Unpacking the Baltimore Orioles Collapse From Monday Night
Baseball games in the middle of May aren’t supposed to mean much in the grand scheme of things. When the team you’re following is the Baltimore Orioles, they really aren’t supposed to mean much.
Fans are fans, though, and giving disproportionate amounts of attention is almost universal. Therefore, it won’t surprise anyone that Monday night’s Yankees-Orioles game got my feelings turned all the way turned up (and sadly, down).
Six innings deep, I was riding a Dwight Smith Jr.-induced high, planning a spectacular column about the O’s ability to bounce back in the face of an embarrassing loss to Cleveland on Sunday. They took a hard L on the chin, let someone named Bieber humiliate them, and managed, somehow, to turn the page against one of baseball’s elite. The offense was alive, Andrew Cashner was pumping 95, and the jolly feeling was contagious.
Even the baseball gods were standing with the O’s. Up 6-3, Baltimore was gifted a run thanks to a dropped pop-up by Yankees’ first baseman Luke Voit. It was all good in Birdland. They had manufactured runs in four of their six times at bat and held a 7-3 lead heading into the seventh.
Nine outs = huge win.
Simple…
Not simple. The O’s blew it: Yankees 10, Orioles 7
As impressive as the first six innings were, the final nine outs were equally unimpressive. The O’s bullpen, outside of Shawn Armstrong, was disastrous and their defense followed suit. And it wasn’t just bad…it was a complete breakdown at an elementary level. Both groups allowed free bases multiple times; the defense via errant throws from the outfield and the bullpen via missed spots and lost battles.
Their bats also went back to sleep over the final three innings but they put up seven runs. That should have been enough.
Even more, the main culprits from Monday’s collapse were guys O’s fans have come to believe in: Dwight Smith Jr., the team’s best lefty bat,
allowed a run in the seventh on an air-mailed throw from left, Mychal Givens, their most-trusted reliever, blew the save and took the loss after allowing five earned runs, and Pedro Severino, the team’s best defensive player, dropped a foul pop-up* with two outs in the ninth that would have sent the game to extra innings**.
*Was it the baseball gods evening the score from earlier?
**The next batter, Gary Sanchez, smacked a three-run jack into the left-field stands.
When things were going good on Monday night, I planned to give Brandon Hyde credit for getting these guys to believe in themselves when no one else would. After the collapse, that hasn’t changed. They do scrap and they do compete, and on certain nights, they put it all together. The collapse wasn’t due to lack of effort or interest; that loss hurt them deeply, which says a lot about how invested they are. Rather, the team crumbling on Monday is a result of inexperience and to some degree, a lack of talent. Hyde is dealing with a lot of replacement-level players this year and it could be a lot worse than it’s been.
They could be the 2018 Orioles, who had the same exact record as this year’s team on May 21st (15-32). That squad had an abundance of talent (Machado, Schoop, Jones, Britton, etc.) but they weren’t scrapping like Hyde’s team is this year. If you took the talent from 2019 and switched it with 2018, they could have single-digit wins right now. Hyde, if nothing else, is rebuilding a team-first culture in Baltimore.
Overall, the loss really hurt on Monday. Some of it, I’m sure, is because they were so close to a huge win and let it slip. It sucked, sure, but in the grand scheme of things, this team, and Hyde as a manager, may learn a thing or two from it happening. It’s not a lot to hold on to but then again, this season really isn’t about wins and losses.