Almost a year ago, I wrote a flowery piece about the Orioles’ superiority and how the Giants were little losers by comparison. Baltimore was supposed to have set itself up for a wide competitive window after tanking for so many years. That hasn’t happened this year, and the previous genius assigned to Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal has been revoked — or, at least, placed on probation. Not only are the Orioles in bad shape this season, but their 60-74 record was as predictable as a slow motion trainwreck.
Is the San Francisco Giants franchise in better shape than the Baltimore Orioles right now?
Here’s the key piece from last year’s series preview:
Last week, Grant Brisbee for The Athletic (sub required) pointed out that the Orioles haven’t signed a top-50 free agent in 5 years. The Giants have signed the second-most after the Mets. Is the tanking strategy preferable to whatever it is the Giants have been doing for the past decade? I don’t think so, but Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal have at least offered an interesting counter to my belief system:
23-year old Gunnar Henderson. 26-year old Adley Rutschman. 25-year old Heston Kjerstad. 24-year old Colton Cowser. 20-year old Jackson Holliday. The prospect capital to trade for Corbin Burnes and Trevor Rogers. They’ve put together an enviable core and now they have the financial might to supplement this group for a long time and in a supremely competitive division. It’s good to be the O’s, less so the G’s.
Well, the Orioles increased their payroll by 57% this past offseason specifically to supplement their group of young position players. It didn’t really work out, though. They entered the season with one of the worst-projected pitching staffs in the sport. All they needed was for their lineup to perform. That didn’t happen.
Through 134 games, the mighty Baltimore Orioles, with their lineup populated by homegrown superstar hitters, have a team wRC+ of 97 (.240/.305/.402). For comparison’s sake, Buster Posey’s Giants have a 96 wRC+ through the same number of games (.233/.309/.380). Throw in Patrick Bailey’s defense, and overall, the Giants’ lineup has been more valuable than the Orioles’ (13.1 fWAR to 12.2).
Hard not to smile when you see something like that. Again, Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal? They and their adherents will tell you quite forcefully that they are the best and brightest to ever run a baseball team with their combination of ruthless efficiency and black box proprietary player scouting and usage. And yet here’s Buster Posey basically putting a racing stripe on the side of Oracle Park and producing a slightly better team in 2025.
A triumph of The Yokel over The Expert?
Nah, it’s just dumb stupid baseball luck. This season, Baltimore has give 15 players 100+ plate appearances. Depending on how one judges a 98 or 99 wRC+ (I tend to round up when it’s that close), they’ve had just 5 (or 7) players hit above the league average (100 wRC+). Last year, they had 11 such players. Except for 24-year old shortstop Gunnar Henderson (.277/.348/.461) and 26-year old Jordan Westburg (.276/.326/.473), their young position player group hasn’t performed. 27-year old catcher Adley Rutschman was an All-Star in 2022, 2023, and 2024 and the runner-up in Rookie of the Year in 2022, but has already fallen out of favor with the front office (.227/.310/.373 this season) in favor of 20-year old Samuel Basallo. Jackson Holliday and Colton Cowser didn’t wind up making the leap to All-Stars this year and the free agent signings (Tyler O’Neill & Gary Sanchez) didn’t produce how the team had hoped.
The team got off to such a bad start (15-28) that they fired their manager, Brandon Hyde. Since elevating Tony Mansolino, they’re 45-46, but if you just go by their “Since June 1st” split, they’re 39-38 with a 4.19 ERA (4.12 FIP) and the 11th-most valuable pitching staff (7.4 fWAR). The Giants, by comparison, are 34-42 with a 4.14 ERA (4.00 FIP) and are 21st in value (5.4 fWAR). And they’ve actually done okay on offense with a 100 wRC+ on a team line of .243/.308/.415 and +9.2 fWAR in value — all better than the Giants. So, you could say that the manager change shifted the tone of the season and they’re on their way to ending on a high note… right?
This will be the sixth time in the nine-time interleague series where Baltimore is the road team. They’ve won 4 out of 5 thus far, their sole loss coming back in 2010 when it was still called AT&T Park. History isn’t supposed to have an effect on the present when it comes to baseball — these historical matchups don’t usually carry over; but I bring it up because, well, maybe the Orioles are just comfortable in Oracle Park? Baltimore is 29-37 on the road this season and they’re performing better as I said… but actually, they’re just 10-15 here in August, and have dropped 7 of 8. In true Giants fashion, they did it on a homestand, dropping 3 of 4 to the Astros and getting swept in a 4-game series by the Red Sox. They might be licking their wounds as they fly into Oracle Park. On the other hand, that dreadful homestand might’ve been the balancing of the scales by the Baseball Gods, as Baltimore had just returned from a 5-game road trip where they won 2 out of 3 in Houston and swept Boston in a 2-game series at Fenway. Still, they’ve won just 3 interleague series all season, and all of them came in July: a sweep in Atlanta followed by 2 out of 3s in Baltimore over the Mets and the Rockies.
But the Giants might be committed to ending their season on a high note. Bob Melvin has managed teams that have fallen short of expectations only to make a run at the very end to get to respectability. They’ve won 5 in a row. They need only go 16-12 the rest of the way to get to 82-80. That seems within reach. Willy Adames is just 6 home runs away from hitting 30, which would be the first time in over 20 years that a Giants player has hit 30. Rafael Devers is a career .294/.352/.501 hitter (121 games, 535 PA) against the Orioles, and his 6-for-11. 2-homer performance against the Cubs in this last series suggests he’s getting hot at the right time.
Series overview
Who: Baltimore Orioles vs. San Francisco Giants
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Friday at 7:15pm PT, Saturday at 4:15pm PT, Sunday at 1:05pm PT
National broadcasts: Apple TV+ (Friday), Fox Network (Saturday)
Projected starters
Friday: Dean Kremer (RHP 9-9, 4.19 ERA) vs. Robbie Ray (LHP 10-6, 2.93 ERA)
Saturday: Trevor Rogers (LHP 7-2, 1.40 ERA) vs. TBD
Sunday: Tomoyuki Sugano (RHP 10-6, 4.06 ERA) vs. Justin Verlander (RHP 2-10, 4.47 ERA)
Where they stand
Orioles: 60-74, 5th in AL East; 18.0 GB ALE, 12.0 GB Wild Card Giants: 66-68, 3rd in NL West; 11.0 GB NLW, 6.0 GB Wild Card
Prediction time
This isn’t so much a prediction as an observation, but if the Giants were to sweep, then they’d find themselves above .500 for the first time since July 28th.
