The 2023 MLB season is officially two weeks old.
After opening the campaign with six road games, the Orioles came back to Baltimore for their first homestand of the year. The seven games at Camden Yards had their ups and downs, with a series loss to the New York Yankees and three wins in four games against the Oakland Athletics.
Baltimore ended the homestand 4-3, capped with an 8-7 walk-off win Thursday over the Athletics. The club showed off its offseason acquisitions, top pitching prospect Grayson Rodriguez and a new home run celebration at Oriole Park.
Here are five takeaways from the Orioles’ first 13 games.
Starting pitchers (not named Kyle Gibson) aren’t going deep enough.
When manager Brandon Hyde was asked Thursday morning what he was looking for out of starting pitcher Cole Irvin that afternoon, he quickly responded “nine” — joking that he wanted the left-hander to pitch all nine innings.
Hyde would’ve taken six. Irvin, who was optioned to Triple-A after his poor outing, didn’t even provide that.
For the third straight game, an Orioles starter couldn’t reach the sixth as Irvin struggled for his third consecutive start to open the season and pitched only four innings. Only three times has an Orioles starter recorded more than 15 outs this season — Kyle Gibson (twice) and Tyler Wells.
“I’m concerned about our pitching in general right now,” Hyde said. “I feel like we’re gonna turn the corner, like we’re gonna improve. But we gotta get deeper in the game.”
The inefficiency and ineffectiveness from Hyde’s starters have downstream effects on the bullpen, which has been overworked already this month. Orioles starters have pitched just six more innings than the bullpen — 60 1/3 versus 54 1/3 — through the first two weeks while recording a 6.86 ERA. A prime example of the bullpen’s load is Logan Gillaspie, who pitched in seven of the team’s first 12 games and warmed up in the 13th on Thursday.
The Orioles’ bullpen was a critical part of the team’s success in 2022. The Orioles’ starters aren’t putting the bullpen in positions to be successful so far in 2023.
The Orioles have a scary 2-3 punch.
If not for Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle, the starting pitching struggles would be even more magnified.
Rutschman and Mountcastle — Baltimore’s Nos. 2 and 3 batters — are two of the hottest hitters in baseball, and without them, a 3-1 series win over the Athletics could have been a 1-3 series loss.
Rutschman went 11-for-24 with three home runs and eight walks on the homestand. The star catcher has reached base in all but one of 13 games. His recent hot streak continued with his 405-foot walk-off home run Thursday.
Mountcastle, meanwhile, is 10-for-36 with five home runs, three doubles and 16 RBIs since he went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts on April 3. He leads the American League with six home runs, four of which he hit against the Athletics.
The duo has already proved thus far to be a tough one for pitchers to face. The Athletics on Tuesday pitched around Rutschman twice, and Mountcastle came through in both instances with an RBI single and a grand slam in his nine-RBI game.
That 12-8 win was one of a few games this season in which the Orioles’ lineup has bailed out the pitching staff. Baltimore entered Thursday with the fourth-most homers in the majors and the eighth-best OPS.
Starter Grayson Rodriguez said after allowing five runs in 4 1/3 innings Tuesday that the “offense had my back.”
“That’s something that this team is about to be known for,” he said. “There’s a lot of guys in this clubhouse who can swing it.”
The defense continues to be a problem.
Perhaps the most confounding part of the Orioles’ season thus far has been the club’s poor outfield defense.
Last season, the Orioles ranked top 10 in the majors in several key defensive metrics with plus defenders in Rutschman, third baseman Ramón Urías, shortstop Jorge Mateo and center fielder Cedric Mullins.
Baltimore entered 2023 relying once again on its defense, as the club went out and acquired strike-throwing, low-swing-and-miss starters in Gibson and Irvin. So far, those pitchers haven’t received the defense Orioles pitchers got last season.
From the several blunders in the opening series against the Boston Red Sox — with Ryan McKenna’s dropped fly ball at the top of that list — to miscommunication between the left fielder and shortstop on several occasions to a couple instances of overrunning popups, the Orioles’ defense hasn’t been good enough.
“That’s been bothering me is the defense we’ve played,” Hyde said. “We need to play better defensively, really how we did last year. We played great defense last year, and we’ve got to get back to that.”
It’s not just physical mistakes, though. Some mental errors, like left fielder Austin Hays throwing to the wrong base in Wednesday’s loss, have crept in, too.
“There have been a couple mental lapses we haven’t had in the past. Our guys are very aware,” Hyde said. “For us to be successful, we’re gonna have to play really good defense.”
The Orioles are fun and interesting …
First baseman Ryan O’Hearn was brought up to the big leagues from Triple-A on Thursday, and he said he could tell from Norfolk that there were “really good vibes going on” in Baltimore.
Good vibes, indeed.
The Orioles rank third in the majors in runs, fourth in home runs and tied for first in stolen bases. They also rank first in home run celebrations and, probably, hydration, too. The club broke out its new home run celebration this week to much fanfare — and some disappointment.
The “homer hose,” as it’s been named by the team, got a lot of use against the Athletics, with Mountcastle, Rutschman and Hays all chugging water from the orange and black hose.
“I absolutely love the fact that we have personality,” Hyde said. “I think it makes it a lot more fun in a six-month grind of a season. I want our guys to be loose and have fun. All those things — the home run chain this year, the SeaWorld acts we have going on right now — those are all things that didn’t come from the coaching staff. It’s player generated. That’s when, for me, it’s awesome. That just shows you how awesome that personality is.”
… but whether they’ll be good remains to be seen.
Despite all the fun and the homers and the steals, it’s still early in a 162-game season.
The Orioles are 7-6, with series wins over the Texas Rangers and Athletics — two of the worst teams in the AL last season — and series losses to AL East foes in the Yankees and Boston Red Sox. The struggles against the division is an early continuation of the same trend from 2022, when the Orioles played well against nondivision foes and struggled versus the AL East.
On one hand, the Orioles being above .500 while having a 5.49 ERA (fourth-worst in MLB) could show that the team is poised for better things ahead. On the other, the fact that the Orioles are the third-highest scoring team in baseball and are only one game above .500 — against a schedule that includes three teams that posted 84 losses or more in 2022 — could be a warning sign.
“We’re still not playing our best baseball by any means,” Hyde said. “We just have to improve in a lot of areas.”
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