WASHINGTON – The team that won 101 games two years ago and earned another playoff berth last year is now lucky to win a three-game series.
A young core whose burgeoning talent was only matched by how much fun they appeared to be having between the white lines has more often looked dazed and despondent, usually hampered by the worst rotation in the major leagues and, on occasion, by the game’s enduring cruelty.
Simply put, the Baltimore Orioles have dug themselves a hole and must learn to climb out of it much sooner than they anticipated.
They’ve now lost five of six series, split two others, and after losing for the second time in as many nights in their “Battle of the Beltways” series, they’re suddenly facing a sweep at the hands of the Washington Nationals, who have an on-paper pitching mismatch in the finale.
However, that is the case most nights at this club. It’s largely due to injuries (Grayson Rodriguez will be lucky to return by June, Zach Eflin possibly next month), exacerbated by poor performance from Dean Kremer and Charlie Morton, the former hoping it’s his traditionally cold April start and the latter, at 41, blaming the first loss on the indomitable Father Time.
The Orioles are 9-14 and in the American League East cellar, with the following boilerplate qualifier: There are five months and 139 games left in this slog.
However, if the pitching matchup tilts the field against you every night, playing uphill can be exhausting, even for a very talented and young core.
And yes, they are still very young.
Sure, it feels like they’ve been around forever, with their dugout Hydration Station and cherub-cheeked prospects emerging from the minors seemingly every month. However, with the exception of fourth-year catcher Adley Rutschman, who is now 27, the team remains relatively young.
Franchise shortstops Gunnar Henderson? He is still only 23, while his double-play partner, Jackson Holliday, is 21.
What about All-Star infielder Jordan Westburg? Sure, he’s 26, but after missing nearly half of the 2024 season after being hit by a pitch, he’s never played more than 107 games in a single season.
Collectively, the group has never failed. I’ve never been around the block long enough to know that when things get bad, there’s usually a bright side.
It’s the type of thing you don’t realize until you go through it, and the Orioles are going through it.
“I’m figuring that out,” Westburg told USA TODAY Sports. “I’m still very young in this league. I’m still finding my footing in this game. I understand that this game is only temporary and may be taken away from me at any time.
I’m trying not to think about anything other than today. I’m trying to rely on players and coaches who have been in the game for a lot longer than me.
“And I think those guys are trying to support and get behind a lot of us young guys who maybe don’t have that experience under our belt.”
‘They are hard on themselves.’
It’s a tricky spot. The Orioles’ unexpected rise from 110-game losers to contenders to World Series threats was felt collectively, with each talented player promoted along the way simply another bro showing up to the party.
The Rutschmans and Hendersons transitioned from prodigies to cogs, All-Star talents on the field but perhaps not the natural-born leaders some expect from their best players.
They’re now a mishmash of great young talent and veterans who may or may not be around for much longer, such as center fielder Cedric Mullins, a pending free agent, and slugging outfielder Tyler O’Neill, who can opt out of the final two years of his contract after this season.
At the core are the kids, whose dugout frolicking and childlike love of Star Wars and Legos mask an intensity that is usually their best asset on the field.
However, no matter how determined you are, you will not be able to outslug a rotation ERA of 6.08.
“They’re hard on themselves,” admits Orioles manager Brandon Hyde. “They have such high expectations for themselves that it can get in the way at times. There is some dissatisfaction with how we’ve been playing, and with how certain players are pitching and swinging the bat; they want to perform better.
“We were the first team to reach 80 wins last season, but we struggled down the stretch. There’s plenty of baseball left to play. “You have to stay positive and remind them that things can change quickly.”
Westburg was in a pretty bad slump last week, going 0-for-30 before hitting a home run against Cincinnati. He had two more hits the next day, and on Wednesday night, he hit an eighth-inning triple and scored the game-tying run with a sacrifice fly.
In the bottom of the inning, he nearly started a 5-4-3 double play, which the Nationals broke up. They scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly one batter later.
In Process vs. Outcome, Process took another loss. However, the grind continues.
“The term grinder implies that no matter how things go, we’re going to work, and we’re going to be purpose-driven and process-oriented, and I believe that’s a perfect term to describe this group,” says Westburg, who had 15 home runs and an.815 OPS through 101 games last year. “We don’t have the flash and money signs that other teams do, so we have to win in different ways. It won’t always look the best or prettiest, and we’ll have stretches like this.
“But we’re grinders and we’re going to get through it, we trust in each other, we trust that the work and the professionalism that’s brought to the field every day is going to carry us through a long season.”
Mid-market malaise
Certainly, the window for this year and the Orioles’ longer-term title hopes is still open. However, every day that Rutschman (eligible after 2027) and Henderson (2028) get closer to free agency feels like a missed opportunity.
Despite the presence of new owner David Rubenstein, the Orioles were unable to shift their focus toward big spenders this offseason, losing starter Corbin Burnes to Arizona after offering him a four-year contract.
General manager Mike Elias wagered $15 million that Morton had one more ride in him, but a 10.89 ERA in five starts means “everything is on the table,” according to Hyde, including a bullpen demotion.
Elias did sign Tomoyuki Sagano from Japan for $13 million, and he has pitched well with a 3.54 ERA.
It’s probably no surprise, then, that the body language was much better Wednesday, when Sugano threw six zeroes after giving up three runs in the first, than it was Tuesday, when Kremer quickly got them out of the game, or Sunday, when Morton’s latest horror show set the stage for a 24-2 loss to Cincinnati.
“If we play baseball like that, we’ll win a lot of games,” a generally upbeat Hyde said Wednesday. “I thought we competed very well offensively.” I thought we played very hard. Everyone was into it.
It’s easy to blame the core for not getting into it some nights. As Westburg noted, this generation of players is heavily process-oriented and focuses on controlling the controllables.
There is no control over pitcher injuries, and there is insufficient backfilling at the position, both of which are necessary for an organization whose draft strategy is primarily to load up on bats and pluck pitchers from other organizations whose profiles they like.
So it goes for a baseball team that was 36-19 at the end of May last year and 35-21 two years ago. That will not occur this year.
But the Orioles have no choice but to find another route, even if they don’t have a map to guide them.
“It’s kind of my first beginning of the season up in the big leagues, but this team expects to win,” Holliday tells me. “And it’s obviously frustrating not to win and perform to our full potential.
“But we’re going to keep pushing, being competitive, and trying to get through this. “We have a great team.”
