Baltimore Orioles: Becoming a Difficult Team to Follow

Jul 27, 2016; Baltimore, MD, USA; Colorado Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado (28) fields a ground ball past Baltimore Orioles catcher Matt Wieters (32) in the fifth inning at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports /

The Baltimore Orioles have become a team that both excites their fanbase with winning streaks, yet depresses the same with multiplied losses.

What is a fan? The word “fan” is short for a “fanatic” … someone who is emotionally invested in the team they follow. And that emotional investment in the 2016 Baltimore Orioles is becoming more difficult given the high highs, and the low lows.

Every baseball team, even the best in the sport with the best record at the end of the year, is going to have some low times and piled-up losses by the end of the season. It is the nature of the game. A 100-win season is exceptional. St. Louis did it exactly last year. Prior to that it was the 2011 Phillies who won 102 games. The last AL team to do so was the Yankees in 2009. So that is three teams in seven seasons, which is equal to it happening once in 70 chances.

A season with 100 wins is a percentage equal to an NFL team going 10-6. Though we would call that a successful football season, it is not exceptional. In some cases it might not even get you into the playoffs.

All of this is to say that baseball fans have to put up with more disappointment over the course of a 162-game campaign and six months of mostly daily contests.

Of these Orioles I have used the phrase that they have a baseball case of bipolar disorder, featuring big highs and lows. They are manic depressive with multiple personalities. Consider the past 32 games since June 22^nd (20% of the season) …

Won seven straight = 7-0
Lost five straight = 7-5
Won six of seven = 13-6
Lost four straight = 13-10
Won five straight = 18-10
Lost four straight = 18-14

The pretty good news is that the wins outnumber the losses and would combine for a pace to post a final record of 91-71. But that sort of team is difficult to follow emotionally. It is sort of like dating a girl who loves you one weekend but seems completely disinterested in being with you on the following date. What is the real deal? What can you bank on?

In the most recent loss to the Blue Jays last night by a 6-5 score, the Orioles came within a few feet in the ninth inning of getting a game-tying sixth run on a long J.J. Hardy fly ball. But, like most of July, the O’s came up just short. The Orioles have only scored six runs twice in this month.

Kevin Gausman simply had a terrible outing. It was Ubaldo-like in terms of a lack of command of secondary pitches. And the other half of the battery is playing poorly at this juncture, simply not looking at all like the Matt Wieters we know on defense. His throwing error was very costly, balls are getting past him, and offensively there is minimal contribution. But I’ll give him props for getting angry enough at the umpire to verbalize the frustration, rather than just sitting back passively and taking it.

Chris Davis looks just terribly lost, especially swinging over the top of diving pitches toward his back foot. He actually has a legit shot at setting the all-time single season strikeout record of 223, held by Mark Reynolds from 2009 with the Diamondbacks. Davis is on pace right now to register 221. His 208 strikeouts last year rank him as fifth all-time for a season. Exceeding 200 has only ever been done seven times in MLB history, three of them by Reynolds.