On the final day of a weekend-long Star Wars promotion, the Orioles and Kansas City Royals put on a laser show that would have been wildly entertaining if it wasn’t just another sign of the hard times that have befallen the home team.
The two lineups combined for 11 home runs – oddly enough, 10 of them with the bases empty – in a back-and-forth rubber game the Orioles badly needed to win. Alas, it was the team that doesn’t hit home runs that hit a club-record-breaking seven on the way to a 11-6 victory.
The Royals came into the series having hit only 15 all season and raised that number to 25 on Sunday after hitting three solo shots in Saturday night’s 4-0 win.
Kind of explodes the myth propagated by color analysts for generations that solo homers don’t really hurt you. When you give up nine in two days after having an uplifting four-game span in which you took two of three from the Yankees and shut out the Royals on four hits Friday, each one stung a little more than the last.
Now, we’re right back where we were at the start of the homestand, wondering when this growing stretch of mediocrity is going to end. It really felt like the O’s were coming out of a nightmarish April when Dean Kremer opened May with a dominating seven-inning performance. Now, all bets are off after the most dependable component of the roster gave up five home runs in five innings of explosive relief.
Right-hander Bryan Baker, who entered a tie game in the fifth inning with a terrific 1.38 ERA, almost doubled it (2.57) when he gave up a leadoff home run to Jonathan India on his first pitch and another home run to open the sixth. Seventh-inning setup man Yennier Cano also gave up two homers. Charlie Morton and Matt Bowman each gave up a bomb as a very exciting and competitive game morphed into another double-digit disaster.
Frustrated Orioles fans can take some comfort in a great individual performance by young Jackson Holliday, who kept his team close with a pair of homers in the early innings. Cedric Mullins and Ryan O’Hearn also hit big shots to give the O’s their last lead of the game.
What those same frustrated fans cannot do is assume that a stretch of games against supposedly softer competition than the Orioles faced throughout April will pull them out of this funk.
Even four encouraging innings by Kyle Gibson in his second start couldn’t change the narrative that the Orioles have an injury-depleted group of starting pitchers that have only rarely gotten into the sixth inning.
You don’t have to tell manager Brandon Hyde that when you are forced to trot out five or six relievers every game, there’s a pretty good chance that even under the best of circumstances, one of two of them are likely to give up runs.
The situation should improve when solid veteran Zach Eflin returns from a lat strain, but the success of the rotation may still depend too heavily on the continuing maturation of young Cade Povich and the impending return of Trevor Rogers, who still has to show he can pitch well enough to hold a rotation spot. A lot is riding on the eventual return of Grayson Rodriguez, but no one knows when – and if – he’s coming back.
Certainly, this is not a position that anyone around here wanted to be in, but the Orioles just have to hope they can hit their way through a .500-or-better May and hope they’re still a playoff contender on the other side.