No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. The Orioles really are hitting into a ton of double plays.
The Orioles are an imperfect baseball team, and right now they’re playing like it. At 5-8, they’re last in the AL East, and they’re performing no better than average in offense or pitching. They’re not coming back in games, instead falling behind with bad starting pitching and then leaving runners aboard the bases.
Killing not just rallies but also the fans’ good mood have been ground-ball double plays. Lots of them. Wednesday’s 9-0 beating in Arizona featured two: the first came with a runner on and the O’s down 1-0 in the second, still very much a winnable game, until Ryan Mountcastle ended a potential rally. Come the sixth, Ryan O’Hearn helped erase a first and second, one-out situation with a GIDP of his own. That’s been the vibe.
It is no illusion that there have been too many of these. The Orioles are currently leading the pack, so to speak, in ground-ball double plays (16), more than any other club. This is a weird and odd development from last season, when their 71 double-play ground balls were last in the league, barely more than half as many as the Yankees had, with their league-leading 138. How does a team shift in offensive identity so quickly?
With such a sample size, we have to be careful, but we know a few things. The main offenders, with two GIDPs or more, in order, are Adley Rutschman, Ramón Laureano, Ryan Mountcastle and Heston Kjerstad. After that, you have seven Orioles with one apiece. Let’s leave out the latter for now.
As for Kjerstad, a closer look at the situation he hit these suggests we should chalk them up to bad luck. The lefty hit into a game-ending double play on April 5 against the Royals’ Daniel Lynch IV, but it was fluky. He pounded a fastball 98.4 mph into left field and two Orioles committed baserunning blunders. On April 8, he ended the game with a ball 102 mph off the bat against the D-backs’ Justin Martinez. Neither was a badly hit ball, so we shouldn’t fault Kjerstad’s approach.
Same for Ryan Mountcastle for now, too, who has two GIDP, as well. One came against the Royals’ Seth Lugo (clip below), the other against Arizona’s Brandon Pfaadt. Both came off the bat at over 99 mph, but straight at the infielders. Good contact here.
Laureano’s two GIDP give more reason for concern. Against Kansas City lefty Kris Bubic the right-handed Laureano saw two consecutive 91-mph fastballs and grounded the latter weakly to third. That’s not great, but it’s worth mentioning that Bubic is on fire this year, with 0.8 WAR, already matching in two games his total last year in 27! On March 31, he bounced into one against Red Sox lefty Sean Newcomb, swinging at a pitch way outside. These at-bats were kind of sucky.
Finally, Adley’s seem rooted more in bad luck than ineptitude, too. On March 31, Rutschman took a tricky sequence from Boston’s Newcomb, a curveball-slurve-sinker pattern featuring varied pitch velocity and location. On April 3, he stung a fastball 105.8 mph but right at second base. On April 4, he was simply fooled by Lucas Erceg, who threw him a 96-mph fastball high and away, then dotted a changeup low-and-outside to draw the weak contact.
There are worse pitchers to be bamboozled by. An average groundball rate for a pitcher is 43% or so. This year Erceg’s rate is a ridiculous 73%—unsustainable, but it does put Adley and the offense’s struggles in perspective.
Thus far, I think it’s safe to say that of the main double-play-groundball-hitting offenders, most of the results we’re seeing are bad luck. Only Ramón Laureano appears to be taking subpar at-bats, from what we can see. Otherwise, the robust exit velocities on these ground balls speak to a team making good contact at the plate. That’s sustainable even if the double play numbers hopefully aren’t.
We’ll have to keep an eye on this worrying trend, but based on what we’re seeing I don’t predict that the Orioles will stay stuck in the No. 1 slot for unproductive groundballs this entire season. This one feels like an unlucky spell. Hope they break out soon.