As Yogi Berra once said, “It gets late early out there.”
The Orioles are in a bad place right now. No one on the outside has any idea why it’s happening, and if anyone on the inside does, they haven’t managed to fix it yet. It’s just an ongoing mess in a season where, even if you were pessimistic about the offseason’s moves for starting pitching, this kind of mess is not something that could have been reasonably predicted.
I rant into a microphone for about 20 minutes two times a week about this team. This was less of a rant-worthy endeavor in the 2023 season and in the first half of last year. Things have gone in a different direction this year, particularly with the offense. The relatively young players who are supposed to be the stalwarts carrying the team better places over the next few years are collectively falling apart at the plate so far this season.
Some thoughts on that from today’s episode:
If the combination of Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson, plus Holliday, Cowser, Westburg, Kjerstad, etc. isn’t going to be able to deliver a good Orioles team regardless of what else is going on, then where are the Orioles over the next two years? They’re nowhere! What’s more, what was the point for us as fans of enduring the misery from 2018-21 (not that ‘18 was Elias’s fault) if the players they drafted with the high picks gave them at most two good seasons and then they’re not the answer? That’s horrible!
Other topics over the course of this episode include how bad it is that Kyle Gibson’s presence in the rotation feels desperately needed, why I don’t buy a variety of amateur psychology explanations for the team’s struggles, and why firing somebody just to try to shock the system that way seems increasingly necessary to attempt.
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