At the beginning of May, the Orioles got their butts kicked for four straight games by the Yankees and they needed to act immediately to prevent the season from spiraling out of control. The O’s managed to do this in winning two of the next three series, including getting some revenge against the Yankees. A struggle of a series facing a poor Nationals pitching staff and a sweep at the hands of the Rays later and the Orioles are back in a tailspin that could prove fatal to their hopes of being able
to eventually go somewhere good this year.
If you are reading this hoping to feel better about the Orioles, I am probably not your guy. I am feeling bad about this team. It’s looking increasingly like, for a second consecutive year, they ain’t got it. They should have it. Some of their weaknesses should be their strengths instead. Other things among their weaknesses are going worse than even most pessimists would have predicted. Who to blame for all of this and what to do about it are the subjects of daily argument. Nobody with influence to change things seems to know how to make that happen.
Perhaps at least this weekend will go better for the Orioles. One thing working in their favor is that they are back at Camden Yards, where they are playing at a .500 clip so far this season. Another is that they are playing the Tigers, one of the teams with an even worse record than the O’s themselves have. Detroit has lost its last six games and 14 of its last 16. They were above .500 before this began and now they’re 20-31.
The story of Detroit’s season seems to be the disappointment from its offense, even though they have two great young hitters. 25-year-old outfielder Riley Greene is currently on pace to have the best-hitting year of his five MLB seasons. They debuted a top infield prospect, Kevin McGonigle, early this season, who is already worth 2.7 bWAR in 49 games of his rookie season. That’s basically the guy we wanted Jackson Holliday to be, and unlike Holliday, McGonigle has just showed up and he is doing great. That’s a good start to a good offense.
The problem is nearly every other Tigers hitter. There are some brutal batting splits kicking around, with several Tigers position players among the worst that MLB has to offer so far this season. This includes former Oriole Jahmai Jones, former #1 overall pick Spencer Torkelson, outfielder Wenceel Pérez, and utilityman Zach McKinstry. The best OPS of the players I just named is Torkelson at .681. The others are far worse; they’d fit in with the biggest Orioles strugglers like Tyler O’Neill and Colton Cowser. Pérez is kind of impressively already at a -1.1 bWAR.
Things are going better for Detroit’s pitching staff. Orioles fans looking at the team’s 4.97 ERA have got to be envious of the Tigers having a team ERA nearly a full run lower. How much of this is difference is an “invisible” gap in defensive quality is not something I can say because I don’t watch the Tigers.
They’ve had their share of pitching problems even through the overall quality. Two-time Cy Young Tarik Skubal is out due to surgery for loose bodies in his elbow. The feel-good late-career reunion with Justin Verlander halted after one terrible start. Free agent addition Framber Valdez has a 4.58 ERA through ten games. We’ll see him in this series. Some of their bullpen guys suck. But then, some of every bullpen’s guys suck.
Like the Orioles, this team probably “should” be better than it is. It’s not. One team may come away from this series feeling a little better about itself. Unless the weekend’s weather forecast leads to the teams playing only two games right now and they split the two games they actually play. That wouldn’t do much to feed into anybody’s narrative.
Game 1 – Friday, 7:05
- BAL starter: Chris Bassitt – 5.44 ERA, 4.74 FIP, 1.698 WHIP in 43 IP
- DET starter: Jack Flaherty – 5.77 ERA, 5.03 FIP, 1.603 WHIP in 43.2 IP
Note: This game is on Apple TV. No other TV broadcast will be available.
A theme I return to a lot when I think about these Orioles is that even pessimists could not have predicted these specific outcomes. I mentioned it above and here as I think about Bassitt it is on my mind again. I didn’t like the signing because I thought the Orioles needed to aim higher than stabilizing their back end. Yet even for that, a mid-5s ERA heading into Memorial Day weekend would have surprised me. I figured he might slide into the 4.5 range.
Maybe that’s where he’ll end up by season’s end. Maybe it’s the defense’s fault that he’s not there right now. I don’t know. What I do know is that his strikeout rate has been cut by close to a third compared to a year ago, while at the same time his walk rate has increased by about a third. That’s a tough combination, so even though his BABIP is crazy high (.352) and that’s probably not all his fault, there’s a lot that he could be doing to help his own cause that he’s not doing. Currently not looking like a great use of $18.5 million or a roster spot.
For the Tigers starter Flaherty, that’s a familiar-feeling ERA if you remember his short tenure here. He is failing in a different way than he did with the Orioles. The 2025 issue for Flaherty is that he’s walking way too many guys, handing out one walk roughly every seven batters. Whether Orioles who are not named Taylor Ward can take advantage of this may be one of the keys to success for the game.
Game 2 – Saturday, 4:05
- BAL starter: Brandon Young – 4.25 ERA, 5.23 FIP, 1.483 WHIP in 29.2 IP
- DET starter: Framber Valdez – 4.58 ERA, 4.07 FIP, 1.400 WHIP in 55 IP
At the end of spring training, if you had told me that Young would already have six starts with more coming, I wouldn’t have had a hard time picturing a disaster regarding the Orioles rotation. It has indeed been disastrous, but to be fair to Young, he hasn’t been one of the disastrous parts up to this point. Most likely he’s getting lucky. That’s a big gap between the ERA and the FIP. His strikeout/walk ratio is bad. Still, if he was the fifth-best Orioles starter, this season would probably be going fine. The problem is he’s the second best by ERA so far.
If you checked in on Valdez’s stats at the end of April, when he had a 3.35 ERA, you were probably quite upset that the Orioles didn’t sign him. He got socked in his first May start and hasn’t pitched well enough yet to recover a lower ERA. For the curious, Boston’s Ranger Suárez has a 2.40 ERA and Dylan Cease of the Blue Jays is at a 2.98. Adding either one of these guys to the Orioles rotation wouldn’t solve all of the problems they’ve had so far, but it would solve at least one.
Game 3 – Sunday, 1:35
- BAL starter: Trevor Rogers – 6.87 ERA, 4.35 FIP, 1.658 WHIP in 38 IP
- DET starter: TBD
No one should have believed that Rogers was just going to come out and drop another sub-2 ERA. I don’t think anyone believed that. Here’s another one for the “Not even the pessimists…” category. An ERA that rounds up to 7? Really? You could have thought that relying on Rogers at the top of the rotation was foolish and that the Orioles not acting to bolster the front of the rotation was a bad decision. Many people thought that and they certainly look like they were right.
Still, after last year, of course the 2026 Orioles rotation plan included Rogers in some capacity. That was always going to be the case. And like so many other guys who are undershooting even pessimistic projections, here he is. Put him at Brandon Young’s 4.25 ERA and he’s still massively disappointing after last year, and he’s more than two and a half runs worse than that.
There was no way to plan for that possibility, and at this moment, with even Cade Povich and Dean Kremer on the injured list, there’s not much way to adapt to it by kicking Rogers from the rotation even if that was an unquestionably good idea on its own merits. Everyone involved just has to hope for magical improvement.
As of this writing, it’s TBD for Detroit. TBD will probably not turn into Casey Mize, who pitched in Thursday’s game. That’s good news for the Orioles in that Mize is the best of the active Tigers pitchers. He’s sporting a 2.47 ERA across eight starts.
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Here is another time where they have to make a stand. The Tigers are reeling. The Orioles need to make that continue. If they can’t even capitalize on that opportunity, how are we supposed to believe that they will do anything good with the season beyond Memorial Day? There’s also the basic math aspect of it. Even if they turn things around later, losing two of three this weekend would put the team at 22-31. As with last year, that’s a deep hole to escape over the remainder of the season.
How do you think this series will go? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
