
Since this time last week, the Orioles are 6-2. It’s too little, too late.
If only the Orioles had not been so bad in April and May, this team might have gone somewhere. That’s the message that they sent over the last week of baseball, turning in impressive series against the extremely bad Colorado Rockies and the extremely good Toronto Blue Jays. They were a Yennier Cano meltdown away from a four-game mop of the Jays and had a 6-2 record for the week overall. It’s fun. It’s just not enough to stop the inevitable trade exodus.
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 102
- Result: Orioles beat Guardians, 4-3
- Record: 45-57
- The biggest play: Gunnar Henderson RBI single gives Orioles 4-3 lead in seventh inning (+20%)
- The biggest hero: Gregory Soto (.200 WPA)
Did the Mets watch Soto close out this game and decide, “Yep, we want to trade for that guy?” Probably not, but that’s how it worked out. Soto closed out a narrow win and then he got dealt. As saves go, it was fairly easy, in that he faced the 8-9-1 hitters. As we know watching the Orioles this year, sometimes the 8-9 combo is actually pretty tough.
The Orioles scored three first-inning runs in this one and for a while it looked like it was going to be one of those “score early and never score again” games, with starter Charlie Morton gradually giving back the runs. Henderson’s big hit in the seventh got the Orioles back on top and they were able to hold on to win thanks to Soto and now-also-traded Seranthony Domínguez putting up zeroes. How are they going to protect leads in August and September? I shudder to think.
Game 103
- Result: Orioles lose to Rockies, 6-5
- Record: 45-58
- The biggest play: Andrew Kittredge allows solo home run to Ezequiel Tovar to give Rockies 6-5 eighth inning lead (-28%)
- The biggest goat: Dean Kremer (-.248 WPA)
Remember how fun it was when the Orioles hit four home runs in the first two innings against Rockies starter Kyle Freeland, making him look like the bad pitcher that he is? That was fun. The problem is they didn’t get any more runs off of Freeland after that, and in the meantime their own starter Kremer set about giving back all of the runs the Orioles had scored plus one more on top of that.
In classic 2025 Orioles fashion, they managed to rally to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh, with Jackson Holliday driving in Alex Jackson. Then in the top half of the very next inning, Kittredge served up the dinger to put the Rockies on top and the O’s couldn’t score again. Tyler O’Neill led off the eighth inning with a double and they couldn’t bring him home.
Game 104
- Result: Orioles beat Rockies, 18-0
- Record: 46-58
- The biggest play: Tyler O’Neill hits two-run home run to give Orioles 3-0 second inning lead (+12%)
- The biggest hero: Trevor Rogers (.212 WPA)
Complete dominance by Rogers, who allowed just one hit and one walk over a seven inning start. Since the Orioles had a 3-0 lead after two and a 6-0 lead after four, there was not much in the way of leverage opportunities for the Orioles offense, so while there were five O’s who had multiple hits, only O’Neill’s homer in the second really moved the needle.
Turning an 8-0 lead into 17-0, as the Orioles did when they exploded for nine runs in the seventh, made no difference: The O’s were already effectively 100% to win the game before that point. I’ll tell you, as someone who was in the stands, that it was still plenty of fun to watch it all happen.
Game 105
- Result: Orioles beat Rockies, 5-1
- Record: 47-58
- The biggest play: Tyler O’Neill hits two-run home run to give Orioles 4-1 third inning lead (+15%)
- The biggest hero: Tomoyuki Sugano (.172 WPA)
Are we entering an O’Neill era here? Let’s hope. The Orioles made the most of getting just five hits in this game to bring five runs across the plate. This ended up being a relatively easy win even with that paltry output of hits because of Sugano pitching so well. Most of the time, if the starting pitcher can go six innings while allowing just one run, the team is going to win the game.
Although, having said that, there’s no guarantee that this will apply to the post-trade deadline 2025 Orioles, because there are going to be a lot of guys who are either unproven or what they’ve proven so far has been bad between now and the end of the regular season.
Game 106
- Result: Orioles beat Blue Jays, 11-4
- Record: 48-58
- The biggest play: Cedric Mullins hits two-run home run to give Orioles 2-0 second inning lead (+21%)
- The biggest hero: Mullins (.203 WPA)
The Orioles scored three runs across two homers in the bottom of the second inning, only to see Zach Eflin allow three runs across two homers in the top of the third. So they just came back out in the bottom of that inning and scored three more, this time without homers; Adley Rutschman’s two-run double was a big needle-mover (+16%).
Despite all of this run support, Eflin couldn’t even finish the fifth inning. Not a great outing there. The Orioles just kept on scoring runs anyway, piling up 16 hits as they made the first-place Blue Jays look more like that’s the team that should be selling off at the deadline.
Game 107
- Result: Orioles beat Blue Jays, 18-4
- Record: 49-58
- The biggest play: Addison Barger hits two-run home run off Charlie Morton to cut Orioles lead to 4-3 in fourth inning (-16%)
- The biggest hero: Gunnar Henderson (.194 WPA)
All this offense! Who IS this team? This was a close one through four innings, with the Orioles holding a 4-3 lead through the middle of the sixth inning before, for the third time in four games, they started to really blow it open. They even got more hits than the previous day, a total of 19. Nothing like really putting in a beatdown in Game 1 of a doubleheader. Really leave them demoralized for Game 2. As we’ll all always remember because of the 30-3 game.
Although Morton ended up being on the wrong end of the game’s most substantial single play, he pitched for six innings while giving up just three earned runs. It’s the bare minimum quality start, but if Morton had been churning out bare minimum quality starts in April and May, the team would probably not be undergoing the sell-off it’s having this month.
Game 108
- Result: Orioles beat Blue Jays, 3-2
- Record: 50-58
- The biggest play: Corbin Martin strikes out Nathan Lukes for second out with tying run on third, go-ahead run on second (+25%)
- The biggest hero: Martin (.157 WPA)
There were some intense late-inning plate appearances in this one. The O’s preserved a 2-2 tie in the top of the eighth even after the Jays got two men on with one out. Andrew Kittredge, in what turned out to be his final appearance as an Oriole, got an inning-ending double play there. In the bottom half, Henderson and Rutschman hit back-to-back doubles (Rutschman’s scored the run, +23%) to put the Orioles back on top, and then, having traded so many guys, they turned to… Martin?
It was on the road to disaster after Martin walked the first guy he saw (-11%) and walked the second (-16%). The Jays had their #9 hitter Myles Straw bunt to move the two runners into scoring position (-1% for the Orioles, a rare sac bunt that helped the WPA). The lineup turned over and Martin stood firm, striking out the next two guys to end the game.
Game 109
- Result: Orioles lose to Blue Jays, 9-8
- Record: 50-59
- The biggest play: Yennier Cano allows three-run home run to Nathan Lukes to give Blue jays a 9-5 seventh inning lead (-25%)
- The biggest goat: Cano (-.638 WPA)
With a Ryan O’Hearn home run and a Cedric Mullins highlight reel home run robbery, this was about as perfect a send-off for these likely-to-be-traded players as there could have been… at least until Cano got involved. I recapped this game yesterday and don’t feel like rehashing it. I’ll just say that, in terms of WPA, that’s about as bad of a game as anyone can have.
The best Orioles so far
This time a week ago, the best Orioles hitter by WPA was Ryan O’Hearn (1.90) and the best pitcher was Félix Bautista (also 1.90). Here’s how things look after eight more games played in the past week:
- WPA (hitters): O’Hearn (2.14), Gunnar Henderson (1.84), Colton Cowser (0.86)
- WPA (pitchers): Bautista (1.90), Trevor Rogers (1.83), Seranthony Domínguez (1.14)
- fWAR: Gunnar Henderson (3.2) for batters, Dean Kremer (1.8) for pitchers
Henderson is also in the lead for bWAR (3.7), with a sizable lead over Ramón Laureano (2.9). Rogers (2.3) is the highest-placed pitcher there, because while he only has made eight starts, they’ve been very, very good.
The worst Orioles so far
In last week’s update, the worst active Orioles hitter by WPA was Tyler O’Neill (-1.10) and the worst pitcher was Charlie Morton (-1.44). Players who are not with the team any more are listed separately in this section. Where things stand after this past week of games:
- WPA (hitters): O’Neill (-0.73), Jackson Holliday (-0.53), Dylan Carlson (-0.44)
- WPA (pitchers): Morton (-1.34), Yennier Cano (-1.24), Zach Eflin (-1.17)
- WPA (not here now): Heston Kjerstad (-1.94), Cade Povich (-1.35), Kyle Gibson (-1.34)
- fWAR (active): Carlson (-0.4) for batters, Eflin (-0.3) for pitchers