The Baltimore Orioles’ 2016 season has ended, and once again it was the offense that failed them when they needed it most.

There is more than enough second-guessing of Buck Showalter‘s decision to keep Zach Britton on the bench going on this morning, and all of that criticism is 100% valid. There is no way you should lose a winner-take-all game with your best pitcher and Cy Young candidate not touching the ball even once.

There will also be plenty of vitriol directed toward Ubaldo Jimenez, which is much less valid. Jimenez’s pitching down the stretch is one of the biggest reasons the Birds even got this far. He was put in a very unfamiliar position and unsurprisingly wilted. After he allowed two hits immediately, Buck should have at least then gone to Britton. It would have been a tough spot for the closer for sure, but you have to go down with your best weapon.

Again though, this post isn’t about Buck, or Ubaldo, or Britton. It’s about the vaunted O’s offense, and how the big bats once again came up small in the most important situations.

(And maybe these objects of scorn aren’t unrelated – our own Kevin George wrote this morning that Buck was handcuffed because the offense showed absolutely no life for inning after inning.)

That’s what I’m here to talk about: that offense. Woof, that offense.

The Birds bats’ struggles over the season’s second half are well-documented, but just in case you need reminding:

First half wRC+: 112, 2nd in MLB

Second half: 88, 26th in MLB

— Dillon Atkinson (@DillonTAtkinson) October 5, 2016

We all knew coming into this season that this Orioles team, not unlike most recent Orioles teams, was built to win games 8-6, not 3-2. They had a roster of – to borrow from Buck – “big hairy guys” who could mash the ball over the wall, a very questionable stable of starting pitchers, and a great bullpen.

Let’s go slug it out, and see who comes out on top.

And slug they did. That first-half offense (the “Taco Bell Lineup”) propelled them to first place in the AL East at the All-Star Break.

Then, they stopped.

That second-half offense was the reason they fell out of first and found themselves fighting tooth-and-nail with seemingly half of the AL for a Wild Card berth down the stretch. Thankfully, the aforementioned resurgence of Jimenez, along with Kevin Gausman making his ace turn, Chris Tillman returning from injury, and Yovani Gallardo & Wade Miley being slightly smaller dumpster fires, was enough to get the Birds into the postseason.

Wild Card, Tame Bats

Now that they were “in,” they would need their offense to show up again.

Early on in Tuesday night’s Wild Card game at Rogers Centre, it was depressingly apparent that the second-half offense had, unfortunately, showed up.

Adam Jones looped the first pitch of the game into the outfield for a can-o-corn. Hyun Soo Kim worked a six-pitch AB, but ultimately grounded out weakly. Manny Machado got himself into a great hitter’s count at 3-1, and Jays starter Marcus Stroman lobbed in a meatball that Manny harmlessly popped straight up (more below).

Things of course got no better for the O’s any time soon, as Stroman would retire the first nine batters he faced.

In the fourth, the Birds seemed to wake up a bit, and Birdland was on its feet.

Jones poked a single to right leading off, Kim came through with the POFO to move him to second, and after Machado was robbed by Kevin Pillar in left-center, Mark Trumbo crushed the first pitch he saw to give the O’s a 2-1 lead.

In the fifth, Michael Bourn singled and stole second with two outs. Alas, J.J. Hardy ended what had been a nice AB by swinging at ball four and striking out, but that was two straight innings that the O’s had managed to put a little something together. They did the same in the sixth, via a Machado two-out single. Unfortunately, Trumbo’s third hard-hit ball of the night was his second right at a Jays infielder, and the threat ended.

Three straight innings with baserunners was enough to chase Stroman, though the Birds could have had far more than two runs.

The game was tied by now, and we had ourselves a battle of the bullpens.

Wouldn’t any Orioles fan have jumped at this, given the opportunity?

Bullpen vs. bullpen? Buck Showalter vs. John Gibbons?

Sounded too good to be true. Thanks to – again – the Orioles swinging wet noodles, it was.

Davis drew a one-out walk in the seventh, for the Birds’ FINAL BASERUNNER of the game. In a game that went 11 innings!

The O’s needed a postseason hero or two, and all they got was a bunch of guys trying to play hero ball and hit five-run home runs. Sound familiar?

Let’s run it down…

Jones was 1-for-5 with a strikeout, bringing his career postseason numbers to 9-for-58 with one home run and four RBI (.155/.206/.207). Mr. October!

(Side note: I have to give props to Jones for running over and standing up for Kim after that idiot threw a beer can at him. Of course, right after that, with a chance for revenge, Adam went HACK HACK HACK all the way back to the dugout…)

The $161-million man himself, Chris Davis, was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and a walk. Hey, at least he didn’t put on a playoff sombrero?

Jonathan Schoop was 0-for-4 with a strikeout (but was robbed of a hit by Troy Tulowitzki.)

Matt Wieters was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.

Kim was 0-for-4.

J.J. Hardy, the wily veteran, was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts (again, one while hacking at ball four).

And Manny. Sigh. Manny.

Before the game, as I was getting ready to watch with my pop and a few friends, we all agreed that Machado would be the one to put the team on his back. It was his first postseason appearance since way back in 2012, when he went 3-for-19 with a home run as a rookie. Now a bona fide superstar, it was Manny’s time to shine.

In the first inning, he got his chance to do just that. He worked Stroman to a 3-1 count, and got a 93 MPH fastball up and out over the middle of the plate. A meatball, plain and simple.

Pitch 5 on the graphic there. An obvious mistake, that Manny needed to send deep into the bowels of Rogers Centre, instead turned into an easy pop-up. Stroman knew he had gotten away with an OOPS, and you could see it in his face as he walked off the mound.

In the end, Machado was 1-for-4, his lone hit of the infield variety. To his credit, he avoided whiffing, along with only Kim. It continued a downward trend for Machado, who managed an OPS of just .671 in September.

The Orioles needed their offense to step up and win this game, but instead, their big boppers (with the exception of Trumbo) stayed in the shell they’ve seemed quite comfortable in for over three months, thank you very much.

Moving On…

While I sit here trying to get over the most painful loss I can remember, I’m taking solace in this question that I keep asking myself: could you really have seen that team winning the world series?

Think about it and be honest. Remember the hitting approaches in the biggest game of the year, tied late, when just one run could have been the difference, when one baserunner would have turned up the intensity on the pitcher and the defense and made that crowd let a bit of their digested Molson slip a little early into their undies – overswinging, first-pitch swinging, swinging at balls…basically, the exact approach that we’ve seen all season, and the results that we’ve seen since July.

That wasn’t going to cut it in October, when pitching rules the roost. This team has gotten themselves out all year, and there’s no reason to think they were suddenly going to change when the games meant more, and when they’re seeing only the best opposing pitchers on the mound night after night.

Yes, Buck should have gone to Zach Britton in the 11th (or earlier). That contributed to the loss, certainly, and Showalter is being roundly and justly criticized.

But when we look back upon this season that ended in heartbreak, our ire should be directed toward the failures of the guys with the bats – not the bullpen phone – in their hands.