The last time the Orioles were 10 games below .500, Brandon Hyde was a few days away from being fired.
Now, the Orioles are one of MLB’s hottest teams under interim manager Tony Mansolino, and being 10 games under .500 is seen as a small accomplishment with an arduous road ahead. After losing two of three to the Detroit Tigers, Baltimore (30-40) swept the Los Angeles Angels — the Orioles’ third sweep in their past five series — for perhaps the club’s most complete series performance this season.
Here’s the Orioles reset:
What was good?
Shortly after Mansolino took over, he laid out a roadmap for how the Orioles — then 15-29 — could escape the abyss and contend for a playoff spot.
“Listen, we’ve got to get to .500,” Mansolino said the night of his promotion. “I think we’ve got a couple of months to do that.”
At first, it didn’t seem possible. The Orioles dropped to 18 games under .500 one week into Mansolino’s tenure. But they’ve since been one of the best teams in baseball with a 14-6 record. Key players (Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and others) have returned from the injured list. And the atmosphere in the clubhouse is as optimistic as it’s been all season — a consequence, of course, of winning.
“There’s a lot more energy in the dugout, there’s a lot more energy on the field,” Westburg said. “I feel like guys are kind of feeding off of each other, and we’re seeing a lot more smiles.”
Baltimore is only six games out of the final wild-card spot in the American League — a deficit that seems manageable. Of course, that still means the Orioles are the third-worst team in the AL, and they’d need to leapfrog seven teams to make the postseason for the third consecutive year. The Orioles will likely have to win at least 60% of their games to have a chance of playing in October.
But the light at the end of the tunnel is visible, albeit still dim. When the Orioles fired Hyde, FanGraphs put their playoff odds at 3.7% — down from 55.9% after their 2-1 start. The nadir was their 19-5 loss to Boston on May 23, after which their odds were 1.4%. About three weeks later, those odds have nearly quadrupled to 5.2%.
The Orioles have gone 4-2 in each of the past three weeks. If the Orioles keep playing at a .667 pace — a Herculean task, to be sure — they would end the season with a 91-71 record, good enough to make the playoffs and the same record they had last year.
“We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re kind of in it in a weird way,” Mansolino said after an 11-2 win on Sunday. “There’s some belief in there. It’s like, now if we can get five under. If you get to five under, all of a sudden, eyes are open and you can kind of see it a little bit. … With the way we’re playing, if we keep it up, we’re going to be just fine.”
So … what was good? It’s simple: The Orioles were good. Whether there’s enough time to dig out of this hole remains to be seen. But for the third straight week, the Orioles won more games than they lost. Such a feat seemed foreign just one month ago.
What wasn’t?
The starting rotation is starting to show some cracks again.
The Orioles felt the need to have an opener go before Dean Kremer and Cade Povich, though both times it resulted in wins. Charlie Morton struck out 10 in five innings Friday, but that followed a concerning start against the Athletics. And regression has finally come for Tomoyuki Sugano, who hasn’t made it through five innings in either of his past two starts after doing so in each of his first 12.
There’s no reason for alarm as there was in April and the first half of May when the Orioles’ rotation was the AL’s worst. But this group isn’t performing as well as it was to begin the month.
What’s next?
No days off, another series in a minor league park and seven divisional games.
The Orioles are in the midst of a 16-game stretch without a day off — their longest of the season. Baltimore’s next day off is June 26.
The club’s next series will be against the Rays, but it will be in Tampa, Florida. Instead of playing in St. Petersburg at Tropicana Field, Rays home games this season are at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees’ spring training facility and the home of New York’s Low-A affiliate. Tropicana Field was damaged in October by Hurricane Milton and can’t host games this season. It will mark the second time this month the Orioles will play a series at a minor league park after they visited the Athletics’ Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento.
After the four-game set against the surging Rays (39-32), the Orioles will travel to the Bronx to face the AL East-leading Yankees (42-28).
Orioles stars were once demoted, giving Heston Kjerstad a path to follow
On the farm
Heston Kjerstad received five days off after he was optioned to Triple-A Norfolk on Tuesday. The former top prospect was in the Tides’ lineup Sunday for the first time, going 1-for-5 as the club’s designated hitter.
Kjerstad clobbered the ball at every level he reached until the big leagues this year, posting a .192 average and .566 OPS. Mansolino said the Orioles “set out a specific plan” for Kjerstad, adding that there must be “something that we’re missing” that’s led to the slugger’s slump.
Extra innings
• The Orioles were either going to be the worst lefty-hitting team in MLB history, or regression would mercifully arrive. It appears that finally happened this weekend against the Angels. After the Orioles were shut down by Tigers ace Tarik Skubal on Thursday, their OPS this year against lefties was .553, which would rank worst in MLB history (since 1901) across a full season. But Baltimore’s bats handled Angels southpaws Tyler Anderson and Yusei Kikuchi, scoring 11 runs off them in 10 2/3 innings. The Orioles’ OPS off lefties is now .589, worst in MLB this season but no longer the worst figure in the sport’s history. Baltimore is now 5-14 against lefty starters (not including openers) this year.
• When he was Triple-A Norfolk’s manager, Buck Britton still served as the Tides’ third base coach. Britton, now the Orioles’ third base coach after Mansolino’s promotion, has thus far looked experienced and fearless in his new role. Last weekend in Sacramento, Britton had a risky — borderline reckless — send of Gunnar Henderson that worked. In Saturday’s one-run win, he had a pair of aggressive two-out sends that both scored runs. “Two outs, they’re great sends,” Mansolino said Saturday. “Buck knows. With two outs, we’re going to make our mistakes with two outs. That’s third base coaching, getting guys thrown out with two outs [with] the odds of getting a hit with a runner on third.”
• After missing the past few games, Cowser and Ryan O’Hearn could return to the lineup soon after being available off the bench Sunday. Cowser has been out the past three games after slamming into the center field wall Thursday, while O’Hearn missed Saturday and Sunday’s games after his ankle was clipped by a base runner Friday. O’Hearn said he will be “ready to rock” on Monday in Tampa.
• The Orioles on Sunday claimed right-handed starter Kyle Tyler off waivers from the Phillies. Tyler hasn’t appeared in the majors this season but has a 4.31 ERA in 12 starts for the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate. The 28-year-old has a career 4.31 ERA in 48 MLB innings between the Angels, Padres and Marlins.
Baltimore Sun reporter Matt Weyrich contributed to this article. Have a news tip? Contact Jacob Calvin Meyer at jameyer@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/JCalvinMeyer.