Well, that sure was a series, wasn’t it? That was about as up-and-down as a series as one could imagine to kick off 2025 for our Birds. In a four-game split in Toronto, we saw two different Orioles teams show up. One of them was utterly dominating on offense, and the other was a story we saw all the time with the 2024 version of this team, the constant strikeouts and stranding runners on base.
This is the time for overreactions because what else can we do? What can we take away from this series with only four games played? Today, we are trying to make some sense from a weird, inconsistent first set.
Go West, Young Jordan
Jordan Westburg started off the season hot, with a home run on Thursday and two more on Saturday, and currently leads the team with three. Unfortunately, this comes with a caveat: Westy didn’t play the fourth and final game of the series. For some reason, Brandon Hyde said he was only available in emergencies, and the team might be slow playing him after his spring training injury. Let’s hope this isn’t the case because one of the team’s terrible strikeout games came when he didn’t play, which is the perfect way to describe Westburg. He is, perhaps, the most essential member of the team when it comes to driving in runs. When he is out of the lineup, the offense just looks discombobulated. Could Westy take it to another level in 2025? Is it possible to break out after having an all-star appearance under your belt?
Well, Westy is looking like he may be primed to do just that. Now we just have to see what is happening with this injury.
The Starting Pitching was … Fine?
The starters in this series are exactly what they will likely be this year: fine—nothing game-breaking, but enough that a good offense should win plenty of games. The only one who was terrible through and through was Charlie Morton. His velocity was still good though, so we can have some hope that he’ll bounce back. Zach Eflin was great on Opening Day. Dean Kremer was mostly fine but gets demerits due to a bad first inning. As for Tomoyuki Sugano, he was terrible in the first as well, but he settled down and, unfortunately had to leave early due to cramping. This starting pitching just needs to survive until Grayson Rodriguez and/or Kyle Gibson are ready to go, and for the most part they did just that against the Jays.
How about that Offense?
Oh boy, this offense is frustrating to talk about. Two games where they looked dominant and two games where they looked lost. They hit a lot of home runs this series, but again, like last year, they had issues with runners in scoring position. I don’t understand why they struggle so much with it, but these issues that haunted them all last year showed up in this series.
Expecting eight runs a game is ridiculous, but that’s not what his happening here. Why can’t they be more consistent? Why can’t they hit in high-leverage situations? This might be more of a baseball-wide issue because other teams also have issues with runners in scoring position as well.
Whatever the reason, they have to be more consistent this year. Maybe trade in those nine runs games for more 4-5 runs games.
Of course, getting Gunnar Henderson back later this week will help as well. Just a bit.
The Return of the King
The best part of this series was the return of Felix Bautista. He came in to a non-save situation for his first action since August of 2023 and faced four batters, striking out three and allowing a double to Bo Bichette.
March 29th proStuff+ Pitch Leaderboard
(min. 10 Pitches Tracked) pic.twitter.com/zujQENViO0
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Seeing him smile and be embraced at the end of the game again after a year of not pitching was glorious (sure, it would have been nice if it had been Adley instead of Gary Sanchez, but that will come soon enough). Felix will be such a big part of this season, and getting that first live appearance out of the way in a non-save situation felt right. His velocity is still not 100-plus, but 98 with a nasty splitter will play any day.
They’ll Go as Far as the Bats Carry Them
As I mentioned earlier, this wasn’t quite the offensive series we wanted to see, which is strange considering they scored 24 runs, averaging 6.0 per game. The trouble is that 21 of the 24 were in two of the four games. The inconsistencies aren’t new to this team. The big-run games are nice, but the games where they disappear and do little to nothing pop up way too much for the liking of many.
Sunday’s game in particular, just gave me a ton of PTSD from last year. It felt like a game that the O’s would lose because they can’t keep get of their own way with these lazy at-bats with RISP. The biggest culprit was Jorge Mateo, who was unwatchable and was only in there due to whatever is going on with Westy. Maybe Mateo isn’t long for the squad once Henderson returns, but still, Sunday’s game is a disturbing reminder of what happens when this offense relies too much on the long ball and not enough on working pitch counts and making quality contact. The bats have to get more consistent and not have this on-and-off game they play because we don’t have the pitching depth to cover for it this year.
The offense has to be more consistent, or this season will go belly-up fast, before any reinforcements can come from the likes of Kyle Bradish returning or any summer trades.
