The O’s are now 12 games under .500 as they hit the 100-game mark.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Orioles lost a game because they were bad at all aspects of baseball.
The Guardians steamrolled the O’s again, 6-3, in a game that perfectly encapsulated everything that’s gone wrong for the Birds this year. Let’s run down the checklist, shall we?
1. Lousy starting pitching — CHECK
Brandon Young entered tonight’s game with no wins and no quality starts in his six major league outings. He’d gone five innings in only one of them. Would this be the night he finally made it through the fifth again?
No, dear readers, it would not. Yet again Young fell short of five, managing just 4.1 innings, in which he gave up three runs. The first came on a solo homer by José Ramírez, which is certainly forgivable. That guy’s pretty good. Less forgivable was Young walking the No. 9 hitter, .170-hitting Bo Naylor, to lead off the fifth, with Naylor later scoring on a sac fly. In between, Kyle Manzardo delivered an RBI single in the third.
After this game, Young’s ERA sits at 7.34. And there’s a chance he’ll be, like, the Orioles’ #3 starter after the trade deadline. Get excited!
2. Awful relief work — CHECK
The sixth inning was a big ol’ struggle-fest for O’s southpaw Gregory Soto, a possible trade candidate who did his best to destroy any of his value. Soto labored for 33 pitches and just 14 of them were strikes. (In fairness, if he hadn’t been squeezed by home plate ump Tony Randazzo, his ball-strike ratio would have been…well, still really bad.) Soto issued three walks in the inning along with RBI singles by Brayan Rocchio and Angel Martínez. And also a wild pitch. And also an uncontested stolen base.
Remember, folks: Mike Elias traded two pitching prospects for Soto at last year’s deadline. He’d be lucky to recoup a fraction of that value if he deals Soto this time around.
Yennier Cano, too, surrendered a run in the seventh, giving up a walk, a single, and a perfectly executed squeeze bunt by Rocchio. You’d never know the Guardians were the worst-hitting team in the league based on how they’ve throttled Orioles pitching in this series.
3. Terrible hitting — CHECK
The Orioles’ offense was Guardians starter Joey Cantillo, a lefty who’d worked almost exclusively in relief this year. So did the O’s make this barely-stretched-out, unremarkable lefty look like the second coming of Sandy Koufax? Yes, of course they did. Cantillo mowed through four hitless innings to start this evening, striking out five.
It wasn’t until the fifth inning that the O’s put together a rally, thanks to a pair of hits and a walk that loaded the bases with nobody out. Of course, being the Orioles, they biffed the golden opportunity and came away with just one run, which scored on a Jacob Stallings double play grounder. Cantillo ended up with five strong innings and his first win as a starter since last September.
One exception to the Orioles’ otherwise dreary offensive showing was Coby Mayo, making only his fourth start this month, who put together a slew of patient plate appearances and worked three walks and a single. It’s criminal that the O’s haven’t given this guy more playing time, as he’s showing the most professional at-bats of anyone on the team. And yet there’s a decent chance Mayo will be riding the bench again tomorrow. Make it make sense.
A hat tip also to Ramón Laureano, who homered, and Jackson Holliday, who contributed an RBI single. I would also applaud Ramón Urías for his two hits except that he foolishly got himself thrown out at second on a shot off the left-field wall in the seventh. Bleh. By the time All-Star closer Emmanuel Clase set down the Orioles easily in the ninth, there was little fight left in this O’s team.
**
Just another across-the-board terrible performance by the Orioles, which is becoming a near-daily ritual. There’s almost nothing else we can even say about them at this point. But I’m recapping this sorry lot again tomorrow, so I guess I’ll have to think of something.