The Orioles won on Sunday and it wasn’t particularly close. They lost on Saturday the same way, and they rebounded from an early six-run deficit on Friday night to score an almost-record 22 runs.
The net result was a much-needed series victory over a very good team, but the weekend featured enough stressful moments to leave the O’s and their fans as exhausted as they were uplifted by Sunday’s 5-1 rubber-game win.
It has been that way for a lot of this season. Remember the first six games in late March and early April when the Orioles scored a total of 29 runs in three of them and a total of three runs in the other three? We should have seen this coming, but never could have imagined the roller coaster ride the first half of the season would turn out to be.
“Yeah, that’s the game of baseball … the hardest thing is to be consistent, kind of rolling with the punches, sitting on the highs and setting the lows aside,’’ said winning pitcher Dean Kremer, who threw seven shutout innings in one of his best performances of the year.
“We definitely feel it when we win big and we definitely feel it when we lose bad, but again, tomorrow’s another day. We’ve got to compete every day. You can’t just give in.”
Considering the way things came apart in Saturday’s blowout loss and the quick turnaround, the Orioles again showed one of the qualities that carried through the very successful 2023 and 2024 seasons. They often talked about “flushing” a bad loss and moving forward. They have done that several times over the past couple of weeks but have suffered through a series of rocky pitching performances and low-hit offensive games that kept them from maximizing the surge they engineered in late May and early June to keep faint hope alive for a return to the playoffs.
They seemed to be making a move on .500 but have recently been treading water at 10-12 games below and stand now at 36-47.
It doesn’t get easier from here. The upcoming road series against the Texas Rangers will feature elite starters Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi, who have a history of frustrating Oriole hitters.
The season has reached the point where the Orioles can no longer take solace from playing modestly above .500 for an extended period. They are going to need to make a move over the next three weeks to keep enough playoff hope alive to prevent a trade deadline fire sale.
The resiliency they showed on Sunday makes that seem possible and interim manager Tony Mansolino said before the game that he didn’t see anything in the clubhouse that indicated that another tough loss had knocked any of the confidence out of his players.
“We have professionals,’’ he said. “We have to manage the emotions and show up the next day. It doesn’t feel that way walking in there right now. There’s a lot of good vibes and optimism. Yesterday [Saturday] kind of happened, I guess, but I do think that in baseball you play 162 games and you want to win every single one. I do think that when the starting pitcher comes out in the first inning and it was what it was, I don’t think guys go home and it ruins them for the next one.
“The harder ones to get by aren’t the 9-0 games. It’s probably like the one that we lost in New York in the eighth inning. That’s a hard one to get over. The one against Texas earlier on this homestand. Those are the ones you worry about more than what happened yesterday.”
The most positive sign could be their ability to compete with the two best teams in the AL East. The victory on Sunday gave them a 4-3 record against the red-hot Rays and they’ve split their first six games against the Yankees.
The bad news, of course, is that the injury epidemic persists, with Adley Rutschman out for weeks, pitching ace Zach Eflin likely headed for the injured list and Jordan Westburg still iffy with that jammed finger.
There is still half a season left, but it is getting late early around here.