The Red Sox came into their series against the Orioles on a 3 game losing streak with all their best hitters ice cold at the plate and their ace pitcher coming off a disappointing (by his standards) first start of the season. They left yesterday on a winning streak, with their top hitters red hot at the plate, their ace pitcher looking dominant and having signed multiple players to long term extensions.
After the third 2 run homer of the day it felt like they were rubbing it in.
For the Orioles the themes from their first series of the year continued. The offense was hot one day non-existent the next, none of the starters besides Eflin could get deep in games and the bullpen either held the lead the starters gave them or got the ball trailing by multiple runs.
What was most interesting in this series is you could really see the impact of what the Red Sox did this offseason contrasted with the half measures and no measures that the Orioles took.
The Orioles were better than the Red Sox last year and the year before that and the year before that but this past offseason the Red Sox put their foot down and made some win now moves.
The moves they made were not without risk or cost, they traded for an ace starting pitcher even though it cost them multiple top prospects, they signed a top of the market free agent even though they already had someone at his position and they pushed one of their top prospects to the major league roster even though it would cause a roster crunch that will likely end with a guy that they like being DFA’d or sent down.
Every single one of these offseason moves showed up in this series and will continue to show up all season long which is why a lot of people smarter than me picked the Red Sox to win this division.
Garrett Crochet
In the second game of the series both teams had their number 1 starters on the bump. The Orioles started Zach Eflin who gave them a second consecutive quality start and extended his streak of games allowing 3 or fewer runs. I know that technically 6 innings 3 ER comes out to an ERA of 4.50 which is not great but if you could guarantee that the bullpen won’t touch the ball until the 7th inning and at most the opposing team will have 3 runs I’d take that deal every day with this Orioles lineup especially if you could also guarantee that the bullpen would hold the opposing team to 0 runs in the last 3 innings like they did on Wednesday.
Assuming it’s not the playoffs, with the offensive firepower the Orioles have on their roster holding the opposing team to 3 total runs should be enough to win most games but the Red Sox had Garrett Crochet on the mound and he made made the kind of start that makes Vegas adjust the odds for American League Cy Young winner.
8 innings, 0 ER, 4 H, 1 BB, 8Ks
Because of some timely double plays he only faced 3 batters more than the minimum and it only took him 102 pitches. It felt like a huge relief when he didn’t come back out for the ninth, it seemed more likely the O’s could tag Aroldis Chapman with 3 runs than do anything against Crochet. Crochet wasn’t even the sharpest that I’ve seen him, the velo was down compared to his better starts last year and in general the Orioles did a decent job of laying off the fastball if it was out of the zone but they struggled to hit the ball hard all night.
In total they had 4 hard hit balls in the air spread out over 8 innings. Those 4 hard hit balls resulted in 2 singles and 2 outs. Even if you could magically make Jordan Westburg’s 109 mph lineout a double and make Tyler O’Neill’s 105 mph flyout a homer, the Orioles still wouldn’t have had enough to take down the Sox that night.
I’m not writing all this to shed light on the fact that Garrett Crochet is better than Zach Eflin. The point is that these two teams both had rotation issues this offseason and went about solving those problems in very different ways. The Red Sox aggressively pursued the top free agents on the market and when they got outbid they traded 4 very real prospects for the best arm available on the trade market. It was risky but as their reward they get to have a start like this every 5 games.
The Orioles never made an offer to the ace of their staff from last season as he walked out the door and then their big free agent pitching acquisition was 41 year old Charlie Morton who gave the Orioles 5 innings 5 ER in the final game of this series and took the loss.
I know that there is more nuance to this conversation but this was a pretty clear object lesson. Here is the Orioles’ best vs the Red Sox’ best and the Red Sox’ best was better. Even if I believe that over the course of the season the Orioles rotation will be ok and their lineup and bullpen will carry them, when it comes to the real goal of competing in the playoffs, best vs best is going to continue to come up and when you look at the teams in the AL that think they will be in the playoffs almost every single one of them will have 1 if not 2 starting pitchers better than the best option the Orioles have.
Alex Bregman and Kristian Campbell
Garrett Crochet won the Red Sox game 2 of the series but Bregman and Campbell won game 3. Bregman got things going quickly in the first innings with a massive 2 run homer that would have cleared every version of the Orioles left field in the history of Camden Yards. After Cedric Mullins cut the deficit in half with his own homer that same inning Campbell added two more runs with another 2 run homer in the 2nd inning. The Orioles never got within a run again.
What made me jealous of the Red Sox wasn’t so much that they signed Alex Bregman specifically and more that they handed out a 120 million dollar contract to a top of the market free agent even though they really didn’t have to. The idea that a team would throw 100+ million dollars at a free agent when they didn’t even have an opening at his position is incredible, the Orioles can’t even be bothered to spend 100+ million on a player when they have an obvious need. This was a risky move! Bregman is in his 30s and the AAV is huge, if he gets the yips tomorrow and sucks for the rest of this deal it’s a total disaster but they did it anyway.
The Kristian Campbell part of this is more of a process thing than a move that the Red Sox made. Campbell had a meteoric rise through the minors last year going from A ball to the triple A in a single minor league season. It would have been well within the Red Sox right to hold him at triple A a little longer, especially after a slow spring training but instead the Red Sox pushed him to the majors and cleared space for him to play everyday. Making Devers move to third was partially in service of Bregman who has mostly played at third in his career but also partially in service of Campbell who’s best position is at second. So the Red Sox moved their franchise player off his preferred position at least partially in service of a rookie.
In comparison to this the Orioles prospects struggle to get playing time even when they are not blocked by a multi time all star. They are forced into platoon roles and on days they do get to start they routinely get pinch hit for late in the game. I understand it is difficult to let a rookie play through his struggles when you are a “win now” team and Kristian Campbell is making it easy for the Red Sox to play him while the Orioles prospects have not all done that in their opportunities but the Sox are a “win now” team this year and they were going to give Campbell this opportunity no matter what.
The Orioles
You might be thinking at this point “Well if you love the Red Sox so much why don’t you marry them?”
Despite the slow start I am not backing off my Orioles to win the division pick. Baseball is a weird sport where it has an incredibly long season and the very best teams in the league only win about 60% of their games. That would be like if in the NFL the best team in the league went 10-7 every year.
The O’s have made the playoffs the last 2 seasons and in those seasons they started 5-5 and 6-4 in their first 10 games so 3-4 through 7 games is not that big of a deal especially since the Orioles have been missing Gunnar Henderson to start the year.
It’s probably not fair to expect Henderson to come back and hit the ground red hot after recovering from an injury that interrupted his spring training but I expect his return to the lineup will help stabilize the Orioles offense that has been up and down on a day to day basis and once he gets his feet under him he’ll start leading the team to wins like he’s done for the last 2 seasons.
Cade Povich
Coming into the series I was excited to see how Cade Povich would fare in his first start of the year. He had looked so good in spring training and even though every year we re-learn that spring training doesn’t matter, when a pitcher looks awesome in Spring Training it’s hard not to get excited.
The final numbers on this start aren’t overly impressive at just 4.1 innings 3 ER but Povich looked a lot like his Spring Training self. He struck out 8 and only walked 2. He’ll never be a fill up the zone command artist so we’ll take that kind of ratio in a Cade Povich start.
He got lots of whiffs on the curveball low out of the zone and on the fastball up out of the zone. It was good to see him get ahead of hitters and then have multiple options to get them to swing and miss out of the zone. That is going to be the recipe for Povich to be effective. The next step would be to see him find a way to consistently get soft contact and then pitch to contact when it is appropriate to try to get deeper into games.
Cedric Mullins
I was happy to see Cedric Mullins stay hot at the plate. He had a big time RBI double in game 1 and he led off game 3 with a homer. The broadcast mentioned that he probably wouldn’t lead off much with Gunnar returning soon but if he stays hot I’d be interested in seeing lead off Cedric Mullins again with Gunnar and Adley hitting behind him.
Heston Kjerstad
It was good to see Kjerstad get 2 starts in a series that had 2 lefty starters. He got a clutch RBI single for his first hit of the season in game 1 of the series and he smacked a double for his first extra base hit of the season in game 3.
With Cowser out for an extended period of time Kjerstad goes from being a fun extra outfielder who gives the fans a reason to complain about lineup card when it gets posted to an essential part of this Orioles team.
It’s sink or swim now for silent J.
Jordan Westburg and Adley Rutschman
Westburg and Rutschman didn’t put up eye popping numbers this series but they both continued to hit the ball very hard and if we get this version of these 2 guys with Gunnar back the first inning is not going to be fun for opposing pitchers.
Bryan Baker and Yennier Cano
The Bullpen continued to be solid this series and within that solid group Baker and Cano looked especially dominant. I’m wary of celebrating Bryan Baker as top relief arm but if he keeps this up he will give the Orioles a high leverage relief option that they weren’t expecting coming into the season.
Cano looks like his all star self which is super promising for this O’s team.
Felix Bautista
The Mountain’s return to Camden Yards fell a little flat because he did struggle but the Orioles had given him enough of a cushion that it didn’t matter and the O’s still won despite a shaky appearance from Bautista and we got to see the long anticipated Adley-Felix hug combo.
Bautista still hasn’t looked quite like his former self which is to be expected so it’s a win win that so far he’s only been used in non save situations. Felix benefits because as he returns it is good for him to have a wider than normal margin for error and the Orioles benefit because Felix is probably a little too shaky to feel good about him closing out a game with a 1 run lead.
The Orioles haven’t actually had a save situation yet this year so I’ll be interested to see if Bautista gets the nod when the situation arises. He was warming up when the Orioles were only up 1 on Monday so maybe he is the closer but with the velo still down and some evident command issues being worked out I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Orioles lean on Dominguez or Soto until Bautista looks more like Bautista.
The Double Plays
Apparently last year the Orioles set a record for fewest double plays grounded into in a season and unfortunately it seems like they are determined to make up for that.
The Dishwasher 
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