Hello, friends.
Even the optimists in Birdland have to be pretty much ready to put the hopes to bed for the season at this point. Last night’s loss to the Red Sox comes darn close to settling it for the Orioles. They needed to come out and have a strong September in order to keep themselves as a possible wild card team. Instead, the Orioles are the only winless team in MLB in the month of September, and they’ve now been shut out in consecutive games by the Red Sox. Check out Tyler’s recap of last
night’s 5-0 loss for more of the not-so-lovely totals.
There is certainly a dark comedy to it. The Orioles did something modestly interesting when they took on a non-trivial amount of late-season salary in the waiver claim of Luis Robert Jr., a total of $5 million, in hopes that his recent strong performance would carry over and bolster the offense. What’s happened instead is that the offense has disappeared.
This is giving off big 2017 Orioles collapse vibes to me. That team hit its September peak at a 71-68 record on the 5th and then went 4-19 over their final 23 games. The offense just absolutely died in that last month of the season as the team batted a combined .220/.268/.349 in the month’s 28 games. It was a complete disaster. The pitching was bad too, largely driven by Dan Duquette’s regrettable decision that having a rotation with Wade Miley and Jeremy Hellickson would be a good idea; those two guys between them were the losing pitcher in eight of the team’s 21 Sept/Oct losses, and they didn’t win any games started by either one.
Five games into September 2026, the Orioles are hitting .207/.274/.308, the third-worst OPS of any MLB team this month. The rotation isn’t proving to be quite as much of a problem. They just aren’t good enough to be a solution to the offense doing, approximately, nothing.
We got a little taste of that last night, when Chris Bassitt ran into trouble in the sixth inning, talked manager Craig Albernaz into staying in for one more batter, then ended up on the wrong end of a bad luck broken bat single that scored two runs. Rico Garcia then let the inherited runner score for good measure. Bassitt deserved better than 3 ER in 5.2 IP, but that’s what he got. He needed to be perfect since the offense was absent and he wasn’t perfect.
It’s not the first time that Albernaz has shown faith in a player and have it immediately blow up in his face. This is one of the more consistent things of the Albernaz experience. He believes in the guys. He tends to refer to them as “the boys.” He thinks they’re going to do it. The problem is how often they aren’t doing it. This kind of thing is more defensible when he’s believing in like, Kyle Bradish, as opposed to when he’s believing in Carlos Narváez or Anthony Nunez. It would probably be a noble and laudable quality if Mike Elias had given Albernaz a better roster.
All there is to really hope for at this point is to start to see some signs of life from key guys who are almost certain to be around next year. I have no hope about this. After 143 games of watching the Orioles problems, I don’t think they know what’s going wrong or what needs to be done to fix it, either on the individual player level or on the team level. I think the front office is locked into something that has failed. If it’s getting punted to the next generation, I don’t know that lessons have been learned to make those players more successful and more able to gel into a consistently good team.
I’m not going to post the wild card standings. That’s toast unless the Orioles rip off like a six game winning streak starting today. They’ll try to avoid being mopped by Boston with a 1:35 game to close out this four-game weekend set. The scheduled starting pitchers are Payton Tolle and Kyle Bradish.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
Takeaways as the Orioles playoff hopes slip away (The Baltimore Sun)
This was published yesterday, after the Orioles had merely lost four straight games. It’s five straight now and of course all of the concerns still apply.
Albernaz not optimistic about Tyler O’Neill’s return this season (Baltimore Baseball)
For a little while there, O’Neill was in the positives for bWAR for his Orioles tenure. Then he slumped and now he’s not coming back this season.
Albernaz on Kjerstad in last night’s starting lineup (School of Roch)
“We’re excited to get his bat here,” the manager said. I hope Kjerstad can pay off that belief over the remaining few weeks of the season.
On Luis De León, the first Orioles international arm under Elias to make it to Baltimore (Steve on Baseball)
De León’s early outings haven’t impressed. You can get a good sense of what the Orioles like about this player from reading this article.
Orioles prospect Jaiden Lo Re enjoying ‘surreal’ breakout debut season (Orioles.com)
Lo Re is following a similar path to what Nate George did a year ago, hopefully not to be followed by what’s happened to George this season.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 1974, the Orioles swept a doubleheader from the then-Indians, winning 2-0 and 1-0 with each of Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar pitching a complete game shutout. These marked the fourth and fifth straight Orioles games with complete game shutouts, setting an American League record. Across MLB this season, all pitchers combined have nine complete game shutouts.
In 1995, Cal played 2131. The Orioles beat the then-California Angels, 4-2.
In 1996, Eddie Murray joined the 500 home run club. He was the 15th player to do so; there are 28 today. Murray was just the third player with 3000 hits and 500 homers. That list has (I think) six players on it now. The team is honoring this 30th anniversary at today’s game. The O’s lost the game to the Tigers, 5-4, in 12 innings.
In 2012, the Orioles beat the Yankees on Cal’s statue night honoring the 2131 anniversary. That 10-6 victory, which saw the Orioles take an eighth inning lead right after blowing a lead, pulled the O’s into a tie with the Yankees for the AL East. This is the greatest game I’ve ever been to at Camden Yards.
One year ago, the Orioles were being no-hit by Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers with two outs in the ninth inning and a 3-0 deficit. Emmanuel Rivera eventually hit a walkoff single off of former Oriole Tanner Scott.
There are a few former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2025 reliever Shawn Dubin, 2016-18 reliever Donnie Hart, 2011 first baseman Derrek Lee, 1991 pitcher Roy Smith, and 1954 outfielder Jim Fridley.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: America’s favorite Frenchman Marquis de Lafayette (1757), Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters (1943), author Alice Seabold (1963), and actor Idris Elba (1972).
On this day in history…
In 1620, the Mayflower left England for North America, carrying 102 Pilgrims as passengers.
In 1901, President William McKinley was shot and fatally wounded; he died eight days later of an infection that spread from the gunshot.
**
And that’s the way it is in Birdland on September 6. Have a safe Sunday. Go O’s!
