Things feel bad right now because the most recent Orioles loss was an especially terrible one.
Thanks to off days last Thursday and Monday and last night’s game being postponed until today, the Orioles have only played four games since the last edition of this weekly article. The Orioles are 3-1 in those games, having swept the Braves over the holiday weekend before getting a real gut punch loss to the Mets on Tuesday night. It feels bad because that game was bad and because at this point, to keep their longshot postseason hopes alive, the O’s can’t blow any more winnable ones. Every loss feels increased in magnitude because it’s two more games the Orioles would have to win later.
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 87
- Result: Orioles beat Braves, 3-2
- Record: 38-49
- The biggest play: Cedric Mullins hits two-run homer in fifth to give Orioles 3-0 lead (+19%)
- The biggest hero: Andrew Kittredge / Félix Bautista (.200 WPA)
The Orioles got the better of Spencer Strider in this game, mostly thanks to two home runs – a solo homer hit by Jordan Westburg (.124 WPA with three hits) and the two-run homer by Mullins (.125). Mullins’s two-run dinger delivered what was the ultimately decisive third run of the game for the O’s. The offense only got seven hits in this game, so it’s good that they really made two of them count.
Starting pitcher Charlie Morton had a decent outing here, allowing two runs over 5.1 innings, but he left the game with a man on first base representing the tying run. Kittredge collected enough WPA to be tied for the hero because he entered and got a double play ground ball, then pitched another inning besides. Bautista holding the one-run lead with his scoreless ninth inning for the save was similarly important.
Game 88
- Result: Orioles beat Braves, 9-6
- Record: 39-49
- The biggest play: Jacob Stallings delivers two-run double in tenth inning (+23%)
- The biggest hero: Cedric Mullins (.240 WPA)
No thanks to starting pitcher Dean Kremer in this one, who was dunked on for five runs on eight hits over just 4.1 innings here (-.349 WPA). It’s tough to win a game when your starting pitcher is that bad, and tougher still when your team only gets eight hits over a ten inning game. The Orioles were able to manage it anyway because the offense made those hits count as much as possible, particularly by piling on three runs in the tenth inning.
Stallings, a guy who nobody thought much about until the Orioles catching chaos forced him into action as a substitute here, didn’t end up delivering the go-ahead hit (that was Ramón Laureano) but he moved the needle the most in one single play by giving the O’s a comfortable margin in extra innings. That kind of thing is the essence of “you never know who’s gonna hear the call.” In 2025, you never even know who’s going to make it onto the roster to maybe hear the call.
Game 89
- Result: Orioles beat Braves, 2-1
- Record: 40-49
- The biggest play: Jackson Holliday breaks scoreless tie with two-run homer in third inning (+18%)
- The biggest hero: Trevor Rogers (.383 WPA)
Dare we hope that Rogers is going to be able to sustain this kind of positive performance? A 6.2-inning scoreless outing against the Braves, helping the Orioles win on a day where the offense didn’t have much going on, was an impressive performance from him and one I didn’t really believe he’d be able to do. He now has a 1.57 ERA through five games. It’s good!
Holliday (.251 WPA) had the classic “triple shy of the cycle” with a four-hit game here. His four hits doubled the output of the other eight Orioles in the lineup combined. The O’s had one of their “can barely buy a clutch hit” games here, just a 1-9 RISP. Seranthony Domínguez made it more interesting by allowing a ninth inning homer to Sean Murphy (-7%) and then letting the tying run on base with a single right after that (-11%) but he closed out the save afterwards. Three different Orioles relievers got saves over the course of this series.
Game 90
- Result: Orioles lose to Mets, 7-6
- Record: 40-50
- The biggest play: Bryan Baker allows game-tying two-run homer to Pete Alonso (-31%)
- The biggest goat: Baker (-.469 WPA)
Fellow Camden Chatter Tyler Young wondered in the immediate aftermath of this game if it’s the worst loss of the season. For my money, it’s tough to beat blowing the 8-0 lead to lose 12-8 to the Rays, but this one certainly belongs high up the list of infamy. Baker just absolutely blew it, facing four batters, retiring none, and allowing all four to score thanks to two different two-run homers to turn a 6-2 lead into a 6-6 tie.
Once the game went into extra innings, things nearly got totally out of hand, as the bases loaded against Yennier Cano with only one out with Cano already having allowed the Manfred Man to score. However, he dodged the jam and set up the bottom of the tenth with the Orioles 2-3-4 hitters having a chance to tie or win the game. Three terrible at-bats from Jordan Westburg (-16%), Gunnar Henderson (-13%), and Ryan O’Hearn (-14%) sent everybody home.
Orioles starter Brandon Young had a decent outing here, striking out six batters over 5.1 innings with two runs for allowed. This even included an immaculate inning, where Young struck out the side on nine pitches, three to each batter. In WPA terms, however, he finished with a negative (-.083) because the Orioles had only scored one run before Young allowed two in the sixth, so he gets penalized for blowing the lead. The O’s were 67% to win through five innings, but when Young exited, they were only 31% to win. Things got more awesome later, and then were again terrible later still.
The best Orioles so far
This time last week, the best Orioles hitter by WPA was Ryan O’Hearn (2.02) and the best pitcher was Seranthony Domínguez (1.39). Updated numbers through this week:
- WPA (hitters): O’Hearn (1.90), Colton Cowser (1.03), Gunnar Henderson (0.87)
- WPA (pitchers): Félix Bautista (1.79), Domínguez (1.53), Trevor Rogers (1.06)
- fWAR: Henderson / O’Hearn (2.1) for batters; Dean Kremer (1.3) for pitchers
O’Hearn has been headed in the wrong direction for the last couple of weeks, with his extra innings failure on Tuesday making up almost the entire gap compared to where he was last week. If you’re surprised to see Cowser on the clutch list, you may be further surprised to know that he’s hitting .333/.385/.833 with RISP so far this season.
Two seasons ago, Bautista had the highest WPA of any AL pitcher, and that was without even being able to pitch in September. He’s been steadily climbing towards the top spot among the team’s pitchers this season as he’s been used more frequently in high leverage spots, and if he keeps pitching like he has been, he’ll climb the league rankings this year too.
The worst Orioles so far
In last week’s update, the worst active hitter was Jackson Holliday (-0.74) and the worst active pitcher was Charlie Morton (-1.39). Players who are not currently active are listed separately. Here’s where things stand now:
- WPA (hitters): Tyler O’Neill (-0.71), Holliday (-0.41), Jordan Westburg (-0.36)
- WPA (pitchers): Morton (-1.33), Yennier Cano (-0.76), Tomoyuki Sugano (-0.67)
- WPA (not here now): Heston Kjerstad (-1.94), Cade Povich (-1.35), Kyle Gibson (-1.25)
- fWAR (active): O’Neill / Coby Mayo (-0.3); all active pitchers are 0.0 or better
To be honest with you, I’ve only been using fWAR for this series because when I sat down to do it on week 1, Baseball Reference wasn’t displaying its WAR numbers for the year. That several pitchers have an fWAR so divorced from their results is part of why I generally don’t prefer it. Morton and Mayo are tied at -0.5 for worst among active Orioles for bWAR.