Baltimore Orioles: Not a Very Good Team

Jul 30, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Baltimore Orioles first baseman Chris Davis (19) tosses his bat away after striking out with bases loaded in the eighth inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. The Jays won 9-1. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports /

The Baltimore Orioles are simply playing poorly in all aspects of the game and are frankly not a very good baseball team at this point.

The Orioles are also no longer a division leader. After losing to the Blue Jays 9-1 on Saturday, the O’s fall a game behind Toronto, with the Red Sox lingering nearby.

From before the beginning of this season, I believed that the Jays were the team to beat in the AL East. That Boston has done so well is not incomprehensible, but neither did it seem probable to me. They have had a surprising number of players perform at a higher-than-expected level.

But looking at Toronto, seeing that top five order of Baustista, Donaldson, Encarnacion, Saunders, and Tulowitski … that is formidable. And the rest of the lineup is decent.

Then looking at the Jays’ starters, between Estrada, Happ, and Sanchez, they have a current combined ERA of 2.97 over 380 innings. Their joint record is 31-8. Toronto’s starting pitching has thrown 658 innings to lead all of MLB. The closest AL team is Cleveland with about 40 fewer innings thrown. The Orioles rank 27^th in all of MLB.

The one weakness of the Jays is their 10^th-ranked bullpen in the American League for ERA, a full run worse than the Orioles. This accounts for some of their less than dominant performance this year, though that might change.

Hopefully what will truly change is the way the Orioles are playing baseball. Just as it is difficult to imagine how they can be beaten when they hit four or five homers a game, it is difficult to imagine that they can extricate themselves from these losing streaks and slumps into which they frequently fall.

The good news is that the O’s are in a pennant race as August dawns. This was not necessarily a certainty back in March. The national writers could not have imagined it at all, and even in Birdland it seemed perhaps more than could be reasonably hoped for. But this team is full of players with long, historic records of performance far above the current level of play. It is there for the taking; they need to step up.

It would appear that the Orioles are going to have to go with what they have for pitching. Jimenez and Gallardo should have never been obtained, but here they are. There is still time for a Wilson or Wright to step up in a big way. But quite a number of pitching “step-ups” need to happen.

New acquisition Logan Ondrusek made his Orioles debut and was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal afternoon. The 31-year-old is 6’8” and honestly has a very good pitching history from his past with the Reds. His fastball velocity looks good, though it does not appear to have much movement. The slider was excellent and would look to be his best pitch. This is not a huge acquisition that is a game-changer, but it may prove to be of help over these final two months.

But whether the pitching can arrive to something workable or not matters little if the offense cannot rediscover itself. We can quote the comparative numbers to other years, but they probably mean little, given the turnover of personnel.

Baltimore Orioles: Not a Very Good Team – Not Now

By Randy Buchman | Jul 30, 2016

The Baltimore Orioles are simply playing poorly in all aspects of the game and are frankly not a very good baseball team at this point.