It’s been over a week since the Kansas City Royals ripped out Birdland’s hearts. That playoff series represented everything about the 2024 Orioles. The pitching was dynamite, led by Corbin Burnes and Zach Eflin, which was the only reason these games were even close. That is because the offense did nothing and only scored one run, and it was on a solo home run. The team had chances, but their season-long bugaboo showed up, as they were unable to come through with runners in scoring position. In every big spot, the team constantly failed. The main culprit in Game 1 was James McCann, who struck out in noncompetitive at-bats every time he had runners on.
Then, in Game 2, the team had the bases loaded and no one out following the Cedric Mullins home run that tied the game. They didn’t score, as Anthony Santander popped out on a pitch around his eyes, Colton Cowser struck out on a ball that hit him (and broke his hand), and Adley Rutschman grounded out.
What makes it all worse is that these MLB playoffs have been pretty bad, and this would have been a perfect time for the O’s to make a long run. You can’t tell me the O’s wouldn’t have put up a better fight against the Yankees than the Royals just did.
This was the time for the Orioles to take advantage, and it was squandered. The team has now gone ten years and ten games straight without a playoff victory, and is again searching for answers.
The question is, why? Why did this offense struggle so much this year? I understand the numbers look good. As our good friend Rob Shields put it in his article about the offense last week, the team finished in the top 10 in most of the significant Offensive categories.
While he made fine points, many of those numbers were carried by what they did in the first half, and the amount of home runs the team hit. The main issue all year was hitting with runners in scoring position. They were so bad at it this year, and no, I don’t care what the numbers say. It was a huge issue, and it showed its big ugly head in those two games in the playoffs.
I fully believe this is because of the focus on hitting fly balls rather than line drives. These hitters just have such big swings that once they have two strikes on them it is easy work to get rid of them. I understand that these Orioles had great offensive numbers, but anyone who watched saw how inconsistent they were.
This year just feels like a waste. They wasted the one year we had with Corbin Burnes, and for once, the pitching wasn’t the problem. All this team needed was one big hit to get them rolling, but they couldn’t even do that. I know they would have fought with the Yankees if they had won that Royals series; they had their number all year. Unfortunately, they never got that chance because the one thing holding them back continued to show up repeatedly.
This is crying over spilled milk at this point. Yes, it sucks that the Orioles messed up the 2024 season, and it was essentially a failure, but what are they going to do about it?
After the season, Mike Elias promised to do a full-on autopsy of the organization to attempt to discover what went wrong with this team in 2024.
On Friday, we got our answer to what they found, as bench coaches Fredi Gonzales and Jose Hernandez were let go, along with the big one, co-hitting Coach Ryan Fuller.
I have nothing for Hernández. I have yet to learn if he was let go or simply chose to move on. However, Gonzales is surprising to me. He was Hyde’s right-hand man, and it makes me wonder if he is leaving for a better job elsewhere. When Hyde would be ejected (no, it wasn’t often enough), Fredi filled in as stand-in manager, so this is quite surprising. We can only assume they wanted a new voice, or Fredi is eyeing a promotion elsewhere.
The real meat on this bone is Fuller. I don’t know what happened to this man. Early in his career, he preached patience at the plate with power mixed in, so what changed this year?
This might get a little tinfoil-hatty, but I fully believe either Fuller or Elias wanted to implement a change in the approach of the organization’s hitters.
They wanted to get more balls into the air and hit the ball harder; here is the problem: that doesn’t work for all hitters. Take Rutschman and Jackson Holliday. Holliday wasn’t a power hitter in the minors; he wasn’t the number-one prospect because of his power. Everything else made him unique, so why does it look like he is swinging for the fences on every swing and now has a massive hole in his swing that wasn’t there last year? Adley, like Holliday, was a line-drive hitter with a patient approach, so why did he pop up so much this year? Again, I don’t know what was done with these hitters. Fuller could have just been doing what he was told, and it seems weird for him to change his approach that much. Again, he was a guy who preached patience, so why did it change this year?
I don’t have the answers; no fan does, and the only ones who do are in the Warehouse. In Fuller’s defense, he didn’t take one at-bat for this team; he might not have been the one to spearhead this new approach, instead simply following what Elias told him to do. He is gone now, and Elias wouldn’t have fired him without cause. One thing we’ve learned about Mike is that doesn’t just fire people to appease a loud majority of angry fans (if he did, Hyde wouldn’t still be here). There was a reason why Fuller was let go, and maybe it was because there were just too many cooks in the kitchen. The Orioles technically had three hitting coaches last year. Three! Most teams have one, so maybe that was the impetus here. Perhaps players were getting overloaded with data, and the message from the Warehouse to the player was getting lost in translation.
We’ll likely never truly know the real reason why Fuller was fired. It could be as simple as wanting a new voice or as disastrous as that he was preaching destructive philosophies that ruined the years of several players. Interestingly, the other hitting coaches remain on staff. That news could still come, but could this mean that Elias liked what he saw from them? Are they moving the other two around the organization and into the Warehouse? We’ll find all that out in the coming weeks.
In the end, something had to change. You can’t score a single run in two home playoff games and keep the status quo.
