One Inning Offense

[Bahama O's Fan]

Why does it seem that our offense is only good for one inning a game and then shuts down? Is it a psyche?

[Fla_O'sfan]

Be grateful when it is. Sometimes it isn't even one inning.

[LookitsPuck]

Was noticing that, too. Curious what stats are out there. Maybe this club just lacks an ability to make adjustments. Personally I think this club relies way too much on the homer.

[sportsfan8703]

We consistently let starters off the hook and get right back into the game. Gotta work at bats and don't let the pitcher get quick outs. It's been happening the last two years.

[ReclaimTheCrown]

Two baserunners after the second inning, I believe, tonight. One gets doubled off in a mindless play in the fifth, the other is a single in the 9th that we can't do anything with.

My cousin is traveling out of the country for the week, so I've been emailing him quick insights on the game each night. The sad part about tonight? I wrote my summary email for him between the third and fourth inning and predicted exactly what happened: that despite jumping out to a big lead, once we got down, we would shut down. Didn't change a word.

This is very, very difficult to watch right now. We are in serious trouble.

[islandecho]

This is no "rough patch".This is who we are.

Exactly.

[Bahama O's Fan]

Yesterday, our one inning offense got one run. I hope that's not the case today.

[Ori-Al]

Notice to Orioles pitchers and relievers: Baseball's rules allow a game to be won by a score of 1-0. How about doing that occasionally?

[allquixotic]

Notice to Orioles pitchers and relievers: Baseball's rules allow a game to be won by a score of 1-0. How about doing that occasionally?

Shutouts are relatively rare, even among the best rotations and pens in baseball. It takes a special kind of bad offense to fail to rake across at least one run in a nine-inning game. Most teams besides the Orioles will tend to have enough offensive pop to avoid being shut out more than a handful of times per year.

The O's have shut out other teams (and been shut out) this year, and they've done it at a rate that's nothing out of the ordinary, which is exactly what you would expect out of a pitching staff that is completely ordinary in quality.

Don't pin on pitching a problem that is purely offense-related. We've been losing tons of games with very respectable low scores on the opponent's side, somewhere in the range of 1 to 4 runs. It's much more likely that you'll be able to build an offense that can reliably score multiple runs (say, 3+) per game, with 1-or-less run games being quite the outlier, than that you'll be able to hire and retain pitching talent that can throw shutouts 30%+ of the time.