The Orioles slumped down the stretch but still have plenty enough firepower to make some noise in the postseason.
A year ago, the Orioles surprised everyone as they romped to a 101-61 regular season record. Through the end of May, the 2024 O’s were doing it again. At 36-19, the team was on pace for 106 wins, raising hopes of rolling back into the postseason and doing better this time around. Since then, a variety of problems have dragged the team down and it was only by the good fortune of struggles across the field of AL Wild Card contenders that the O’s limped to finishing in the first Wild Card position.
The hopeful thing for the Orioles and their fans now is the same hope that every flawed postseason entrant has each year: That the team can paper over enough of its problems and get enough lucky breaks to play their way to hoisting a trophy. As it happens, the Orioles start out from a great position, since they’ve got one of the best young players in MLB, Gunnar Henderson, turning in the best season for any Orioles player since Cal Ripken Jr. He’s among the top 10 in the league in home runs, has stolen over 20 bases, and regularly flashes Gold Glove-caliber defense.
It’s not a complete fool’s hope. Only last year, the World Series was contested between a Texas Rangers team that had a massive Achilles heel of a bullpen, and an 84-win Diamondbacks squad that had a lot of holes on its roster. All it takes is a month of pretending your flaws don’t exist and you’re fine. That’s not so much to ask, is it? Well, yes, it is, but this happens to some playoff teams almost every year.
Last year’s Rangers were a team that had bankable stars Corey Seager and Marcus Semien performing at a high level; they finished second and third in AL MVP voting behind Shohei Ohtani. The stars were surrounded by a solid supporting cast. Deadline deals were made with the aim of fortifying the starting rotation, bringing in Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery. This helped them deal with their bullpen issue not just in the regular season but throughout October as well. This is a formula that the Orioles can approximate.
There is not much mystery about what cost the team a chance to repeat its AL East division win and what needs to be fixed to go anywhere in the postseason. The offense went dormant not too long after the All-Star break. Monthly batting splits for the Orioles as a team:
- June: .273/.333/.513 (2nd in MLB by wRC+)
- July: .258/.332/.431 (6th)
- August: .231/.299/.393 (20th)
- September: .246/.316/.398 (7th)
For a two-and-a-half week period in the last month of the season, the Orioles were averaging just three runs scored per game. That is likely part of a recipe for another swift and unceremonious postseason exit if it does not change. The team has not won a postseason game since sweeping the Tigers out of the ALDS in 2014.
In what Orioles fans will be hoping is not a coincidence, the dropoff from July to August lined up with Jordan Westburg suffering a broken hand after being hit by a pitch on July 31. Westburg missed nearly two months and he returned only in the season’s closing days. He is a 2024 All-Star and one of the team’s top two or three hitters. The lineups without him just did not have the same punch.
Two more injuries suffered towards the end of August created further challenges for the offense. First baseman Ryan Mountcastle hit the injured list with wrist soreness on August 22, an ailment that cost him more than a month of playing time. Infielder Ramón Urías rolled an ankle on August 31 and missed more than three weeks.
Neither one of these guys was putting up earth-shaking batting numbers. Still, they are both solid performers and the team’s fill-ins were not getting the job done. A couple of top-ranked prospect rookies, Jackson Holliday and Coby Mayo, were among those struggling in the absence of the injured players. Things would have been a lot more fun in Birdland this season if Holliday had been putting up numbers like fellow 20-year-old Jackson Chourio and Jackson Merrill have done for the Brewers and Padres, respectively. It just didn’t work out that way.
Returning to the example of last year’s Rangers team that just whistled past its season-long bullpen challenges, it helps if you’ve got an offense that can make up for the deficiencies. That championship squad led the American League in nearly every offensive category, including home runs.
The recent pattern in the postseason is that the team that hits more home runs is the team that wins. Add Henderson’s home run prowess to Anthony Santander’s and we’re getting somewhere. The 29-year-old Santander, a pending free agent, has had a walk year for the ages. He’s one of just eight switch-hitters to ever put up a 40+ homer season, finishing with 44. Among MLB hitters this year, that trails only Aaron Judge and Ohtani.
Westburg, Mountcastle, and Urías all made it back in time for the final week of the regular season. That was too late for the Orioles to salvage the chance to take the division lead back from the Yankees. It’s not too late to hope that they can get the team looking like they were back in April and May. Getting these guys back helps add some right-handed balance and it takes pressure off of everyone else to do it all themselves.
Again thinking of last year’s Rangers, perhaps two pitchers the Orioles have acquired this year will help them get somewhere in October. Corbin Burnes, picked up back in February, spent the first four months of the season looking like he was going to fight for a second career Cy Young win. He returned to form in September, with a 1.20 ERA over his final five starts. And in July, the O’s brought in Zach Eflin, who found a new gear immediately with his new team, closing out the season with a 2.60 ERA in nine starts after the trade. That’s a great 1-2 punch to have in a postseason series, especially the chaotic best-of-three wild card round.
Is all of that going to be enough for the Orioles to fight for their first World Series title since 1983? Maybe with their injured players coming back added to what they’ve already got working in their favor, the Orioles can be this year’s team that figures out how to solve its problems in time for October.