Orioles can’t hit a tricky Reid Detmers, drop series finale to Angels, 4-1

Angels lefty Reid Detmers stymied O’s bats for five innings, and Tyler Wells got hit up early.

Coming into Sunday, everything was coming super easy to the 2024 Orioles in this opening series against the Los Angeles Angels. On Thursday, they delivered an 11-3 beatdown in Game 1 and yesterday, a 13-4 butt-whupping in Game 2.

But as the baseball saying goes, even the best teams still lose 60 games in a season. OK, let’s hope there’s only 59 more of these soggy showings for the Orioles this year.

Orioles right hander Tyler Wells wasn’t supposed to be making this start today: he was thrust into the #3 spot in the rotation by Kyle Bradish’s unwelcome UCL sprain, announced back in February, and John Means’ recovery, which has hit a snag. (Uh, about that: let me recommend you not check the box score from Triple-A Norfolk, where Means made a disastrous rehab start on Sunday.)

Wells did have an excellent spring, allowing just two runs in 14.1 innings with eleven strikeouts. But today, he looked like a guy who’d been unexpectedly thrust into a spot start and wasn’t quite ready for action. Over the first inning-plus, his fastball/cutter looked concerningly hittable and flat. As it happened, with a man on in the first inning, outfielder Taylor Ward got all of a low fastball and launched it 399 feet over the wall to put the Angels up 2-0.

The Angels added a quick third and fourth run in a long second inning that saw Wells give up three singles (one soft, two on sharp contact). One run scored on a single by No. 9 man Zach Neto, and just as Wells looked to be finally putting things together, a fourth came home when catcher James McCann misfired attempting to hold the runner on third. Yuck. We don’t need to hand out free runs.

Especially not with Angels starter Reid Detmers out there looking much better than you’d hoped. A 2020 draftee who made his MLB debut in August 2021, the 23-year-old lefty hasn’t succeeding at putting it all together yet but has undeniably great stuff. Today, you saw exactly what the deal is.

Deploying high heat and a mean lefty curveball, Detmers mostly made Orioles hitters look timid and ineffective over five dominant innings in which he allowed just two hits. (Those hits, for those of us counting, came thanks to Ryan Mountcastle scooping a low curveball into the outfield, and Jorge Mateo legging out a squibber in the second. Despite not great results, both hitters showed pretty good approaches today.)

The second inning saw the O’s claw one run back, but whether this was their good approach or Detmers beating himself is tough to say. With one out, Jordan Westburg turned in a disciplined eight-pitch at-bat that reminds you why this team loves him (and why, if I were an opposing pitcher, I’d hate him). Cedric Mullins got plunked on the elbow guard and Mateo narrowly got aboard. Showing massive maturity, Henderson drew a two-out, bases-loaded walk on six pitches to give the Orioles their first (and only, it turned out) run. Adley Rutschman couldn’t keep the line moving, grounding out, and there went the Orioles’ best chance.

Detmers deserves credit for what he did today, although you felt the Orioles could have made more of his occasional command struggles. Some Orioles took impressively professional at-bats: Gunnar, Westburg, and Cedric Mullins, in particular. (Note: it was ridiculous to see Mullins duck to avoid getting beaned by a curveball in the fourth and the home plate ump still call it strike three. OK, I’m just belly-aching.) Jorge Mateo, actually, wasn’t making bad swing decisions. But James McCann and Austin Hays were basically automatic outs all day.

As for Tyler Wells, despite that rocky start, once his breaking stuff showed up to the party some time around the middle of the second inning, he immediately looked a lot better. Wells whiffed Mike Trout in the third inning and got two ground ball outs. In the fourth, he whiffed a pair of Angels, then delivered a three-up, three-down fifth, and struck out the side in the sixth (on three different putaway pitches, no less—cutter, changeup, heater) to cap off his day.

By the way, after the one bad inning, the O’s starter didn’t need a ton of defensive padding, but it also doesn’t hurt when your shortstop is 4-for-10 on the season with a triple, homer, and three walks in three games and can also do this. Gunnar is a stud.

Overall, six innings for Wells with four runs allowed (three earned), five hits, seven K’s and no walks. What to make of this effort? Overall I think we’ll take it! Durability has been an issue for the big righty, so it was good to see him grow as the game went on, especially as the K’s started to rack up.

The Angels pulled Detmers after 87 pitches and five innings, and this felt like not a bad thing. Except that, after what the Orioles had done to Los Angeles in the first two games, Angels manager Ron Washington was playing this one like it was a late-season divisional matchup, so there’d be no more slouches on the mound for them.

José Soriano, a back-end weapon, can hit 100 on the radar gun easy, and he rewarded his manger’s trust with three scoreless innings. A mini-rally against him in the seventh—on a McCann single and a Tony Kemp pinch-hit walk—fizzled out. In the eighth, leadoff man Ryan Mountcastle reached on an error but a tough-luck double play—Santander blistered a ball 110 mph right at second baseman Brandon Drury—erased him, and a pinch-hitting Colton Cowser couldn’t collect an RBI, either.

The Angels’ Carlos Estévez, an eight-year veteran with Colorado and LA, got custody of the ninth, and he didn’t blow it, unfortunately. Three Orioles flew out, and the series sweep remains unconsummated.

Even the best fall down sometimes, says a song that unfortunately dates my tween years to the early aughts. Other pearls of wisdom: A good lefty curveball is hard to hit. Tyler Wells should maybe throw longer bullpens, because after the first, his stuff looked not bad. Gunnar is taking excellent at-bats and is ridiculous in the field—a stud, like everybody says.

Onward and upward, Orioles.