Shortstop Luis Vázquez had to pitch for the third time in two weeks; let’s leave it at that.
You know Ratatouille, the Pixar classic where Rémy the rat becomes a decorated Parisian chef, inspired by the mantra of his idol Chef Gusteau, “Not everyone can be a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere”? Watching tonight’s Orioles-Rangers game, the thought crossed my mind that if Chef Gusteau were an MLB executive, he’d say, “A great pitcher can come from anywhere, but the Orioles cannot heave up a bunch of randos from the farm team and expect this club to win games.”
Forgive me if that sounds elitist, not egalitarian. But while it’s possible that one or all of Brandon Young, Matt Bowman, Scott Blewett, and Gregory Soto will contribute to “The Next Great Orioles team,” I kind of doubt it. To me, the fact that these guys appeared in tonight’s game at all speaks to an extreme pitching shortage, not just on the Orioles 40-man roster (you might remember, the O’s have eight starters on the IL right now) but in the high levels of the farm system, too.
Baseball can be deeply unfair. Indeed, for the second straight week, the Orioles had to face Texas’s two-time Cy Young Award Jacob deGrom with Brandon Young making an emergency start. Tonight, deGrom was less dominant, and Young hung tough as long as he could, but after this David-v.-Goliath affair got as close as 3-2 in the fifth (thanks to the lately-improbably badass Gary Sánchez’s two-run home run), the Orioles bullpen gave up seven runs, and David got left in the dust.
Seemingly in on the “baseball isn’t fair” theme, home plate ump David Rackley judged Jacob deGrom to have “rung up” the first batter of the game, Jackson Holliday, on a pitch well below the knees. The O’s went down in order that inning. But after that, they definitely made more noise off the Texas ace than last week’s near no-no, with a runner aboard in every inning.
The Birds wasted a leadoff Ryan O’Hearn walk in the second inning, and a Cedric Mullins single in the third, when the centerfielder ran into an out trying to steal. But they broke through in dramatic fashion in the fourth. Gary Sánchez, hitting with Gunnar Henderson on second after a single and steal, let fly a mighty home run. Here’s two crazy stats about the blast—which do you think is crazier?
1. No right-handed hitter had homered off deGrom this year.
2. In his last 27 AB’s with RISP, Sánchez has driven in 23 runs.
That bomb made it 3-2, Texas … but things only got worse from there. Brandon Young had laboriously held Texas to three runs over four innings. Never dominant, his fastball hangs out around 91-92 mph and sustained pretty hard contact (by a bad Texas offense, remember). After courting danger in the first two innings, danger turned around and bit Young in the ass, when in the third inning he allowed two singles, a walk, a two-run Adolis García single up the middle, then an RBI single by onetime Oriole Jonah Heim (that frigging guy!).
Young’s outing was effortful and short, but before you had time to blink and say, “Victory is still within reach,” it was 6-2 Texas, and this game was a goner. Pitching the fifth, sidearming righty Matt Bowman made a mess. He allowed a two-out double to the effusive Adolis García, then a home run to Alejandro Osuna. For effect, Bowman walked Jonah Heim (that frigging guy) on four pitches, then served up an RBI single to some guy named Billy McKinney. Bowman returned in the sixth, and allowed a fourth run on a double and a pair of singles. Bowman looked totally shaken. It was tough to watch, although perhaps not even the low point of this game.
Joking aside, Scott Blewett pitched a nice 1.1 innings, the only Orioles pitcher who looked competent tonight (I’m not counting position player Luis Vázquez, so don’t ask me). Blewett struck out Heim (that frigging guy) to leave an inherited runner stuck at third base in the sixth, then pitched a clean seventh.
Despite everything, tonight’s low point was Gregory Soto’s utterly unwatchable eighth inning, where he had no command, especially with the clumsy Gary Sánchez catching him. In a single inning, Soto threw three wild pitches, walked two, hit Corey Seager with a pitch, and gave up an RBI double to Justin Foscue, a guy who was 0-for-44 entering this AB. As the kids say, it was cringe. It got bad enough that interim manager Tony Mansolino pulled Soto for a position player with two outs, Luis Vázquez getting a quick flyball third out to keep his ERA a pristine 0.00.
I’m not trying to be a jerk vis-à-vis Young, Bowman, Blewett and Soto. Credit especially to Young, gamely called up for the second time in a week to do battle with deGrom—who’d want that assignment? Anyway, I hope all four of them go on to have career-making breakout 2025 seasons. But from a team-wide perspective, in the main, when you pitch people like this against a Cy Young, you should expect to lose, and this, among many other reasons, is why we might suspect the Orioles have given up on the season.