Thursday September 21: Orioles vs Guardians, nationally televised on Fox

[OriolesMagic83]

1 minute ago, Gurgi said:

I think Ortiz can do that next year and be cheaper.

Probably.  I would bet that Ortiz or Urias gets traded.  No room for both of them on this team.

[Gurgi]

2 minutes ago, baltfan said:

He has a lot of really bad health problems.  It’s apparently very hard for him to even get out of bed in the morning.  

Didnt know all this.  You can see he looks chubby but not in a quite normal way but different.  Hard to exactly describe. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

Just now, eddie83 said:

Is the pen the issue or are they overworked? I get ticked off when media at times blames a bad outing on usage but the pen is tired right now. 

The overall quality of this bullpen has been decent. This isn't the Orioles bullpen that we got used to seeing during the 2012 to 2016 run. Bautista covered up a lot of the warts with his shear dominance until he got hurt.

[SteveA]

1 minute ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Bullpen needs to be a top priority this off-season. I really wanted Elias to trade for a good reliever at the trade deadline. Not that I predicted Bautista would get hurt, but you can never have too much bullpen depth late in the season.

Our bullpen was very good this year.   They were just worked to death from the start of the season.   They aren't tired just because of overuse lately.   They are tired because they have been overused ALL YEAR.   We weren't going deep enough in games with our starters all year, then Wells ran out of gas.   We won all those close, late inning games throughout the year on the strength of the bullpen but we were wearing them down.   

We didn't bring in enough quality pitching at the deadline, like you say.

But I don't think our pen was constructed poorly.  It was a good pen.  We just had to use it too much and didn't bring in reinforcements.

The big question is:   did we not make trades because Elias didn't want to give away any precious prospects, or was he not allowed to bring in anyone making any significant salary, or did he want to make deals but teams were demanding too much?   We may never know.

[Gurgi]

Wish we had peak Britton back.   

[Uli2001]

My guess it’s going to be that the game yesterday affect todays game. They were deflated. This is exactly what happened after the St Louis 1-0 game last week. Hopefully the funk will be gone by tomorrow. This team has bounced back all season long. I think they will one more time.

[Uli2001]

1 minute ago, SteveA said:

Our bullpen was very good this year.   They were just worked to death from the start of the season.   They aren't tired just because of overuse lately.   They are tired because they have been overused ALL YEAR.   We weren't going deep enough in games with our starters all year, then Wells ran out of gas.   We won all those close, late inning games throughout the year on the strength of the bullpen but we were wearing them down.   

We didn't bring in enough quality pitching at the deadline, like you say.

But I don't think our pen was constructed poorly.  It was a good pen.  We just had to use it too much and didn't bring in reinforcements.

The big question is:   did we not make trades because Elias didn't want to give away any precious prospects, or was he not allowed to bring in anyone making any significant salary, or did he want to make deals but teams were demanding too much?   We may never know.

 

[Uli2001]

Do you have numbers to back up this claim of overuse? How does it compare to the rest of MLB? Honest question.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

2 minutes ago, Gurgi said:

Wish we had peak Britton back.   

I'd settle for Felix Bautista not being injured. He bumps Cano, Perez and everyone else back to pitching the 6th, 7th and 8th innings.

[EddeeEddee]

10 minutes ago, baltfan said:

Grayson was almost at 100 pitches. 

I get that but this shaky bullpen may cost us more games if they are expected to pitch 3-4 or more innings in a close game.  Eventually some of the starters may need to go more than 100 pitches on occasion.  Unless our offense erupts until the end of the season, it's hard to imagine this bullpen (i.e. no Bautista, Wells or Tate) shutting down the opposition on a consistent basis.

[SteveA]

3 minutes ago, Uli2001 said:

Do you have numbers to back up this claim of overuse? How does it compare to the rest of MLB? Honest question.

We are second in the league in most games pitched by relievers, behind Cincinnati.

 

[Uli2001]

Cleveland seems to be a house of horrors for the Orioles. I still remember 1997. Now go win the next three.

[Uli2001]

29 minutes ago, SteveA said:

We are second in the league in most games pitched by relievers, behind Cincinnati.

 

Most games? Do you mean most innings?

[EddeeEddee]

20 minutes ago, SteveA said:

We are second in the league in most games pitched by relievers, behind Cincinnati.

 

Interesting.  But both Fangraphs and MLB shows Orioles' relievers as only the 20th most used in terms of innings pitched -- 542 innings -- far fewer than Tampa at 618 innings (4th most).  So if the O's bullpen is struggling it's not because of the number of innings. 

So maybe recent bp struggles are more to do with the quality of the relievers we've picked up since the deadline like Fujinami and Lopez -- more so than the bp as a whole being overused.  

[SteveA]

10 minutes ago, Uli2001 said:

Most games? Do you mean most innings?

No, most games used by relievers.