The Orioles needed an ace performance from Grayson Rodriguez, but this was not that. They’ve now lost five in a row and played their AL East lead into a tie.
Sometime in the fifth inning, right after Juan Soto and Aaron Judge had hammered nearly identical Grayson Rodriguez changeups over the center-field wall to give the Yankees a 6-1 lead, the normally chipper Kevin Brown offered out of the booth, “It feels like nothing is going well for the O’s right now.”
Yup. The Orioles have lost five games in a row and seven of their last ten. They’re hitting .238 with just 18 runs scored in their last seven games. Their AL East lead is down to decimal points (.002). Call it slumps, call it fatigue, but this team needs a shakeup, and soon.
Saturday’s game was never close: Grayson Rodriguez, looking uncomfortable most of the afternoon, surrendered four first-inning runs, six total over just five innings on a trio of bombs off his offspeed pitches. Meanwhile New York’s starter Luis Gil was on his game, keeping O’s hitters mostly in line over six one-run innings. The Birds’ struggles with runners in scoring position continued as they went 0-for-5 on the day. So not much suspense here.
For Grayson Rodriguez, it took one inning too long to settle in, and it proved costly. A first Yankees run scored on a two-out Gleyber Torres infield single after Rodriguez allowed a single and a cautious walk to Aaron Judge. The O’s starter was still a strike away from escaping trouble when backup catcher Austin Wells, slugging .576 in his last 15 games, worked him for a nine-pitch at-bat. The ninth pitch: a bad slider. Wells launched it onto the flag court to make it 4-0 Yankees.
After that, Rodriguez found his rhythm for a spell, keeping the Yankees off the board in the second and third innings. (That included a career-low four-pitch second inning to follow the career-high 33-pitch first. Stats are fun!)
But trading zeroes doesn’t work when you’re down four runs and not scoring runs. Gunnar Henderson and Anthony Santander gamely mounted a response to the Yankees’ barrage with back-to-back singles in the first inning, but Yankees starter Luis Gil got a pair of flyouts and a Jordan Westburg flyout to leave ‘em stranded.
After that, Baltimore would have only three more hits against Gil, eight total on the day. The Orioles struggled with the right hander’s fastball-slider combo (actually more like a slider-fastball combo, as Gil threw about 40% sliders). Gil throws about 97-98 with the heater, and hitters were defensively swinging over the slider all afternoon.
A precious Orioles run came across in the fourth, courtesy of a rare Ryan O’Hearn triple over the left fielder and an RBI groundout. With two outs, Colton Cowser and Austin Hays snapped to life, stinging two balls greater than 100 mph into the outfield. But Ramón Urías grounded out, and now the Orioles’ RISP struggles are legion.
Given that, the game felt completely out of reach by the fifth inning, when as mentioned Juan Soto and Aaron Judge went back-to-back off of Rodriguez to give the Yankees a 6-1 lead, five runs coming on three home-run swings. Rodriguez’s stuff wasn’t terrible today, but his offspeed command was off, and he couldn’t limit damage against his mistakes.
I suppose it’s nice that the Orioles bullpen turned in four scoreless innings today, courtesy of Jacob Webb, Keegan Akin and Vinny Nittoli. Who? Yes, Vinny Nittoli, a 33-year-old on his fifth MLB team who was just called up today with embattled starter Cade Povich getting optioned. Actually, the newcomer Nittoli looked pretty good, showing a mean sweeper-slider thing, and he kept the Yankees off the board in the eighth and ninth.
Late in Saturday’s game, the MASN broadcast cut to a shot of General Manager Mike Elias in a club box, looking sunny as he narrowly eluded a rogue foul ball. If there’s a feeling of gloom around this team right now, well, the GM isn’t showing it. Today Elias reported that new owner David Rubenstein is open to “expanding payroll” with trade deadline moves.
Trust in Fearless Leader and the prospect of reinforcements, I guess?