There are reasons to believe that could change. They just aren’t happening yet.
On Friday night, the Orioles pulled off a nice victory, giving themselves a chance to win three games in a row for the first time all year and a separate chance to do the same with winning two series in a row. Had they done either or both of these things, we might be able to tell ourselves that the team was continuing to move in a positive direction. Instead, they played a couple of bad and dumb games, one where the hitters were shut out and one where the pitchers gave up 11 runs.
It’s particularly disheartening in the wake of last week’s fun with Ryan O’Hearn’s “SMFB!” and the Orioles winning a series against the Yankees. That could have been the start of something good, and instead it was just a momentary interruption of the disappointment. Taken all together, it’s prompted me to conclude something in today’s episode of my podcast that I have wanted to avoid but can’t any more: These guys ain’t got it.
A big reason for this, though certainly not the only reason, is that the Orioles are, for the time being, legendarily terrible when facing left-handed pitching, which I went into in this episode:
I’m trying to talk myself into believing good things, but here’s one more thing stopping me: The Orioles’ hitting vs. left-handed pitching. It remains unbelievably bad. Heading into Sunday’s game, .174/.256/.234. They are SO bad against LHP. A year ago, the O’s had almost no platoon split for hitters as a team. vs. RHP .751 OPS, vs. LHP .750 OPS. This year, .761 OPS vs. RHP, .490 vs. LHP. What do you even do about that? They’re 2-9 vs. lefty starters. Teams are going to try to stack lefties where they can, and why shouldn’t they? … I don’t have anything good to say about that, except for this: The next opponent, the Twins, doesn’t have any left-handed starting pitchers.
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