The Baltimore Orioles lead MLB in pinch hits, and they have managed to do a fair amount of damage late in games and get to bullpens.
Hitting starting pitching with any regularity has been far more of a chore, and they have struggled to find lineups that gel and carry the offense for any sustainable period of time. The late-game theatrics have left them on the fringes of the fight for the final Wild Card spot in a year where the American League truly stinks, and provided some fun moments in walk-offs, like rookie Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers coming through off the bench Saturday night to beat the Rays and secure another series win over the best team in the AL.
But the inability for their regular lineups to do the job, and the striking dichotomy between Baltimore’s productivity from their in-game substitutes vs those chosen to get the bulk of the at bats that day points to their organization rot. It’s the kind of baseball insanity with which failed baseball exec Mike Elias operates this team. The gap between productivity, versus the rest of the league, between the O’s starters and subs is stark and ominous.
Pulling the right levers on some pinch hit homers is great, but managing a team through nine innings and being able to manufacture runs early and find the right combinations of batters to attack that day’s starting pitching seems markedly more important. These numbers in many ways tell the story of another lost season gone horribly wrong with people in charge who have no business being involved in Baltimore baseball anymore (everyone who comes on “The Daily Flock Show” tends to agree).
Accentuate The Positive
Well, I suppose, we should start with the positives. Elias, the contemptable figure that he is, was doing victory laps about his roster of hitters all winter and crowing how they would could win the AL East because of them. Well, when it comes to off-the-bench slugging, I guess he knew what he was talking about.
Here are the major-league leaders in team slugging percentage from their subs entering play Sunday:
Team SLG BA OBP OPS TB
SDP .477 .245 .297 .774 72
WSN .468 .238 .319 .787 116
CHC .446 .274 .371 .817 75
MIA .433 .250 .357 .789 90
BAL .431 .241 .312 .742 93
The Orioles not only rank fifth in SLG – the kind of formidable mashing unit they vowed (but only when off the bench) – but they are fourth in total bases from their subs and second in RBIs and fifth in homers and seventh in OPS.
Fair to say, with the kind of shockingly good pitching the Orioles got this season, that anything close to these numbers from their starters every day this deep in the season and this team would absolutely be contending for the division. Even with the Rays so much better than expected and the Yankees remaining quite formidable despite playing almost all season without Aaron Judge (and I guess Giancarlo Stanton, too, though he is always hurt).
So, in a nutshell, everything else with the Orioles being equal, why have they been able to salvage some moments with late-inning heroics but why are they five-below .500? And why can’t they ever win more than three games in a row and why haven’t they been a .500 team since April 14? Why do they fail to score four runs so often and why is that strikeout rate do ridiculously high?
Well, let’s take a look at where Orioles starters ranked entering play Sunday (this doesn’t include Sunday’s failure with only Colton Cowser hitting a solo shot and Gunnar Henderson watching his season OPS dip below .700 and his season OPS with two outs and RISP dip below .450).
The Ugly Truth About What These Clowns Built
Here are the Orioles starters offensive ranks for the season (full baseballreference.com stats available here):
Total Bases: 23rd
SLG: 21st (.395)
OPS: 20th (.714)
RBIs: 19th
HRs: 13th
They insisted on batting mopey Adley Rutschman at the top of the order every day with a .670 OPS since May 1 until the bitter end. They insist on doing it with Henderson now. They gave Taylor Ward more plate appearances than anyone on the team to try to walk every at bat and provide zero slug or run production but had him leadoff almost everyday.
Blaze Alexander was a top five hitter in MLB from April 28 until he got hurt just before the All-Star break and top 10 in wRC+ in MLB in that span and they hit him ninth or eighth in a horrible lineup every night while it went on. I could go on and on.
The manager, Craig Albernaz, is a puppet who loves nothing more than licking Elias’s boots in public to try to grovel to keep a job he had no business getting. This team desperately needed a real proven skipper then and they need it even more now. If the billionaire owner is awake and figured out they won’t just win seven of every ten the rest of the way, maybe he could get real baseball people to run his organization.
When you factor in the utter contempt for defensive ability that Elias uses to put together Frankenstein rosters, and the shameful inability of his MLB staff to instill anything close to sound fundamentals (they killed The Oriole Way), and you throw this lineup failure on top of it – it equals another seven months of slop. It really can make you sick. They really need to fire these people.
Subscribe To “The Daily Flock” On YouTube For The Hardest Hitting Orioles Coverage:
Add us as a preferred source on Google
