Even with a suspect starting rotation, the Orioles ought to be playing better than this.
Hello, friends.
The Orioles. (sigh) It’s bad right now. Absolutely nothing happened yesterday to make anybody feel even a slight bit better about this team, with Zach Eflin landing on the injured list before the game and then the O’s going on to drop the finale in Arizona, 9-0. Check out Paul Folkemer’s recap of the game for more of the not-so-lovely totals.
At this point, only 8% of the 2025 season has been played. The Orioles are 5-8 so far and that’s not great but there is time for the ship to be turned around. They just need to, you know, play better. What’s maybe the most disheartening aspect of it for me is that it’s not merely that the Orioles are playing badly – which they are – but they’re also playing stupid.
A representative example in yesterday’s game was Ryan O’Hearn getting thrown out trying to advance from first to second on a ball in the dirt that he didn’t read very well. Just stay put! Never mind that Adley Rutschman successfully advanced from second to third on the same play. Don’t make everything worse by being dumb on top of everything else. As a team they are, up to this point, not up to that task.
More than one person who has appeared in the Camden Chat comments recently has invoked a comparison to the 2018 team for these guys. Uncomfortably, the 2025 Orioles and 2018 O’s had the same record here through 13 games. It’s not great!
I understand the impulse to make the comparison. I think the biggest resemblance is in the starting rotation, where it was obvious that the Orioles needed help and what they did is make a couple of potentially severely inadequate signings. And so far everything sucks.
Now even Eflin’s hurt. Charlie Morton and Dean Kremer have been terrible up to this point. Tomoyuki Sugano gets a pass for now. Cade Povich has had a weird first couple of games, which, by the way, now come with a better-looking ERA because MLB changed the scoring on “that” Jorge Mateo play from a triple to an error, in one stroke lowering Povich’s season ERA from 6.10 to 3.48. Small sample sizes are always volatile. Don’t forget it.
One difference between this team and that one is there are way more players who are (or should be) very good and are also quite early in their careers. The woeful Orioles of seven years ago did not have anything in the vicinity of Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Westburg, and Jackson Holliday. Henderson hasn’t delivered yet this year, maybe because he needed more minor league rehab time after all. I remain a believer in the position players figuring it out. I don’t know about the pitching.
Here’s some good news. The Orioles can’t lose today. That means we all get a day off from them. Sad as it is only two weeks after Opening Day, but I could use the break. Do something fun with your night of avoiding the O’s. My wife will be out, so I’ll probably be watching The Wheel of Time’s new episode. That will definitely be better than watching Cionel Pérez pitch for my favorite baseball team.
Around the blogO’sphere
‘Greatest of all time’ Michael Phelps shows off Orioles fandom in Arizona (Orioles.com)
Alas, the Orioles did not seem to find any way to draft off some of the Baltimorean Olympic legend for themselves.
Analysis: The Orioles offered big money to Corbin Burnes. Players still want the years. (The Baltimore Banner)
The Banner’s Andy Kostka took away from the Burnes remarks on Tuesday that Burnes, and maybe players generally, are looking for the longest contract they can get and maybe not always the one with the best AAV.
Burnes’s departure required an Orioles front office response that still hasn’t come (The Athletic)
Ken Rosenthal has some thoughts on what the close-but-no-cigar reports about Burnes mean about the O’s front office.
Why so many Orioles lineups? Brandon Hyde is ‘experimenting’. (The Baltimore Sun)
It’s the kind of thing nobody notices when things are going well. The 2023 Orioles won 101 games while using 150 different batting orders and nobody who is worth listening to cared about the lineup shuffles.
A catcher’s fatal flight (Baltimore Baseball)
Another one from John Eisenberg’s Orioles history files, this story is about Tom Gastall, a catcher who is the only Oriole who has ever died during a regular season.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 2013, the Orioles were present for a little bit of history coming to an end as the crowd in Fenway Park was not a sellout for the first time in nearly 10 full years. The O’s beat Boston, 8-4, with Chris Davis, Manny Machado, and Nick Markakis all homering.
There are a number of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2013 outfielder Chris Dickerson, 1999-2000 pitcher Alberto Reyes, 1989-96 outfielder Mike Devereaux, 1985-87 outfielder Lee Lacy, and 1959-64 pitcher Wes Stock. Today is Stock’s 91st birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: US Navy officer Matthew C. Perry (1794), baseball Hall of Famer Ross Youngs (1897), labor leader Dolores Huerta (1930), football coaching and broadcasting legend John Madden (1936), Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti (1960), and actress Daisy Ridley (1992).
On this day in history…
In 837, Halley’s Comet passed by Earth in what is believed to be its closest ever approach, a distance of just 3.2 million miles from the planet. At its closest point in its next pass in 2061, it’s going to be 44 million miles from Earth.
In 1809, the Austrian Empire sparked a war by invading Bavaria, at that time a client state of Napoleon’s France. This was the beginning of the War of the Fifth Coalition, in which, like the four before it, Napoleon took on all comers.
In 1912, the RMS Titanic launched from Southampton, England, carrying 2,224 passengers and crew who expected to arrive in New York City one week later.
In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published for the first time.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on April 10. Have a safe Thursday.