The Orioles don’t have many games left against teams who are totally out of the race right now.
The 2024 Orioles season has 21 games left to be played. Only six of those games will be against teams who currently have below-.500 records. Three of them are lined up this weekend as the Orioles have the Rays come in to Camden Yards.
It’s not nearly as much of a bad team as the Orioles just faced with series against the Rockies and White Sox. The Rays are only barely down in a losing record. This isn’t a cupcake where the O’s can just sleepwalk through it and get anywhere good. I don’t think they’re a team that does this; even when they play badly, it’s just what happens sometimes. The favored team doesn’t always win. Anything can happen on a particular day for a variety of reasons.
Over the last ten games before this, the Orioles are 5-5. That’s continuing a pattern that’s been going on since June 10, the first time that the team reached 21 games over .500 for the season. The Rays come in with a 4-6 record over the last ten, and are fresh off splitting a four-game set the Twins.
The Rays are one of the worst-hitting teams in the league this season, with the fifth-worst team OPS in all of MLB at .675. Their whole team is OPSing in the neighborhood of Jorge Mateo, and they traded away several of their productive hitters ahead of July’s trade deadline too.
There are three right-handed starting pitchers lined up against the Orioles for the series. Will that impact the decisions that Brandon Hyde makes in setting his starting nine? Those who are looking for more playing time for Coby Mayo could be disappointed over the weekend, without any lefties in sight.
Game 1: Friday, 7:05pm ET
- BAL starter: Dean Kremer – 20 GS, 4.51 ERA, 4.46 FIP, 1.297 WHIP
- TB starter: Shane Baz – 9 GS, 3.49 ERA, 4.13 FIP, 1.286 WHIP
Anyone who saw the welt on Kremer’s wrist from being struck by a line drive during his last start on Sunday probably was not expecting that he would actually be in shape to pitch the next time his turn comes up in the rotation. Even once the Orioles announced that x-rays were negative, they would have to push him back, right? Except, it turns out they don’t. We’ll probably know pretty quickly whether or not this was a good decision. Sometimes players say they’re fine and they aren’t fine.
August was not a good month for Kremer, as he ended up allowing a 5.28 ERA over his six starts. Still, three of those six starts were in the quality start bucket (six innings pitched or more, three earned runs or fewer). That’s about as much as you can ask from a #4 or #5 starting pitcher, which is what Kremer is in this rotation. He has not faced the Rays yet this season.
Baz, a 25-year-old righty, is only nine games back from Tommy John surgery that he underwent near the end of the 2022 season. Over the course of August, he had two different starts where he went at least seven innings. The Rays haven’t been afraid to push him over the 90 pitch threshold when he’s been either effective enough to warrant it or they’ve been desperate enough to try to get as many innings as they can out of him.
Game 2: Saturday, 4:05pm ET
- BAL starter: Zach Eflin (TB/BAL totals) – 24 GS, 3.60 ERA, 3.44 FIP, 1.117 WHIP
- TB starter: Ryan Pepiot – 21 GS, 3.76 ERA, 4.13 FIP, 1.124 WHIP
One thing that made me feel better about the Orioles’ fortunes heading into the final month of the season was Eflin coming back from the injured list and picking up right where he left off two weeks before. With a 1.95 ERA and 0.959 WHIP since joining the Orioles, it’s been a lot of fun to see him in action. What’s interesting to me about that is it’s not like it’s involved comical changes in his batted ball fortunes – he had a .293 BABIP with the Rays and has a .287 so far with the Orioles. He pitched seven shutout innings against his former team a month ago.
In terms of their actual 2024 pre-trade ERA results relative to the league average, Eflin was very close to fellow Orioles trade acquisition Trevor Rogers, who’s been a disaster. Peripheral signs were pointing much better for Eflin and we’ve certainly seen that with his pitching since he joined the team. That was a good move for Mike Elias even if the players he traded – particularly Jackson Baumeister – have shown some promise in their new organization.
Pepiot has been the best Rays starting pitcher to date, at least out of those who’ve spent most of the season in their rotation. This puts him in roughly the same vicinity as Albert Suárez. The Orioles saw Pepiot back on June 10, when they scored four runs off of him in six innings on the way to a win. Ryan O’Hearn came up big with three hits and three runs batted in on that occasion.
Game 3: Sunday, 12:05pm ET
Note that this game will have a video broadcast only on the Roku Channel. It will not be on MASN. It will be on the Orioles Radio Network as usual.
- BAL starter: Corbin Burnes – 28 GS, 3.19 ERA, 3.67 FIP, 1.134 WHIP
- TB starter: Zack Littell – 25 GS, 4.04 ERA, 4.25 FIP, 1.354 WHIP
People, including me, wanted to believe that the calendar turning away from a bad month of August for Burnes would be all it would take for him to get things going in a better direction. Burnes had a 7.36 ERA in August! That’s bad. Although he only allowed one earned run in his last start, that was against the White Sox, and he only went five innings. That wasn’t enough of a return towards dominance to make anybody feel better.
Burnes has pitched against the Rays twice this season. Both of these games were in the Trop. He pitched 13 innings between these games, allowing five runs (three earned) while striking out 11 batters. Will facing them in Baltimore go about as well? Burnes has almost identical home and away splits for ERA, though his OPS against is 89 points lower on the road. Day game splits are slightly better than night, so the 12:05 start could work in his favor.
This will be the fourth time this year that the Orioles have gone up against Littell. They saw him twice in the span of a week in June, scoring three runs in his six innings each time. In August, Littell allowed three runs (one earned) over five innings. He’s a much worse pitcher on the road, allowing a 5.37 ERA and a .914 OPS. We are well acquainted over the past few months that there’s no guarantee of a favorable split meaning good performance.
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Every series from here on out is going to be one where the Orioles could sure stand to win two out of three games. This is even more true for the two where they are getting slightly weaker opponents, as the Rays appear to be. The O’s have not done very well at stringing together multiple wins in a row over the last six weeks or so. No time like the present to start to change that around.