On June 27th the Orioles pulled even with the Yankees in the standings with an 11-2 victory over the Texas Rangers. With the Yankees appearing to be entering their annual second half death spiral it seemed like the Orioles were about to kick it into high gear and pull away but instead since then the Orioles are 26-26 and currently trail the Yankees by a game.
In many ways the Orioles are fortunate to still be in the conversation for the AL East title. Maybe I am overrating most division champs but I feel like playing .500 baseball for 2 months in the middle of the season would usually result in a team falling far behind in a division title race, but the Yankees have also struggled during this stretch and have allowed the Orioles to hang around.
During these last 2 months the Orioles have been swept by the Cub, lost a series to the Yankees where the only game they won was thanks to some of the worst 9th inning defense I’ve seen in my life, lost a series to the Marlins where the only game they won was in extra innings after blowing a 6 run lead, and got walked off twice by the Mets in less than 48 hours. Since the all star break they have not won 3 games in a row despite playing multiple teams that are well outside the playoff picture.
It appears they will fall well short of last year’s 101 win total, but despite the ultimately lower win total and the long stretch uninspiring baseball I would argue that this years Orioles team is better than last year’s team and even if the Orioles are destined for the Wild Card series O’s fans should feel optimistic that this year’s playoffs will be better than last year’s.
Now that is in part because last year’s playoffs set the bar quite low with the O’s getting swept in 3 games with 2 of them being blowouts but even if that weren’t the case I think the Orioles are better set up to advance in the playoffs than they were at the end of last regular season.
The Rotation
Last year’s rotation performed admirably down the stretch and was a key part of why the Orioles won 101 games but as far as actual top end talent they were top heavy with really only Bradish and Grayson being guys you wanted to hand the ball to in a playoff game.
Going into the playoffs I was of the opinion that this didn’t really matter because we would simply win the Bradish and Rodriguez starts (I wasn’t quite that blindly optimistic but I was as certain as I could be that we would win one of those starts) and then do what we could when we had to start Kremer or Gibson. After a full season and half of not being swept it barely occurred to me that we might lose the first 2 games and then suddenly be in a do or die game with a below average starter on the mound against a red hot offense.
I was wrong of course and only having 2 playoff caliber starters really bit the Orioles.
This year assuming that Eflin and Rodriguez are able to come back off of the IL, and the reports we have heard so far say they should, we would have 3 real playoff caliber starters and even though Bradish had really good stats last year I think Burnes is a better pitcher right now than Bradish was this time last year. If I were to rank our best pitching options over the last 2 season here is how I would do it.
- 2024 Corbin Burnes
- 2023 Kyle Bradish
- 2024 Zach Eflin
- 2024 Grayson Rodriguez
- 2023 Grayson Rodriguez
- 2024 Albert Suarez
- 2024 Dean Kremer
- 2023 Dean Kremer
- 2023 Kyle Gibson
Bradish had an incredible season in 2023 where he pitched 168 innings to a 2.83 ERA but it was his first time pitching a full season’s worth of innings and his first time pitching in the playoffs so I think inexperience and fatigue both factored into Bradish not being able to get deep into the game. Burnes on the other hand has a much larger track record as this season will be his 4th in a row pitching over 167 innings and he has also appeared in 3 different postseasons compiling 19 innings at a 2.84 ERA. So I think it fair to expect Burnes to be better than Bradish was in his 1 playoff start.
As for the number 2 starter last year Grayson Rodriguez had a strong finish to the season but he was even more inexperienced than Bradish was and that inexperienced showed as he REALLY struggled facing the Rangers for the 3rd time that season. Whether or not you think our number 2 starter in the playoffs this year is Eflin or a more experienced Grayson Rodriguez either option will be better than a rookie Grayson Rodriguez making his 24th career start.
The number 3 starter situation is much better this year. Last year it was Dean Kremer who took the mound in game 3. Now I like Dean Kremer but his ultimate destiny in this league is to be an innings eater 5th starter or maybe even a swingman bullpen guy (his first time through the lineup numbers are WAY better than the second time which can be an indicator that maybe you’d be better off not seeing the lineup a second time.) This year it would be either Rodriguez or Eflin in that game 3 either of which I already said would be better than last year’s number 2 starter let alone last year’s number 3.
So despite all the injuries to our starting pitching this season we are going to reach October with a strong top 3 in our rotation.
The Lineup
You might look at last year’s lineup and feel like it is very similar to this year’s but there are a few key differences that I believe will make a big difference in this year’s playoffs.
Upgrades
Jordan Westburg
Last year Jordan Westburg had a solid rookie season and was a good player. This year Jordan leveled up and had a great second season. The biggest improvement came in the power department where Jordan improved his slugging percentage almost 100 points racking up 48 extra base hits this year compared to just 22 last year. He has been the best everyday right handed hitter on the team (Tony and Adley technically have been better from their right sides but they switch hit)
What Westburg will bring as a right handed bat will be super important to making sure the Orioles don’t get dominated by lefties and his defense at 3rd will be better than what Urias and even Gunnar were doing at that spot last year.
Jackson Holliday
Holliday’s statline on the year is still rough to look at and he may have just had an 0-20 but Adam Frazier gave us absolutely nothing in the playoffs last year and this year is OPSing .592 with the Royals so he might be looking at his last year in the big leagues. Holliday at second gives the Orioles a much higher ceiling at that position than they had with Frazier while admittedly a similar floor. Again I know there’s a lot of numbers that don’t love Jackson Holliday right now but I think you have to believe that in those high pressure playoff moments the talent will win out.
Colton Cowser
Whether Cowser is our starting center fielder or left fielder he is an upgrade on what Austin Hays and Cedric Mullins were giving us at those positions last year. Hays got off to great start last year and started the all star game but he had a tough second half of the season putting up a wRC+ of 84 after the all star break and Mullins was never really the same after he came back from his injury and was just brutal the last few weeks of the regular season and he went 0-12 in the playoffs.
Cowser is a better hitter for average and power than both Mullins and second half Hays (who in my opinion is a completely different player than first half Hays) and he plays excellent defense making him an easy upgrade in the outfield.
Cedric Mullins
I know I just said we were upgrading from Cedric but he will still be on the roster and even though by the numbers he is having the worst year of his career and he has been turned into more of a part time player than an everyday centerfielder the current version of Mullins is still better than the injured version of Mullins we got in last years playoffs. So he still counts as an upgrade.
Gunnar Henderson
A little controversial here because you could argue that second half and playoff Gunnar from last year was him becoming the player he is this year but I will still say that even though Gunnar made a mid season leap last year he got even better this year and therefore he counts as an upgrade over last year’s team. Specifically we have seen a major improvement in his lefty splits which has contributed to him having better on base, average and power numbers overall. He has also fully cemented himself at short whereas last year he was still being moved over to third quite often.
Anthony Santander
Tony Tater’s upward trajectory has continued this season. Every year people assume we have seen the best of Anthony Santander and every year he comes back better than ever. Everything you hear about Santander says that he is obsessed with hitting and works hard to always be improving and you can see it with his year over year development. This year Anthony Santander is hitting for more power than ever, slugging .515 currently sitting 3rd in all of baseball in home runs. Santander was great last year but this year he is giving the Orioles one of the best power bats in all of baseball in the middle of the order.
Roughly the same
These guys were on the team last year and they will be on the playoff roster this year and although some of them have slightly better or slightly worse slash lines than they did last year they are pretty much the same guy.
Ryan O’Hearn
There is an argument to be made that O’Hearn is better this year if you look at his expected stats but with his actual stats lagging ever so slightly behind what he did last year especially in the slugging category I decided that he belonged in the “roughly the same” category. What O’Hearn gave the Orioles last year was great and I didn’t think he would be able to do it again but here we are a year later and he did it again.
Ryan Mountcastle
There’s also an argument for Ryan Mountcastle to be in the worse category with his OPS sitting 50 points below his 2023 mark and those 2023 numbers were actually deflated because he played for a like a month with vertigo and tanked his stats and this year he had been pretty healthy before going on the IL this week. Looking at his numbers this year kind of surprised me as I didn’t feel like he was having a down year but yet the numbers are where they are. The power hasn’t been what it was in the past and he still doesn’t walk much so I guess that makes it hard to have nice pretty numbers. I left him in the “roughly the same” category because I still think he has the same ability as always. He is still hitting for a decent average and the power is in that bat so it feels like a matter of time before we get a Mountcastle power surge.
Ramon Urias
Ideally Ramon Urias will be in a reserve role once the playoffs come around. Last year he got 2 at bats and I would suspect his offensive usage would be about the same this year. Last year Ramon slashed .264/.328/.375 and this year he is slashing .248/.319/.427 which is pretty comparable, he’s given up about 20 points of average for about 50 points of slugging which you can argue for both sides which is better. I will say that Urias has played very well since Westburg went down and has had several clutch hits so even though I don’t know what the exact situation would be where he would be playing or pinch hitting in a playoff series I wouldn’t count him out to have a big moment.
James McCann
McCann is the backup catcher and didn’t get a plate appearance last year, hopefully this year we are in the playoffs long enough that we have a reason to give Adley Rutschman a rest day and we get to see some McCann. His numbers are a little worse this year but for a backup catcher my expectations are low to begin with.
Downgrades
Just because I believe the 2024 Orioles are better than the 2023 Orioles doesn’t mean that they are literally better at every position so here are some spots where we are a little worse.
Adley Rutschman
It brings me absolutely no pleasure to put Adley in this category but we are now at 2 months of baseball where he is playing well below the level of play that we are used to getting from Adley Rutschman. A month ago I wrote that when it comes to young stars like Adley you just have to live with the ups and downs and trust that the talent will win out but this slump has gone on for so long that that it feels like there must be some sort of injury that is preventing him from being his old self. He got hit on the wrist a few months ago and he missed a few games with back pain and he plays catcher which is a brutal position.
I don’t believe the poor hitter we have watched over the last few months is who Adley will be for the rest of his career but whether it is injury or a massive mental block or a broken swing it seems like this is the Adley Rutschman we should expect for the rest of 2024. I would love to be wrong about this and have Adley snap out of his funk in the last 30 games of the season and look like the 130 wRC+ hitter that we’ve known him to be over the first 2 and half years of his career but until I see the at bats starts to look better and the overall numbers improve I am prepared to accept this is the version of Rutschman we will be getting in the playoffs.
Eloy Jimenez/ Austin Slater
I would compare the role of Jimenez and Slater to what the Orioles got from Aaron Hicks last year. What Hicks gave the Orioles last year in 200 at bats was a switch hitting slashline of .275/.381/.425 while playing centerfield in place of an injured Cedric Mullins.
Both Jimenez and Slater have been very good in their time since joining the Orioles both far exceeding my expectations which were very low but I don’t think they can keep this up, Eloy has been getting by hitting firm ground for very little power and Slater has performed well but is a short side of the platoon bat for Cedric Mullins which is a much less useful role than what Hicks was giving the O’s.
I’ll be interested to see if both of these guys make the playoff roster. Right now they are helping fill out the lineup against lefties but soon Westburg will be back and Coby Mayo will likely get called up soon once rosters expand and if he can perform then suddenly you have a good amount of right handed bats. I’ll hold off on diving into this further because Mounty and Mullins are both a little banged up so that decision might get made for us.
Anyway these guys aren’t bad by any means but they aren’t quite as versatile as Hicks was and I don’t think their success will be as sustainable as Hick’s was.
BTW it’s crazy how bad Hicks was for the Angels this year like what the heck happened there???
Possible Sparks
I don’t want to spend too much time on this because who knows if they’re even under consideration based on injury and poor performance but I wanted to really quick point out that these guys could be valuable additions to the Orioles bench in the playoffs.
Heston Kjerstad
Kjerstad was on the playoff roster last year which is a great example of how either of these guys could make it because this time last year he still hadn’t debuted. Kjerstad looked like he was about to fully blossom into the power hitting, middle of the lineup corner outfielder that the Orioles drafted him to be, but then he was hit in the head by Clay Holmes and even once he came back from the IL and cleared concussion protocol he didn’t look like nearly the same hitter and he is now once again on the IL on a rehab assignment trying to shake off the effects of being drilled in the head by 98 mph (the hardest anyone has been hit in the head in the statcast era)
We have not heard much about Kjerstad since he got put back on the IL and that was over 2 weeks ago so we should get an update soon on his status. Should he be able to get healthy in time for the playoffs it is likely one of Slater or Jimenez that would be the corresponding move to get him onto the active roster and those guys have been pretty good for us so the O’s would have to feel very confident that Kjerstad is fully healthy in order for him to replace one of them.
Coby Mayo
Mayo came up and much like many of the Orioles top prospects really struggled to start his career at the plate and after mustering just 1 hit in his first 20 plate appearances he was sent back down. I don’t love the quick hook for Mayo in the majors but I can kind of understand it. Mayo was brought up based on the idea that he would be such a significant upgrade offensively over what the O’s were getting from Ramon Urias that it wouldn’t matter that he is a shaky defender at 3rd base so when he isn’t hitting anything AND the defense makes you hold your breath even on routine plays it makes sense to send him back down.
That being said once rosters expand I would love for Mayo to get some extended run especially if Mountcastle is banged up to try get his major league legs under him if the O’s could add his right handed power bat to the bench for the playoffs that would be huge for making the O’s less vulnerable to being dominated by left handed pitching.
The corresponding move would also most likely be one of Eloy or Slater so Mayo would have to really outperform them in the majors leagues to force his way onto the roster. I don’t think Elias and Co are going to add him based on his ability to dominate triple A pitching.
The Bullpen
This is where my argument that the 2024 O’s are the better team gets a little shaky because I have not loved the bullpen experience this year and last year it was very much a strength for the team BUT for this blog I am comparing the 2 teams playoff rosters so Felix Bautista, who I think about every ninth inning, doesn’t factor into the conversation.
Here is who the Orioles had in the bullpen for their series against the Rangers
Yennier Cano
Danny Coulombe
DL Hall
Cionel Perez
Tyler Wells
Jacob Webb
Kyle Gibson
Jack Flaherty
Bryan Baker
And here are the guys that might be an option for the Orioles this year
Seranthony Dominguez
Yennier Cano
Danny Coulombe
Cionel Perez
Jacob Webb
Gregory Soto
Burch Smith
Colin Selby
Trevor Rogers
Cade Povich
Chayce McDermott
Brooks Kriske
Dean Kremer
Albert Suarez
Craig Kimbrel
Cole Irvin
Matt Bowman
Bryan Baker
Keegan Akin
And as of today Nick Anderson
Looking at this list of potential bullpen options I am astounded at how many bad options the Orioles have for their postseason bullpen. Over the last 2 months the Orioles have had one of the worst bullpens in baseball and the front office, upon seeing that their trade deadline acquisitions were not sufficient to turn it around, has since scrambled to add a bunch of arms off the scrap heap.
I will be interested to see how legitimate of chance some of these guys like Matt Bowman and Colin Selby, who have pitched well in a very small sample size for the O’s so far, are given to make the postseason roster over guys like Craig Kimbrel and Gregory Soto who have long track records and were expensive to add via free agency and trade but have been objectively terrible for the Orioles this year.
I would hope that performance would win out over sunk cost but I also understand that with relievers it is hard to feel like you got a good enough sample size to make a decision like that in just a few short weeks at the end of the season. Burch Smith looked really good for us for a few weeks and recently he’s been absolutely dreadful. If you leave guys that your spent real money and prospects on to acquire off the postseason roster and then the last minute waiver wire guy blows it in the playoff you are going to feel pretty stupid but on the other hand if you put Craig Kimbrel on the mound in the playoffs and he blows it then you’re going to feel stupid because anyone with eyes can see he’s turbo washed.
You have to make the decision that you know you can live with even if it fails.
So with that in mind here is how I would go about deciding who will be in the postseason bullpen
Locks
Yennier Cano
Seranthony Dominguez
Danny Coulombe
Cionel Perez
Not much to say here these are our four best guys in a perfect world these are the only guys that we let pitch in close games. I think about Danny Coulombe all the time, whether or not he can come back healthy and pick up where he left off might be the single biggest deciding factor for the Orioles World Series championship hopes.
Longmen
Albert Suarez
Dean Kremer
Assuming Grayson and Eflin can come back these 2 guys would be our 4 and 5 starters which means for the ALDS they wouldn’t necessarily need to pitch but it is good to have someone who can pitch bulk innings in case we get another 1 inning Rodriguez start. I think besides potentially starting at some point I am interested to see if these guys can contribute in pure relief opportunities. Saurez was good out of the pen earlier this year and Dean had really good numbers the first time through the order.
In right now, but I have my eye on you
Keegan Akin
Jacob Webb
I can’t believe I have Keegan Akin this high up on the list but that just goes to show you how desperate things have become. He has been pitching very well recently and has most likely earned a playoff spot BUT there is still time for him to blow this. Webb is health dependent, if he comes back and looks good I think he has an inside track to be on the team.
Completely open evaluation
Cade Povich
Chayce McDermott
Matt Bowman
Colin Selby
Nick Anderson
Here we have 2 rookies and 3 waiver wire pickups. Assuming the health and production of the 8 pitchers in the higher tier we need 2 more of these guys to fill out the pitching side of the playoff roster. I would consider the last few weeks of the season to be an open tryout for these 5 guys. Whichever of them stand out the most over the next month should get the spot.
Now obviously these guys are not all on the same footing, Povich is currently in the rotation where he has had one good start and one less than good start since being brought back up so he will likely get the most innings out of these guys. Bowman is the only one currently in the roster and last night Hyde brought him in specifically to face Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernandez so it feels like maybe he is creating a role for himself. McDermott is currently on the IL, Selby is currently in the minors and Anderson just signed yesterday so we’ll see if he gets called up soon or if his signing is more of a minor league depth thing.
Out right now but not locked out
Cole Irvin
Bryan Baker
Trevor Rogers
Gregory Soto
Brooks Kriske
I do not especially want to see any of these guys on the postseason roster BUT I am leaving the door open that they just blow the doors off hitters for the next month and earn that spot. It would take a lot and the eye test and the numbers would both have to agree that they’ve turned a corner but I haven’t ruled these guys out. Even Gregory Soto who I almost put in the bottom tier still has a chance to earn his way back onto the postseason roster if he can look like All Star Gregory Soto again.
Locked in a room far away from Camden Yards
Craig Kimbrel
Burch Smith
There is nothing Craig Kimbrel can do to convince me he should be on the team in October. He could strike out every batter he sees from now until the playoffs and I would have no interest. As for Burch Smith I just don’t think he’s very good at all.
So tiers aside here is who I would put in the bullpen today
Seranthony Dominguez
Yennier Cano
Danny Coulombe
Cionel Perez
Dean Kremer
Albert Suarez
Keegan Akin
Jacob Webb
Cade Povich
Matt Bowman
If Webb or Coulombe can’t make it back from the IL then the 2 replacements would be
Nick Anderson
Cole Irvin
Maybe finishing with the bullpen was a bad idea because they kind of bum me out BUT even with the weaker bullpen this year I stand by my opinion that this year’s Orioles team is better than last years.
Last year’s Orioles team was really fun to watch, they never had an extended losing streak, they were clutch in close games and none of that helped them in the playoffs last year. They lost to a Rangers team that barely won 90 games that was inconsistent, fumbled their division in the final month of the season and blew a lot of games in late innings but they had a better rotation and they had lots of high end talent performing at the right time in their lineup and they might have found a kind of steroid that doesn’t show up on tests for Adolis Garcia.
This year the Orioles have had multiple extended slumps, they’ve been banged up, they’ve blown a bunch of saves and will likely win around 91 or 92 games but there is more talent on this team than last year and there is more experience on this team than last year so I believe this year will be better than last year.
The Dishwasher 
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