I don’t think this team is as bad as their record… though they have played like that bad of a team.
Now this is an interesting matchup. Here we have two teams facing polar opposite situations. I would venture a guess that the Cardinals are the most surprising team in baseball, especially on a national level. The most surprising good team, that is. The actual most surprising team in baseball is far and away the Baltimore Orioles. With their pitching issues, could you maybe see them taking a step backward? Yes. Could you see them being one of the worst teams in baseball? That was not within my range of expectations.
The Orioles are 18-34 this season. Not only are they 18-34, but by runs scored and runs allowed, they should have a worse record than that. Their pythag record is 16-36. They have been unbelievably bad. And you don’t get to be that bad just because your pitching is bad. This has been a true team effort.
With that said, the least of their problems is the offense. They have been a below average unit, with a 97 wRC+. Most of the offense has been good. Ryan O’Hearn leads the way with a 176 wRC+. This is a little out of nowhere. He was terrible with the Royals, but he’s been a 119 wRC+ hitter as an Oriole. His quality of contact is to some degree supporting what he’s doing though. Longtime Oriole Cedric Mullins has a 120 wRC+ in his walk year. Jackson Holiday is still going through growing pains, but the 21-year-old has a 111 wRC+ in 181 PAs.
Disappointing relative to last year is Gunnar Henderson, but that’s because he was 4th in MVP voting. He still has a 122 wRC+. Former Cardinal farmhand Ramon Urias has a 102 wRC+ as their full-time 3B. Adley Rutschman has gotten off to a slow start with a 93 wRC+ but his xwOBA is .364 and his BABIP just .235, so I think his offense is just fine.
So that’s six pretty solid hitters to form a lineup. You wouldn’t expect a group of six hitters this good on a team this bad. And it doesn’t include recently IL’d Ramon Laureno, who has gotten off to a 140 wRC+ start. He will not be in this series.
Where things have gone wrong with the lineup is 1) they have had a black hole in at least two spots in the lineup. 2) They have received remarkably little production for anyone they ask to fill in. There are six players with between 10 and 50 PAs this season for the Orioles. They have combined for -1.8 fWAR. All of them have not only been bad, but way below replacement level. Gary Sanchez, Maverick Handley, and Coby Mayo all have negative wRCs+. They have a wRC+ worse than 0. And until yesterday, Dylan Carlson was right there with them. He hit his first homer of the season to raise his wRC+ to 22.
They are trying to get Heston Kjerstad going, but he has a 64 wRC+ and -0.6 fWAR in 139 PAs. Ryan Mountcastle has a 63 wRC+ in 184 PAs. Jorge Mateo has started the last two games and has a 34 wRC+ on the season. The good part of this lineup is pretty good, but the bad part of the lineup is worse than you can possibly imagine. Or least they have been worse than you could possibly imagine.
The position players deserve a little bit more of the blame though. They are not a good defensive team. Their defense rates as the 25th best defense in baseball. They are 26th in OAA with -9 runs above average. They are hitting worse than your average offense and also give up some runs on the defensive side. Not a good combo.
Sorry to keep picking on Kjerstad, but he is a DH trying to play the outfield. Not that his bat has been good enough to be the DH. But he has been worth -4 OAA in 304 innings. They’ve also have tried Ryan O’Hearn in the outfield for some games and he has a -3 OAA in 655 career innings. He’s on the IL, but Tyler O’Neill has rated as a poor fielder this year. Jackson Holiday’s season with the bat has been a good development, defensively not so much. He’s -3 OAA in 333 innings.
Henderson has been a bad fielder at SS, though he was essentially average there last season. Jorge Mateo, in the very limited innings he plays, somehow has a -3 OAA in 61 innings at SS. I don’t really know why he’s on this team still to be honest. Can’t hit or field. They have just one fielder who has more than +1 OAA on the year, and that’s Enmanuel Rivera, who is +3 in 99 innings at 3B. His career suggests he’s a good fielder, but probably not a great one. So that seems fluky.
The Orioles enter this series with an exhausted bullpen. They played a double header on Saturday. Their closer, Felix Bautista, is however fresh. He has not pitched like Felix Bautista before Tommy John surgery. His K% is 25.4% (it was 46.4%), and BB% is 16.4% (it was a still high 11%). But 59% of balls hit in play are on the ground. He’s hittable, but you’d probably still like to avoid facing him in a save situation.
Andrew Kittredge is healthy and allowed his first run of the season yesterday, though he’s thrown 3 innings. He looks sharp so far. He enters having pitched back-to-back days with 43 combined pitches. Gregory Soto has pitched in three straight games though only 29 combined pitches. Keegan Akin has thrown back-to-back games with 43 combined pitches. Bryan Baker pitched in back-to-back games, but only 27 pitches.
In other words, the two lefties in their bullpen are Soto and Akin. You will see their names in the above paragraph. Soto also pitched on Wednesday, so he’s pitched in four of the last five games. I feel like he might be unavailable for the first two games of this series unless they’re cool with running his arm into the ground. Baker has been extremely good this season with a 2.01 ERA. After Bautista, I think every current high leverage option is pretty freaking tired and they may all be unavailable today.
They do have Yennier Cano, who is 0-4 this season. I think he lost his high leverage role with his 4.76 ERA and 1.59 HR/9 (with a 27.3 HR/FB%). Well, I’m sure he’s the high leverage option in this game. Seranthony Dominguez was unavailable yesterday because he had thrown in three of the past four games and he threw at least 16 pitches in each game. This is a tired bullpen, I cannot emphasize this enough. They have a guy named Yaramil Hiraldo who is 29 and will probably make his MLB debut later today. He was picked up from Indy ball, and he started in High A and made his way to the majors in just 18.1 IP. Says a lot about him, but also how desperate the Orioles currently are for pitching.
Monday – 2:05 PM
Erick Fedde (3.77 ERA/4.38 FIP/5.06 xFIP) vs. Charlie Morton (7.68 ERA/5.88 FIP/4.71 xFIP)
Fedde’s ERA is good, but I think most of the people who read this site would probably agree that Fedde has been disappointing. Well, let me redefine what disappointing really is and show you one Charlie Morton. He is making his first start since May 7th and he’s been pretty good in the bullpen in his last three appearances. His most recent appearance was 4.1 IP with 6 Ks to 16 batters faced. So uh, we may not be getting 7.68 ERA Charlie Morton. He may have fixed whatever was ailing him. He’s had a good last couple weeks.
Fedde, just pretend you’re facing the Nationals again. And it is worth pointing out Morton did have an excellent relief appearance against those very same Nationals, who are a very poor offensive team. I’d venture to guess we’re really going to see how back Morton really is in today’s game. Cardinals are a better test than the Nationals.
Tuesday – 5:35 PM
Andre Pallante (4.18 ERA/4.75 FIP/3.82 xFIP) vs. Tomoyuki Sugano (3.07 ERA/4.81 FIP/4.44 xFIP)
Pallante looks for a bounceback start after a not great one against the Tigers. He had a good excuse there. The Tigers have a good offense. It was the only game this season where his GB% fell below 50% and he also walked more than he struck out, so yeah it wasn’t a good start. But he threw 7 innings in the two starts before that, so hopefully he can get back on track.
Sugano is likely not very good. He doesn’t miss bats. His strikeout rate is just 13.8%. He doesn’t walk people either though, with just a 4.3 BB%. The K/BB ratio might play except he hasn’t really been a high groundball pitcher either. A 44.4 GB% is solid but it definitely needs to be higher to work with a 13.8 K%. He didn’t really strike out that many in the NPB either.
Wednesday – 5:35 PM
Miles Mikolas (3.51 ERA/3.68 FIP/5.00 xFIP) vs. Cade Povich (4.86 ERA/4.52 FIP/3.99 xFIP)
xFIP likes Povich, but xERA does not like him at all. He has a 5.87 xERA, so it seems to think he deserves worse than the 14.5 HR/FB% that he has. He’s kind of a boring pitcher, at least on paper. His strikeout rate is pretty much average, his walk rate is pretty much average, and his GB% is neither high nor low.
You don’t usually see an ERA that is completely explained by FIP. Cause Mikolas is not really allowing homers – I’m sure it’s completely lucky – and thus his FIP is actually good. Close to his ERA. If he ever starts allowing home runs at a league average rate though, he’s going to have to start striking more hitters out.
The Orioles have won their last two games and I really don’t think this team is anywhere near this bad on paper. Yes, I know the results have been deserved, but their lineup will feature six good hitters and if Morton really did figure something out, it’s three pitchers who are capable of throwing a gem. On the other hand, I don’t know how they are going to handle the bullpen situation if they get a lead when they’re ready to take their starter out. And their bullpen is so exhausted that even in game two, they’ll have to make some tough choices. So… let’s handle business.
