It’s hard to pick just one worst thing about the 2025 Orioles. Maybe the worst thing is the one you saw most recently. Bad pitching? Yeah, that’s it. An offense that goes dormant for whole chunks of game at a time? Actually, it’s that. There are times where the fielding and baserunning take their turns at the top. The results are all-too-frequent games of this sort, a 10-5 loss at the hands of the Guardians.
This was a mess. It did not start out that way. That’s what made the eventual descent into
the plane of suck all the more frustrating. The Orioles offense stormed out of the gate hot against Guardians starter Tanner Bibee. Three batters into the game, they had three singles under their belts and a run on the board. Yay! Fun things! Later in the inning, Ramón Laureano delivered a two-run single to make it 3-0 Orioles.
We’ve seen this happen now and again this season and the question is often, can the Orioles continue to score runs after getting some early offense? The answer is almost as often, no, they can’t. As it ended up, four of the six hits that the Orioles got all game happened in that first inning. They had exactly one at-bat with a runner in scoring position for the remainder of the game.
That’s a lot of complaining about offense for a thing where I started off by saying the pitching was bad. Here’s how bad: That 3-0 lead? Orioles starting pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano flushed that lead away before even managing to record an out. Sugano walked the first batter of the game, gave up a single to the second, and a three-run home run to the third. It’s not much consolation that it was probable future Hall of Famer José Ramírez that hit the home run.
The second inning saw the Guardians load the bases with no one out. Sugano managed to escape this without allowing any further damage, preserving a 3-3 tie. It cost him a lot of pitches and virtually guaranteed an early exit from the game regardless of how well he went on to pitch later, but at least it was something.
Laureano helped the Orioles take the lead back. Following on the heels of a two-out error in catching a thrown ground ball that let Ryan O’Hearn onto first base, Laureano blasted a home run far back into the left field seats to put the Orioles up, 5-3. Scoring five runs is good. You should win when you score five runs! Even these jokers often do. Just, not tonight.
Sugano, ultimately, was unable to complete even the fourth inning. His defense didn’t help him, with O’Hearn botching a hard ground ball. The Guardians kept the line moving with two outs, with a walk pushing a runner into scoring position before Carlos Santana drove in the fourth Cleveland run. The Orioles decided that was enough for Sugano, who got the hook after throwing 90 pitches across just 3.2 innings. How do you give up six hits and four walks in only 3.2 innings? Very carefully.
Not many good things are going to happen when you have to turn to the likes of Corbin Martin in the fourth inning, and his low-leverage compatriots for innings after that. So it went on Monday night. Good things did not happen. One of the regular occurrences for these 2025 Orioles is getting worked over by the bottom of batting orders.
In this case, catcher Bo Naylor batted ninth and he hit a game-tying home run off Martin in the fifth inning. There was nearly a disaster starting there, as Martin walked the next batter and then hit a guy. Colin Selby relieved Martin and ended the threat, at least for the time being.
There was no fight left in the Orioles offense at this point. From the time the Guardians tied the game at 5-5, no Oriole reached base safely for the remainder of the game. You know Bibee, who gave up the three runs in the first inning? Yeah, he ended up pitching seven innings, and since two of the runs against him were unearned, it counted as a quality start. He allowed six hits and no walks. There was just no reason for this to happen. Except for this: The Orioles offense isn’t as good as it was supposed to be.
Selby did not waste any more time ending up on the list of pitchers who annoy us. He served up a dinger to Kyle Manzardo - the 16th of the season - to lead off the sixth. This gave Cleveland a 6-5 lead. They needed no more runs. They got several more, because with Martin and Selby having failed, that turned it into Grant Wolfram time. There was one time this wasn’t bad. Then his inherent Wolfram-ness set in. In the seventh inning, Wolfram loaded the bases with nobody out. All three of those guys ended up scoring, plus one more. I don’t even want to talk about it.
In all, the Guardians had 14 hits and drew eight walks. The Orioles had six hits and drew zero walks. They committed two errors. It’s hard to win like that. And indeed, they didn’t win. If they pitch like this tomorrow, they probably won’t win then either. Or if they hit like they did beyond the third inning today, that will probably also not lead to a win. There are so many more problems than they could possibly fix by trading a few rental guys away between now and July 31. If you have no confidence in Mike Elias sorting this mess out, I don’t blame you.
The series resumes on Tuesday evening with a scheduled 6:40 start time. Brandon Young and Joey Cantillo are the scheduled starting pitchers. Maybe the Orioles will end up playing the Guardians into being sellers.
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