Hello, friends.
Though the Orioles were within a half-game of a playoff spot just a few days ago, they’ve veered hard in the opposite direction and now it feels like it’s pretty close to where you can turn out the lights. Losing two out of the first three against the Rangers, the team they’re now chasing, has brought any positive thoughts anyone may have had to a screeching halt. Check out Tyler Young’s recap of last night’s game for more of the not-so-lovely totals from a 5-1 loss.
The final score
obscures that this was yet another great starting pitching outing wasted by the team. Kyle Bradish allowed just a pair of unearned runs across six innings, and the unearned runs were, in true 2026 Orioles fashion, just about the most ridiculously stupid plays that you can imagine. The kind of stuff they’ve been doing all year as if they were rolling them off an assembly line, perfectly crafted exactly the same way.
Two plays of this nature last night prominently involved Gunnar Henderson. The first of these was a classic “contact play with a drawn-in infield,” the kind of thing where Orioles runners are routinely getting thrown out, only on a ground ball right at Henderson, he wasn’t able to throw home in time to stop what was then the tying Rangers run from scoring. Later in that same inning, Henderson was unable to cleanly field a grounder and he committed a throwing error while trying to stop a runner who was aggressively going home. The first of these was not scored an error, the second one was. Both were not good.
If Henderson was hitting like he did two years ago and experiencing these lapses in the field, that would be one thing. Unfortunately for the team’s success this season, he’s not. Manager Craig Albernaz has taken Henderson to batting leadoff in some recent games, which I guess is hoping it sparks something by doing something different. Nothing is working. Henderson dropped a .590 OPS in July and is sitting on a .496 so far in August. The only reason that number isn’t lower is because he’s walked seven times; Henderson has yet to get an extra-base hit this month and he only has two hits in total.
As with so many other aspects of the team’s struggles this year, no one with any influence over the situation seems to have any idea what to do about it all. Henderson in particular seems like he slots into the classic Yogi Berra “ninety percent of the game is half-mental” and that’s the part where it’s going wrong for him. It seems to me that blunting that spiral of failure is one of the most important things that Albernaz could do in his first season as a manager and it’s not getting blunted. He probably didn’t imagine that was going to be on his list of problems when he took this job. Here it is all the same.
It’s almost a joke to bring up the wild card standings after all of this, but the fact remains that the Orioles are three games out of a spot with 45 left to play. They can get back to two games if they win today. Their next series against this is the Twins, who they also must pass. I think they are going to need to go 28-17 at a minimum from here on. That feels impossible. It will feel more possible if they were somehow able to rip off a six game winning streak. They’re going to have to start hitting again to do that.
Cade Povich and Kumar Rocker are the scheduled starting pitchers for a 2:35 game as the Orioles try to avoid being swept almost entirely out of the playoff picture.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
Orioles show again that good starting pitching isn’t everything (Baltimore Baseball)
This was written in response to Friday’s loss, and with just a few tweaks could apply perfectly to Saturday’s loss as well.
Broken Orioles offense shows just how far they’ve fallen (The Baltimore Sun)
It’s really disgusting since the start of August. I’m talking 11 runs in seven games disgusting.
As he gets closer to his MLB debut, Michael Forret rejoins the Orioles organization (Steve on Baseball)
Steve Melewski with some thoughts on recently-reacquired pitching prospect Michael Forret, who will be starting again for the Tides today.
Catching lightning in a bottle: A history of Rutschman-like trades (FanGraphs)
Jay Jaffe looks at the history of teams acquiring a new starting catcher midseason. It has not, historically, led to a World Series win.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
The most recent Orioles victory on this day came two years ago. They beat the Rays, 4-1, to improve to 69-48 on the season. Just four of the 13 players who appeared for the Orioles in that game are on the active roster today. Zach Eflin’s seven shutout innings helped a lot, and each of Colton Cowser and Cedric Mullins homered in the win.
There is one lone former Oriole who was born on this day: Chuck Essegian, who made one pinch-hit appearance for the 1961 Orioles, turns 95 years old today. Happy birthday to him. Essegian played for a total of six teams across six years in the majors.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: actor Sam Elliott (1944), baseball Hall of Famer Ted Simmons (1949), actress Melanie Griffith (1957), singer-songwriter Whitney Houston (1963), football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders (1967), actress Gillian Anderson (1967), and actress Anna Kendrick (1985).
On this day in history…
In 48 BC, in a battle that involved over 75,000 men and where Julius Caesar was outnumbered over 2:1, Caesar defeated Pompey in the Battle of Pharsalus in modern-day Greece. After Caesar’s victory, Pompey fled to Egypt, and Caesar had the upper hand in the Roman Civil War.
In 1854 AD, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, the memoir of the transcendentalist, was first published.
In 1945, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, killing around 35,000 people in Nagasaki.
In 1969, five people including actress Sharon Tate and coffee heiress Abigail Folger were killed in Los Angeles by members of the Manson Family.
In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency due to his coverup of the Watergate break-in.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on August 9. Have a safe Sunday. Go O’s!
