Birdland has an awful hangover this morning, and not the good kind. Not the kind from celebrating an epic walk-off win (like we had on Sunday morning), and not the kind from tipping a few back after winning two games on one day (as we did a couple weeks ago after sweeping a doubleheader from Pittsburgh).
No, this is the kind from having our hearts completely broken by Tommy Hunter, who was one strike away from earning the save and preserving what would have been a 1-0 Birds win over the Detroit Tigers, only to ultimately walk Torii Hunter (of course) to bring Miguel Cabrera to the plate with two outs in the ninth and the go-ahead run already on base. Since bringing Cabrera to the dish is never a good idea, the predictable happened, as Tommy “went boom” and the best hitter of this generation launched a three-run dinger to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for the Tigers.
It was the Birds’ third straight loss after winning five in a row, and it could have very easily been their fourth straight loss after winning four in a row instead, after Hunter also blew the save on Saturday night. Fortunately for him – and us – he was rescued by some O’s Magic with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in that game, as the Birds tied it up and eventually won in extras.
But as much as we’re angry with Hunter today (which is fair – his job is to protect a lead, any lead, whether it be 1-0 or 11-9), the real problem lately has been the Orioles offense, which has been struggling to score runs all month.
Even during their five-game winning streak, they never led in a game by more than two runs, and never scored more than five runs total in any of those games. While it was certainly nice to win some games during that offensive outage, things are now evening themselves out as the Birds are on a little mini-skid thanks to being allergic to scoring runs.
Chew on these numbers for a minute:
- Last night the New York Mets scored four runs in the first inning against the Yankees. The last time the Orioles scored four runs in an inning? May 1 in Game 2 of the aforementioned doubleheader.
- The O’s have four runs since Sunday (three games, all losses).
- The Birds have gone eleven (11!) straight games without scoring more than two runs in a single inning (again, May 1).
- The last time the O’s led a game by more than two runs was May 2 (3-0 vs. Minnesota).
- They’ve scored 150 runs, better than only the lowly Houston Astros in the AL
- They’ve scored 42 runs in May, fewest in the AL.
- For the season, the O’s are scoring 4.05 runs per game, ahead of only KC, Cleveland, and Houston in the AL.
- They’re even worse at home; they’ve scored 52 runs at home, by far the fewest in the American League.
- Their .625 OPS at home is worst in the AL.
As you can see, the Orioles offense has been ATROCIOUS. Coming into the season, scoring runs was expected to be the least of our worries, but several players are not nearly producing the way we expected them to.
Some of the main culprits:
- J.J. Hardy – 0 HR, .583 OPS (career .736 OPS, lowest with O’s was .671 in 2012)
- Adam Jones – .706 OPS (career .778, lowest with O’s was .711 in 2008) Jones is showing signs of turning it on though.
- Chris Davis – 2 HR, .713 OPS (career .834 OPS, 1.004 in 2013)
- Manny Machado – .191 average, 1 XBH in 47 AB (.283, 1 XBH every 9.8 AB in 2013)
So yeah.
Might as well start calling them the Baltimre Riles. No O.
Hopefully as the weather starts heating up, so will the bats, but it’s been U-G-L-Y ugly so far in 2014, and especially over the past few weeks. The pitching has been surprisingly effective for the most part, but unless this team can start hanging crooked numbers on the scoreboard like we all know (think?) they’re capable of, this stay atop the AL East will be short-lived indeed.
