The Orioles suffered another humiliating defeat, and they’ll be back on the field in two hours to do it all over again.
This just in: the Orioles reek.
OK, maybe that’s not breaking news. But sometimes you just watch this team and it’s truly astounding how incomprehensibly awful they are in every facet of baseball. They can’t hit, particularly in the clutch. They can’t pitch, particularly the soft underbelly of their bullpen. They can’t play defense. They are an utterly defeated, lifeless team about whom nothing good can be said.
The Orioles lost to the Red Sox today, 19-5. And it was only their first game of the day! We all get the pleasure of watching the second game of the doubleheader in just a couple of hours. Can’t wait!
The sad thing is that this was, for much of the day, an extremely winnable game for the Orioles. They even took the first lead, thanks to three straight hits off Brayan Bello to start the third inning, including Jackson Holliday’s RBI single. Adley Rutschman’s grounder to short plated a run from third, but after a walk extended the rally, the O’s biffed it. Holliday inexplicably got thrown out by Bello trying to steal third, and Ryan Mountcastle struck out to end the inning.
The O’s missed a golden opportunity to add on some runs in the fourth. After the first two batters reached base, they never advanced, thanks to a flyout, strikeout, and grounder. Still, the Birds ran up Bello’s pitch count to 87 after just four innings, forcing him out and pressing Boston’s bullpen into early duty in game one.
Meanwhile, Cade Povich did his best to make the slim Orioles lead hold up. Although the Red Sox worked him for long at-bats, he started out with three scoreless innings before they scratched across a run in the fourth on a Nick Sogard RBI groundout.
Povich escaped more trouble in the fifth after allowing a two-out single and a walk. With his pitch count at 94 and a righty batter due up, I thought Tony Mansolino might go to the bullpen, but the O’s interim skipper gave Povich the chance to work out of the jam. His confidence was rewarded when the lefty retired Trevor Story on a groundout, completing five full innings with the lead intact. Povich wasn’t dominant today, but he kept his composure and battled through some tough situations, which is a good thing to see from a young hurler.
Unfortunately, the lead went up in smoke as soon as Povich left the mound. Seranthony Domínguez started the sixth inning and stunk, giving up a one-out double followed by a walk, bringing up the light-hitting Ceddanne Rafaela. As we know, Orioles pitchers are utterly incapable of retiring #9 hitters, and sure enough, Rafaela grounded an RBI single up the middle to tie the game.
Domínguez was replaced by Gregory Soto, who was miles worse. Jarren Duran smacked Soto’s second pitch for a go-ahead single, and two pitches later, Rafael Devers clubbed a game-breaking three-run homer into the Red Sox bullpen. Welp. That escalated quickly. The Orioles were suddenly down 6-2 and the game was essentially over already. But it would get so, so much worse.
It would have been nice if the O’s offense could have put together any semblance of a rally against Boston’s parade of middle relievers, but they simply don’t do that kind of thing. Brennan Bernardino and Garrett Whitlock combined for three scoreless innings before another embarrassing RISP failure for the Birds in the eighth. After loading the bases against lefty Justin Wilson, Urías lashed a single off Justin Slaten to score a run. But with the potential tying run on base, Cedric Mullins had a horrendous at-bat, swinging at several pitches in the dirt to strike out. Heston Kjerstad’s weak groundout stranded the bases loaded.
Mansolino turned to mop-up guy Cionel Pérez in the seventh, and he did such a poor job of mopping up that the O’s ended up using a position player to pitch. After a scoreless seventh, his eighth inning began like this: walk, RBI double, RBI single, single, three-run homer by Rob Refsnyder. Also during that sequence, the Orioles had a runner dead to rights at home plate, but Rutschman simply dropped the ball. This team stinks. Have I said that already?
Pérez now has an 8.31 ERA and cannot even be relied upon to simply record a few outs in a blowout game. Whatever usefulness he might have once had with the Orioles, it has long since evaporated. Get this guy off the roster, please. Third baseman Emmanuel Rivera had to come in to pitch, and the Sox simply teed off on the poor guy and his 40-50 mph eephus pitches, sending 13 batters to the plate — in addition to the five who had already batted against Pérez — and plating another eight runs, including a Devers grand slam.
All told, the Red Sox scored 13 runs in the eighth inning, racking up 12 hits. Every hitter in the lineup batted twice. Rivera has an excuse, since he’s not actually a pitcher. You could argue that the same thing applies to Pérez.
With an insurmountable lead, the Red Sox also used a position player to pitch, bringing in Abraham Toro for the final three outs instead of burning another reliever. Toro had some troubles as well but was nowhere near as bad as Rivera, limiting the Orioles to two runs on four hits.
And that’ll do it for this debacle. Who’s pumped for Game 2??