Yesterday the Orioles were swept by the Houston Astros and it feels like the sky is falling. Despite the fact that the O’s are having a great month where they’ve played almost every single day against a lot of the very best teams in the league these losses against the Astros feel like they’ve exposed some of the Orioles’ weaknesses and has made the fanbase worried about the teams chances come October.
I feel a little conflicted writing about the flaws of this Orioles team because they really are having a great season and this month they have played some very good baseball. So before I get into the holes on the roster and concerns I have for this team’s world series chances I do want to give them some props for what they’ve done so far this month.
I could go on series by series but to summarize the O’s are in the final stretch of a brutal month where by the end they will have played 30 games in 31 days mostly against division rivals and many of the best teams in the league. We knew going into this stretch there would come a point when the team would wear down and we might drop some of these series.
The month started with us losing John Means and Tyler Wells for the season as well as Dean Kremer going on the IL and then 2 weeks in we lost Kyle Bradish for the season and we also lost probably our best bullpen arm in Danny Coulombe until September and still the O’s fought and fought and until this weekend hadn’t lost a single series they’d played this month.
All this to say that as O’s fans we have been treated to a good month of baseball and when things are going well like when we are beating the Yankees by 12 in their stadium on a warm sunny afternoon it feels like they will be good forever.
Similarly after you’ve been swept by the Astros and none of the games felt particularly close it kind of feels like you’ll never feel joy again.
I sometimes wonder if the Orioles going on that historic streak of not being swept kind of warped my mind and the minds of many Orioles fans because I had gotten very used to not getting swept. You’d also think someone who just 3 years ago watched his team lose 19 games in a row could handle losing just 3 games in a row but that was the old me, the new me very much can’t handle it.
Even though the streak was broken earlier this season going into yesterday’s game I felt very certain the Orioles would pull it out even after they went down 4 in the first inning I still believed because that’s just who the Orioles have been for the past 3 seasons. But they lost and that happens, good teams get swept all the time, it’s unfair to think that the O’s were going to have another 2 year stretch of never getting swept again.
But like I said in the very first paragraph this series against the Astros feels like it exposed some of the Orioles current weaknesses and even in the series win against the Yankees I felt like some of the O’s weaknesses were pretty blatantly on display.
When I talk about weaknesses or concerns that I have I don’t mean that I think the Astros just laid out some blueprint on how to beat the O’s and now we’re going to be the Rockies for the rest of the year.
I feel very confident that the O’s are going to have a great rest of the regular season and win somewhere between 95 – 102 games and hopefully win the division assuming the Yankees (who I think are massive frauds and who actually are about to enter a nosedive ) don’t continue to get otherworldly production from a bunch of guys destined to have career ERAs in the mid 4s.
I am worried that when we get to the postseason we get a repeat of last year where we simply get overwhelmed by a much more experienced team and many of the guys that we leaned on during the regular season just don’t show up for us.
The Rotation
With Kyle Bradish hitting the shelf for the rest of the season, trading for another starting pitcher has moved from a luxury to a need and if the O’s are being smart they should probably try to get 2.
Right now the rotation is Burnes – Rodriguez – Irvin – Povich – Suarez I would say out of those 5 only Burnes and Rodriguez should be starting a playoff game. Irvin could maybe start if we’re ahead in the series and we wanted to try to get Burnes another day of rest before using him again but I wouldn’t want to put him or either off those other guys in the situation we put Kremer in last year where we’re down 0-2 and our lives rest on your shoulders but if the playoff started today say hello to your game 3 starter Cole Irvin.
At some point Dean Kremer will be back and so I feel I should say that I view him as being pretty much identical to Cole Irvin which is to say a good end of the rotation regular season pitcher who I would prefer to kick to the bullpen in the playoffs.
Albert Suarez I salute you for your service this season but these last 2 starts it has really looked like the clock has struck midnight on this Cinderella return to the league. Not that he needs to be DFA’d or anything like that but man if we start a 34 year old journeyman from the KBO in a do or die playoff game and he gets rocked I don’t know how I’m going to be able to deal with that.
Cade Povich is interesting and I definitely want to see more of him this year. In his first 3 starts it looks like his stuff plays really well in the big leagues. He’s clearly hard to hit and even harder to hit hard (trying saying that 3 times fast) but the problem is the walks. He clearly struggles staying the zone and that is a double edged sword because it makes it so he has to deal with runners on and then you are susceptible to guys stealing and advancing on outs and scoring that way so even if you’re unhittable you can still be giving up runs and it also makes it hard to get deep into games so you have to kind of go into Povich starts ready to use a lot of bullpen guys.
Now for the playoffs you could start Povich and hope he’s locked in and you get a start like what he did against the Braves and if he’s all over the place you get a bulk innings guy out of the pen like Irvin or Suarez up early and try to save the game.
This could work but this feels like a strategy that an 83 win team that got the 3rd wildcard in a year where they weren’t planning on contending would try (hello Brandon Pfaadt) and not something that a team trying to win 100 games in back to back seasons that also has the best farm system in baseball would have to resort to.
Similarly to Povich we could at some point see Chayce McDermott this year. McDermott is an interesting prospect. He technically is rated a little higher than Povich in the Orioles system and his graded tools are a little better for what that’s worth but he has a very similar control issue so unless he comes up and just does miracles on us I don’t see him being the answer.
The issue is that there just simply aren’t very many top end starters that are going to be available at this trade deadline. Jesus Luzardo was probably the biggest name out there and he’s currently on the IL and his ERA starts with 5. Garrett Crochet and Erick Fedde’s names have been thrown around but I don’t think the White Sox have officially said that they are looking to sell on those guys and neither of them are really proven aces that you would feel super comfortable sending over top guys like Mayo or Basallo for.
As you look around the league the fact that so many teams are hanging around the wildcard in both leagues makes it so there just aren’t very many teams looking to sell at all.
I already mentioned in my last trade for a starter blog that I don’t want the Orioles to make another half measure trade and end up with Jack Flaherty 2 (although can you believe how much that dude is balling out this year???)
So the question is are the Orioles willing to put real prospects on the table in order to pry away an ace from a team that currently isn’t selling.
Here are some pitchers that are not currently for sale but that I think the Orioles could get if they offered multiple top prospects.
Tarik Skubal
Logan Gilbert
Logan Webb
Blake Snell
Justin Steele
Dylan Cease
Tanner Bibee
Kevin Gausman
Jose Berrios
Max Scherzer
Nathan Eovaldi
Now you with some of these guys you could argue whether or not the Orioles SHOULD be willing to offer multiple top prospects for them but I’m just saying I think if the O’s started throwing around names like Samuel Basallo, Coby Mayo and Heston Kjerstad these guys could be available to us and pretty much nobody else.
There is kind of an interesting group of pitchers as I look around the league where they are good enough that the team trading them probably wants a lot but they are either not good enough to be worth trading top prospects. They would be good options if you could get them for cheap but in a seller’s market I wouldn’t get caught in a bidding war for these guys.
Tyler Anderson
Jon Gray
Erick Fedde
Chris Bassitt
Jack Flaherty
Seth Lugo
Now I know I said I didn’t want any sort of half measure but I will say that with Dean battling injuries and Albert Suarez battling being an overtasked relief pitcher we are dangerously close to not being able to field a 5 man rotation. So I think it could be worthwhile for the O’s to look at adding a non top end starter just to be able to eat some innings so that we don’t wear out Burnes and Rodriguez or the bullpen.
I wouldn’t want to spend top dollar on any of these guys but if they were available at a decent price I think it would be worth pursuing them. So here are some guys who I think could be good innings eaters in the second half of the season that wouldn’t be too expensive.
Luis Severino
Frankie Montas
Martin Perez
Kyle Freeland
Lance Lynn
Reid Detmers
Yusei Kikuchi
Andrew Heaney
The Bullpen
I wrote a whole blog about how the Orioles needed to fix their bullpen and then everyone in that bullpen decided go nuts for a month and they started to trick me into believing that they were actually going to be fine but then Danny Coulombe went down with an injury and everyone had to slot up and almost immediately things started to go off the rails.
Dillon Tate and Cionel Perez are both really struggling and giving up runs in almost all their outings over the last week, Jacob Webb didn’t record a single out in his last outing and Keegan Akin has been relegated to mop up duty.
Bryan Baker has pitched well since he was called up but you definitely feel like you are waiting for the other shoe to drop with him.
Nick Vespi has also pitched well this year and I am excited for him to get some real run but he is very inexperienced and you’d like for him to be able to be eased into the bullpen instead of immediately going from a taxi squad guy to the second best guy in the pen.
Craig Kimbrel cannot be trusted to come in and protect a 1 run lead; he’s a closer that has to have a 3 run lead in order to be effective. I would very much like for the Orioles to trade for another closer but with so many other issues in the bullpen I’m not sure that can even be the priority.
Yennier Cano is the only guy I really trust right now and it’s not like he’s been one of the best relievers in the league like he was last year.
You do hope that when the Orioles trade for a starter or 2 some of the guys in the rotation can kick to the pen and bolster that group but I really want to see the O’s go out and get some bullpen help, besides Cano I don’t think any off the guys currently in the pen should be blocking us from going out and getting a stud.
As far as who the Orioles should trade for to help the bullpen it’s interesting to make a list because there are REALLY good relievers out there that could be available but they will be expensive and if the O’s are going to trade some of their top prospects for pitching I would prefer that it’s for an elite starter rather than an elite reliever. I think the best prospect the O’s should be willing to trade for a reliever is Connor Norby so here is a list of guys that I think the O’s could get for guys Connor Norby and below on the top prospect list.
Ryan Helsley
Yimi Garcia
Robert Suarez (Kinda funny)
David Robertson (still kickin)
Taylor Rodgers
Hunter Harvey
Kyle Finnegan
David Bednar
And the thing with the bullpen is that there are probably guys that have a mid 4s ERA that to my untrained eye don’t look too great but reliever volatility is such that if our scouts see a guy with bad numbers but feel like he could succeed in an Orioles context I’m down for whoever the O’s bring in. The front office just needs to do anything, we cannot go into the playoffs with this current group, I’m not saying that everyone must go but we need reinforcements.
Hitters
It is hard to complain about the hitters on this Orioles team when we have the best offense in the league but I’m still going to try. Unlike the issues with the pitching staff I think that the solutions to the lineup are already in the organization so there is no need to scour the league for trade targets.
Earlier in the year I wrote about the O’s struggling veterans and since then Santander Mullins and even Hays (although I’m still a little suspect of his progress) have been much better at the plate so it feels like we are close to turning a corner but it seems like everyday when the lineup card gets posted I look at it and there are 2-3 and sometimes 4 below average hitters.
I know it is greedy to feel like the lineup should be 9 straight awesome hitters but look at it this way when in 2022 the Orioles won 83 games and it felt like wow we just had such a good season and we have the top farm system in baseball and all our best prospects are in triple A imagine how good we will be in 2024.
Here is an example of a lineup from the 2022 season
- Cedric Mullins
- Adley Rutschman
- Ryan Mountcastle
- Anthony Santander
- Gunnar Henderson
- Austin Hays
- Ramon Urias
- Jorge Mateo
- Robinson Chirinos
And here is a lineup similar to one we had last week when Jordan Westburg missed a game:
- Gunnar Henderson
- Adley Rutschman
- Ryan Mountcastle
- Anthony Santander
- Cedric Mullins
- Austin Hays
- Ramon Urias
- Jorge Mateo
- James McCann
It’s a lot of the same guys so you think to yourself “oh are all those guys from 2022 that you would have thought would be replaced by “top prospects” just playing super well and are making it so we can’t justify moving on from them?” and the answer is NOT REALLY some of them are among the worst hitters in the league this year.
Now I know what I just did is not fair and I could also show a lineup made mostly of young guys that we currently have on the team:
- Gunnar Henderson
- Adley Rutschman
- Ryan O’Hearn
- Ryan Mountcastle
- Anthony Santander
- Jordan Westburg
- Colton Cowser
- Heston Kjerstad (newly added today a few days ago this could have been Stowers)
- Jorge Mateo
But it is still a little disappointing that we’ve had this “best farm system” for years with most of the top guys at triple A and we’re still rolling out guys like Mateo and Urias that are at best average hitters almost everyday.
Now this isn’t all the front offices fault I think that ideally they wanted Jackson Holliday to come up and lock down second base and have an everyday infield of Westburg, Henderson and Holliday which on paper would be an impressive infield but Holliday came up and he wasn’t ready.
I do think it was odd that when Holliday didn’t work out that they didn’t immediately try to give that spot to Connor Norby who is 24 and has been in triple A for 3 years and is a good player who has hung around the fringes of the MLB top 100 list. Instead they just went back to everyday Mateo and only gave Norby a brief chance to be on the major league roster when injuries cleared the way for him.
It kind of makes you feel like they don’t value him very highly, similar to how they never really gave Joey Ortiz a shot last year even when Mateo was one of the worst hitters in all of baseball for the last 5 months of the season.
Also they could have given Coby Mayo a shot at third and moved Westburg to 2nd base. Mayo is a much higher rated prospect who has crushed triple A pitching and looked good against pros in spring training. He is just 22 so he’s a bit younger and he did get hurt at kind of an inopportune time but he was healthy when Holliday had to be sent down. I think the O’s are worried about if Mayo can stick at 3rd, infield defense is important so you don’t want to put a stiff out there but he has played mostly 3rd base his entire career so I want to believe he has the ability.
I do also think that the O’s have really tried not to yoyo their top prospects like Adley, Gunnar and Westburg so that could be a reason that we haven’t seen Mayo yet because they don’t feel like the path is there for him to get everyday at bats but I would say that yes there is a path just put him at third everyday and see if he can handle it. Maybe he did just get hurt at the absolute wrong time and he would be up if he had been healthy when Westburg got hit in the hand instead of Norby.
In the outfield the hole in the offense has been Mullins and Hays and now sadly Cowser whose numbers on the season still look ok because of how red hot he was in April but he has just been absolutely lost at the plate ever since.
Mullins and Cowser are your only 2 options in centerfield so one of them has to play and centerfield is the kind of position where if you can play really good defense, which both of them have this year, then you can stomach not getting much offensively.
As far as who’d I rather play I think you give that everyday role to Mullins right now and we dial back on Cowser and kind of go back to how he was used at the beginning of the season where he can come in and play when there is a matchup advantage or we need his defense and see if he heats back up playing in that role again.
So Mullins gets his everyday centerfield spot but I would keep my eye on him, he has heated up but it’s not like he is setting the world on fire if he trends down again I wouldn’t wait too long before leaning on Cowser again.
Left field is where the Orioles have had a big hole offensively. Corner outfield is supposed to be a place where you put some of the best hitters in your lineup and right now between Cowser and Hays that is a spot where we haven’t gotten much production in the last few months.
Now Hays has been better, when you look at his numbers since he came back from the IL it looks like he is one of the best hitters on the team and that doesn’t quite match my eye test. I just feel like even if the number say he’s been good since coming back he can’t be relied upon to be a consistent enough hitter for me to feel good about just making him the everyday left fielder.
Which is why I was excited to see that the Orioles have recalled Heston Kjerstad who is an offense first power bat in the corner outfield. Kjerstad made his debut in 2023 and has already been up once this year but in neither stint was he given the consistent at bats he would need to establish himself as a major league hitter. I really hope this call up came with a mandate from the front office that Kjertsad needs to play almost everyday. I know the shaky defense in left field probably makes Brandon Hyde feel queasy but if Kjerstad’s power at the plate can translate to the major leagues it would be a major upgrade for the O’s offensively and you can defensive replace him late in games if you feel like you have to.
Now with prospects nothing is promised, it is possible that neither Mayo or Kjerstad are good enough to come up the big leagues and actually hit better than the struggling veterans that we are anxious for them to replace but I just feel like it is time for these prospects to get their shot.
Either they are good enough that they deserve to be top 20 prospects in MLB and they will be better than these guys currently on the team or they aren’t and we should trade them before the rest of the league figures it out.
Here is a lineup with those guys added
- Gunnar Henderson
- Adley Rutschman
- Ryan O’Hearn
- Ryan Mountcastle
- Anthony Santander
- Jordan Westburg
- Coby Mayo
- Heston Kjerstad
- Cedric Mullins
This blog feels very critical of the Orioles current team and I don’t want everything I write to just be me demanding that guys who have been with the team for years to be kicked to the curb but it feels like this years World Series is up for grabs and the O’s have such a good team right now and they have more good prospects than can even fit on the roster and they made the move to get Corbin Burnes and he might not be back next year so I want them go all in and make this the best team possible.
The Dishwasher 
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