The Orioles will hope not to lose by 22 runs again. Fingers crossed!
I’ll say this: however tonight’s opener against the Nationals turns out, it probably won’t be as bad as Sunday’s game. Probably.
After getting bashed out of Baltimore with a humiliating 24-2 defeat, the O’s head an hour and a half down the road to the nation’s capital for the first of their two “interleague rival” series against Washington. (The Nationals will visit Camden Yards in May.)
Looking at the nearly identical records of these two teams — 9-12 for the Orioles, 9-13 for the Nats — you’d never know which team was supposed to be a contender and which is in the middle of a rebuild. Both teams have had their issues, as Mark Brown detailed in the series preview. The difference is that the Nationals weren’t expected to be good. For the Orioles, all this losing, with so many young players supposedly in their primes, is a tougher pill to swallow.
More bad news for the Orioles is that they’re facing two left-handed starters in this series, including Mitchell Parker tonight. The O’s are 1-5 vs. lefty starters this year, losing five in a row, and their team batting line against southpaws is an abysmal .184/.259/.253 with just two home runs in 193 PAs. And Parker is a good one, boasting a 1.84 ERA in four starts this year, albeit with a bit of batted-ball luck.
After seeing the total lack of success of his usual right-handed-heavy platoon lineup, Brandon Hyde is shaking things up today, finally letting Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad get some swings against a lefty. It’s just Holliday’s second start against a southpaw and Kjerstad’s third. I certainly don’t mind seeing Holliday get a start ahead of the 1-for-17 Jorge Mateo, and it’s good to see Kjerstad back for the first time since he took a 100-mph fastball off the elbow on Saturday.
Dean Kremer starts for the Orioles, coming off his best outing of the year, a 5.1-inning, one-run performance against the Guardians. Kremer has faced the Nationals three times — once each in 2022, 2023, and 2024 — and is a perfect 3-0 with a 2.04 ERA against them.
Orioles lineup:
CF Cedric Mullins
DH Adley Rutschman
SS Gunnar Henderson
1B Ryan Mountcastle
RF Tyler O’Neill
LF Heston Kjerstad
3B Jordan Westburg
C Gary Sánchez
2B Jackson Holliday
RHP Dean Kremer
Nationals lineup:
LF James Wood
1B Nathaniel Lowe
2B Luis García Jr.
C Keibert Ruiz
DH Josh Bell
RF Dylan Crews
3B José Tena
CF Jacob Young
SS Nasim Nuñez
LHP Mitchell Parker