How Are They Doing It, & How Can They Keep It Going?

It’s the morning of May 2, 2023 and the Orioles are 19-9. 19-9!!!! Make yourself a Boh-garita. Yikes. Makes me cringe just to say it. Let’s be real, a Natty Boh with Old Bay needs a better name. A Natty Bay? An Old Boh? Or maybe we need to add an Orioles twist. A Yennier Ca-Boh? An Austin Bays? A Jorge Old Bay Boh? Oof, might need to shove some of those back in the old idea locker. We’ll go with the last one.

Make yourself a Jorge Old Bay Boh.

This prediction would look really good right now if I counted the number of games correctly.

One game short here which means I will cheat and amend my prediction +1 W/L.

I predict 18-9 but (hope for? expect?) better. https://t.co/vN4aJu8xE7

— O's Observations (@AngelusNovus3) April 25, 2023

Also, please take a moment to admire my accurate prediction of the Orioles April record (18-9); recall that this combines with our immaculate 1-0 March record to bring us to the present 19-9.

I’ve subsequently predicted a May record of 15-13, with high hopes for setting the win total too low.

So now, celebration and excitement aside, I want to pose a simple question:

What do the Orioles need to do to keep winning?

Stay Competent When the Schedule gets Tough

While in April the Orioles faced a slew of ‘easy’ opponents…

(aside)

I know we all love our Norfolk Tides who are brimming with talent on the cusp of the major leagues, but allow me to put this to bed: the Tides are NOT better than the Oakland A’s, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Washington Nationals, or whatever other major league team is doing poorly right now. I see people making comments to that effect all the time and it’s become a pet peeve of mine. Those major league teams are made up of guys who would be OPS-ing 1.000 + in Norfolk right now. Yes, the Tides have maybe a dozen guys on their roster who would be worthy of major league playing time. No, they are not by any stretch of the imagination a low level major league team. 

…May looks like quite the challenge in comparison. By my count, here is a very scientific breakdown of our opponent quality:

Bad: Royals (3)

Good: Yankees (3), Rangers (3), Guardians (3)

Elite: Braves (3), Rays (3), Blue Jays (3)

??: Pirates (3), Angels (4)

At minimum, that stacks up to somewhere between 75-90% of our games being played against competitive teams, depending on how you make your evaluation. When it comes to specific matchups, here are my TLDR breakdowns for how we beat each team.

Royals: They are not good. Don’t get beat by the top of the lineup, Melendez-Witt-Pasquantion-Perez.

Yankees: Hope Judge and Stanton are still out, cash in now while they’re missing guys like Severino and Rodon.

Rangers: Hope DeGrom and Seager are still out, don’t let that lineup get rolling, don’t throw Adolis Garcia fastballs or strikes.

Guardians: If we draw Bieber, spit on every slider, sit on the fastball. Don’t let the Kwan Stan-club tell you that he outplayed Rutschman for ROY last year.

Braves: Win the two games around the start we lose to Strider. Hope Acuna is still out.

Rays: Take one out of three and be proud of it.

Blue Jays: Concoct an elaborate plan where information is leaked to the media that Dante Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Sr. are lost in the Canadian wilderness following a hunting trip gone wrong; the only ones who can save them are Bo and Vlad Jr. They go on a hilarious buddy cop-style romp through the wilderness to find their fathers; there is a cameo by Ryan ‘Mountie’ Mountcastle who knights them as junior members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after they save Dante and Vlad Sr. In the last scene, they bro out at a bar over Molson Canadian Coors and connect over how much it sucks to hit right handed in Camden Yards.

On the home front, the Orioles don’t get beat by Kevin Gausman by successfully spitting on his splitter. Matt Chapman hits three 115.0 MPH doubles off the wall but Brandon Belt strikes out behind him each time to end the threat. Orioles sweep.

Pirates: Prove they aren’t actually good? A couple weirdos on twitter act like the Pirates and Orioles are analogous to the Steelers and Ravens rivalry. Three likes. No retweets.

Angels: Take three out of four. Don’t get beat by Trout and Ohtani. Leave Ohtani a candygram that says we’ve been watching him for a while and think he’s cute. Ohtani is nice about it, but in texts with the Mariners, who he has a bit of a crush on, firmly friend-zones us. Orioles fans are graceful about it (as always) and don’t hold it against him except for a select few (it’s no name Tuesday) who meltdown and show up at Mike Elias’s house at three in the morning drunk on orange schnapps and graffiti ‘traitor’ on his lawn. Elias wakes up the next morning and mows. The grass was getting long anyway.

Hold Plate Discipline Gains, Lighten up the bullpen workload, & Tighten up Defense

I swear this piece will get more serious as it goes along.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Orioles can hold some of their plate discipline gains.

*via fangraphs team leaderboards*

That turnaround is pretty drastic, with improvements from several key hitters including Adley Rutschman, Cedric Mullins, and of course, Jorge Mateo.

Undoubtedly, we’ll be facing some tougher pitching staffs this month. That being said, even if the O’s move closer to the bottom part of the top 10 in those categories, they should be well positioned to grind down opposing pitchers and their respective bullpens by the end of some of these series.

Speaking of bullpens, the Orioles have had an otherworldly performance lately from their back end guys. Even with the meager contributions of Cionel Perez, Austin Voth, and Keegan Akin, the big five (Felix-Yennier-Coloumbe-Baker-Baumann) have absolutely shoved lately. Per Fangraphs, the Orioles have the best bullpen in baseball, ranking 1st in ERA (2.86), 1st in WAR (2.1), and 3rd in K-BB% (19.6%).

That being said, the Orioles rank 6th in bullpen IP and need more length from the starters to avoid breaking down, as Baltimore starters rank 26th in the league with 139.2. Doing the math on that, Orioles starters are averaging less than five innings (4.98 IP) per start. Compare that to the Blue Jays who lead baseball with an average of 5.66 IP per start.

Basically, Orioles starters need to more consistently make it into the sixth inning.

I’m not going to speak too much towards defensive metrics at this point because they can take awhile to stabilize and be tabulated fully.

However, anyone who has watched a decent number of Orioles games this season knows that it has not been up to snuff. Personally, I think this is a bit of an anomaly, and will normalize over the course of the season. That being said, the corner outfield defense is a clear weak point as Austin Hays has seen major decline in his range, Anthony Santander is almost unplayable in the OF, and Kyle Stowers hasn’t yet developed defensively as anticipated.

Integrate additional talent

There are three main avenues for this: minor leaguers, guys returning from injury, and trades/pickups.

There’s no one I would call up today. I think the two pieces right now who would be the most obvious upgrades to the major league roster are Joey Ortiz and DL Hall (out of the bullpen). I definitely think it behooves the Orioles to continue to develop Hall as a starter rather than limit him in shorter stints. Once we get deeper into the summer, he’ll always be an option for a bullpen upgrade if, say, Cionel Perez, can’t right the ship. Ortiz is another potential upgrade but with a murkier path to the big leagues. It could take an injury for him to come back up and see regular playing time.

While not a prospect, I’ll also throw out Darwinzon Hernandez as an interesting relief addition. He’s in the same vein as Felix Bautista and Yennier Cano – guys who’ve always had incredible stuff but have had some difficulties harnessing the command to actualize their talent. While his walk rate is still a bit elevated at AAA, he’s K-ing hitters at an incredible rate (15.1 K/9), allowing just a 0.840 WHIP, and has seen strides in command and control.

Of course, there is the looming talent cluster of Jordan Westburg, Connor Norby, and Colton Cowser. However, I think they’re realistically pretty blocked unless one of their performances reaches such an otherworldly level (1.000 + OPS) that they force a promotion.

More intriguingly, there is an upcoming wave of guys returning from injury: Dillon Tate, Mychal Givens, and eventually, John Means. When you do the math, it seems pretty apparent that the three aforementioned underperformers: Perez, Voth and Akin are the most vulnerable. Just based on the talent level and upside of each, I’d guess Voth and Akin will be the first to go. Keep in mind that injuries are always a possibility and the quickest way to loosen up a logjam.

To the final point, trades, I don’t think the Orioles are there yet (they’ll want to give some additional time for the existing talent to shake out/settle), I do think that we may be in for a busy deadline this year. The Orioles have among the most diverse mix of minor league and appealing major league assets to swing a trade, especially of the hitter-for-pitcher or infielder-for-outfielder variety.

But that’s a topic for another article.

Go O’s, 15-13 May (or better!), here we come!