The Orioles haven’t lost a game since last week’s edition of this article. That’s fun!
For the first time all season, there is a good week of Orioles baseball to write about. They haven’t lost a game since last week’s edition of this article! The five-game winning streak started with Friday’s game, and the O’s still haven’t lost here on Thursday morning. It’s a lot more fun to write about things going well than about things going miserably.
This series looks at each Orioles game, the most crucial play that happened in it and who was involved, and the Oriole who contributed the most positive to a win or negative to a loss. As we all know by now, it’s been much more losing than winning. These determinations are made using the Win Probability Added stat, which you can find in game logs on Baseball Reference or FanGraphs.
Here’s how that looked over the past week:
Game 56
- Result: Orioles beat White Sox, 2-1
- Orioles record: 20-36
- The biggest play: Gunnar Henderson double gives Orioles men on second and third, no one out in 0-0 game in the sixth inning (+15%)
- The biggest hero: Zach Eflin (.406 WPA)
Ordinarily, it would be some kind of clutch hit that delivers in a narrow victory and that was the decisive play, except in this case, the Orioles never even got the clutch hit. After that situation set up by the Henderson double, they scored two runs without getting a hit. Ramón Urías cashed in with a sacrifice fly (+4%) and then Ryan Mountcastle pulled off a steal of home when the White Sox tried to throw out Ryan O’Hearn as he stole second base (+10%).
Instead, the biggest story of the game was Eflin just grinding down the White Sox over seven shutout innings. A lot of pressure is on the pitcher when it is a 0-0 game until the sixth and Eflin was up to shutting Chicago down. Yes, their offense stinks, even moreso than the Orioles does, but still, Eflin did well and he deserved the big positive that he got.
Game 57
- Result: Orioles beat White Sox, 4-2
- Record: 21-36
- The biggest play: Jorge Mateo hits two-run home run to give Orioles 4-1 fifth inning lead (+15%)
- The biggest hero: Mateo and Dean Kremer (.203 WPA)
In ten weeks of doing this series, I believe this is the first time we’ve had a tie down to three decimal places of Win Probability added. Mateo, in addition to his home run, walked twice and stole two bases. The only run he scored was his own homer, but he tried to set things up. Kremer allowed just a run over six innings, mostly scattering six hits and a walk. It was a cap on a nice May for Kremer.
Fortunate for the Orioles that Good Kremer showed up on this occasion, because the team only had five hits in this game and managed the victory despite being out-hit by the White Sox, 8-5. The O’s pulled off a sweep of the AL’s worst team, their first sweep of the season, and it’s good they did it, but they somehow did it in the least impressive way possible. Still, anything to shift the vibes around here is welcome.
Game 58
- Result: Orioles beat White Sox, 3-2
- Record: 22-36
- The biggest play: Jackson Holliday hits double to give Orioles men on second and third, no one out in 0-0 game in third inning (+12%)
- The biggest hero: Charlie Morton (.264 WPA)
That’s the second time in three games where the biggest play was the same. One takeaway here is that it is actually really good if you get men on second and third with no one out in a tie game. The Orioles have failed in cashing in on many such opportunities this year so it feels like the start of a letdown, but here, again, against the White Sox, they didn’t, getting a run on a single and later a sacrifice fly. The third O’s run, scored when Dylan Carlson doubled to drive in Coby Mayo, was also significant to the outcome (+12%).
Morton is the biggest hero because, again, if you have a starting pitcher doing well in a close game, they rack up WPA. That’s opposed to many of the previous installments of this series, when Morton and other pitchers were so bad that no hitter ever had much of a chance to take a meaningful at-bat. Morton pitched 6.2 innings and the only run against him was unearned. It’s good when starting pitchers do well. The Orioles need them to continue doing well against opponents who are not the White Sox.
Game 59
- Result: Orioles beat Mariners, 5-1
- Record: 23-36
- The biggest play: Ryan O’Hearn breaks 1-1 tie with RBI single in fifth inning (+15%)
- The biggest hero: Tomoyuki Sugano (.296 WPA)
Is that… four straight games where the starting pitcher was the biggest positive contributor? It is! The only damage he allowed was a solo home run and he allowed only six baserunners over seven innings. We’re more than a third of the way into the season and Sugano’s made a nice adjustment to MLB competition. His success does not look like every other successful MLB pitcher’s success, but he’s making it work for him.
The Orioles offense had 13 hits in this game, though most of these did not come after they’d already gotten a man in scoring position: They were 3-9 in those situations. Frequent hero O’Hearn had two hits and a walk, with his tie-breaking hit giving him a big WPA boost for the game (.234). Adley Rutschman had three hits but was actually in the negatives for WPA (-.003). Tough crowd.
Game 60
- Result: Orioles beat Mariners, 3-2
- Record: 24-36
- The biggest play: Heston Kjerstad hits two-run go-ahead triple in eighth inning (+43%)
- The biggest hero: Kjerstad (.337 WPA)
The streak of games where the starting pitcher was a top guy has come to an end. Cade Povich’s outing here wasn’t bad, with two runs allowed over 5.1 innings, but since Povich ran into a wall in the sixth inning and gave up a run that put the Orioles behind, he actually had a negative for the game (-.145). This was, at least, an outing good enough to keep the Orioles in the game, especially after Yennier Cano (.094) successfully cleaned up the mess.
Falling behind set things up for Kjerstad to get a chance for some late-inning heroics. You almost can’t say enough bad things about how Kjerstad has played so far this season. He doesn’t hit much at all, he strikes out a lot, he doesn’t walk, he fails particularly in clutch situations, he looks bad in the field. None of that is erased by his finally getting a clutch hit on Wednesday night. It’s a nice step in the right direction, though.
The best Orioles so far
This time last week, the best Orioles hitter by WPA was Ryan O’Hearn (2.30) and the best pitcher was Seranthony Domínguez (0.61). Updated numbers through this week:
- WPA (hitters): O’Hearn (2.31), Cedric Mullins (0.58), Dylan Carlson (0.12)
- WPA (pitchers): Domínguez (0.85), Bryan Baker (0.68), Félix Bautista (0.64)
- fWAR: O’Hearn (2.0), Gunnar Henderson (1.2), Cedric Mullins (1.1)
A lot of the story of the Orioles having a 24-36 record right now can be told in the fact that Carlson’s 0.12 is the third-best mark among batters. Players who should have been good have not been, and that comes through particularly in context-dependent numbers like WPA.
The team leaders in bWAR are O’Hearn (2.1), Henderson (1.8), and Tomoyuki Sugano (1.8).
The worst Orioles so far
In last week’s update, the worst Orioles hitter by WPA was Heston Kjerstad (-2.00) and the worst pitcher was Charlie Morton (-1.86). Here’s how things stand now:
- WPA (hitters): Kjerstad (-1.72), Adley Rutschman (-0.71), Jorge Mateo (-0.61)
- WPA (pitchers): Morton (-1.39), Cade Povich (-1.04), Yennier Cano (-0.60)
- fWAR: Kjerstad (-0.9), four Orioles tied at -0.4
The two most substantial strugglers over the season took a chunk out of their negative numbers over the past week. It’s going to take continuing that until at least the All-Star break at a similar pace for those guys to get back to zero.
At -1.1 bWAR, Kjerstad is the worst in that category as well. That was matched by the four games pitched by Kyle Gibson before he was released. The worst active Orioles pitcher by bWAR is Morton (-0.8).