez DFA’d among flurry of moves (Orioles.com)
Jake Rill summarizes the Saturday flurry, which also included the arrival of a reliever you’ve probably never thought much about, Yaramil Hiraldo. The 29-year-old was last with an MLB organization in 2021 before this year.
More on Hummel’s signing, Laureano’s ankle sprain, Mateo in left field (School of Roch)
Hummel was apparently on the verge of signing a minor league deal with a different team when the Orioles came along with an MLB offer. It’s not quite talking Morton and Gibson out of retirement over the offseason, but it’s potentially not far removed from that.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
There are a few former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2017-19 pitcher Gabriel Ynoa, 1993 pitcher John O’Donoghue, and 1991 pitcher Stacy Jones.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: vaudeville/blues singer Mamie Smith (1883), singer/actor Al Jolson (1886), actor John Wayne (1907), jazz legend Miles Davis (1926), astronaut Sally Ride (1951), musician Lenny Kravitz (1964), and South Park co-creator Matt Stone (1971).
On this day in history…
In 1637, English colonists in Connecticut along with allied members of the Mohegan tribe attacked a village of Pequot natives, killing about 500 people in the “Mystic massacre.”
In 1865, the last active general officer of the Confederacy, Edmund Kirby Smith, surrendered in Galveston, Texas.
In 1923, the first 24 Hours of Le Mans was held. The legendary endurance race has been held annually, with exceptions for World War II disruptions, ever since. This year’s edition is set to begin on June 14. A three-driver team from Ferrari won the 2024 incarnation of the race.
In 1940, during World War II, retreating Allied armies hit the English Channel and began an evacuation from Dunkirk, France. This operation, aided by private citizens on little ships, ultimately helped hundreds of thousands of soldiers escape, though there was ultimately no halting the German rampage through France.
In 1998, the Supreme Court decided a case, New Jersey v. New York, in which disputed ownership of Ellis Island, the location through which many immigrants from Europe were processed into the United States, was settled. The case decided that substantial portions of the island that were reclaimed from the Hudson River in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are actually New Jersey land, while the “original” island, whose ownership was settled in colonial times, is New York land.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on May 26. Have a safe Memorial Day. Go O’s!