TT: This is who the Orioles are right now (23-27 in last 50 games)

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

47 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

The vibes are off and the Sox are quickly gaining by getting healthier. They’re the better team, tbh. Twins, Royals are on their heels. 

I'd say today's game is close to a must win as possible (at least in the short term). Red Sox are going to have some serious momentum going if they take 3 out of 4 this weekend. Burnes now has a 5.40 second half era. Burnes and Grayson were keeping this team afloat because they were generally reliable.

That's gone now Burnes has been mediocre lately and Grayson is on the IL. Eflin and Suarez are the only things keeping this pitching staff from being a total loss currently.

If the players on the IL can return and perform at expectations along with Burnes getting back to his first half performance this team as a chance in October. Fans thinking the light switch is going to turn on and this team will return to it's 100 win form from last season that's not reality.

There are way too many if's with the Orioles. I think the team will make the playoffs, but they are on the precipice of a major in-season collapse. The number of player injuries and Elias not addressing the bullpen enough last offseason might be too much to overcome.

Edited August 18 by OsFanSinceThe80s

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

38 minutes ago, vab said:

I'm just staying in the "Just gotta get it right by October" mode, I don't care about the division. They just have to keep grinding, keep mixing and matching, keep working on roles for these new pieces they're trying to incorporate and get some of these injured key pieces back. 

This is where I'm at too just get into the playoffs and get the players on the IL healthy. I'd prefer to win the division, but in the expanded playoff format having the best record doesn't mean much in a short series.

Burnes has been shaky and that's a concern with the razor thin starting pitching depth. Hoping it's just a slump for Burnes and he turns it around.

[Ohfan67]

4 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

The team we were in May and early June is long gone and it's times to face facts that this is not a slump, but what this team is at this point. When your 23-27 and your last 50 games, that's who you are currently.

So the question is why is this team not very good and is there anything that can be done about it?

Injuries
This team has been decimated by injuries but according to Fangraphs they've only lost 4.7 fWAR to injuries this year which is 20th worse. Now I don't know how accurate that is but it does go to show that this team hasn't been bit by injuries more than most other contending teams. 

Losing Bradish, Wells, Means, Rodriguez, Coulombe, Mateo, and Westburg for significant amounts of time have certainly hurt, but out of them, only Rodriguez, Coulombe, Mateo, and Westburg have been out during this poor run and Rodriguez only for what, the last two weeks or so? 

So let's look at the players who replaced these four:

Urias/Mayo for Westburg: Urias is who he is at this point and has slashed .229/.263/.400/.663 in 38 PAs since Aug 1st and we know Mayo was a disaster slashing .059/.200/.059/.259 in his short 20 PA stint. So the loss of Westburg has been pretty big.

Suarez for Rodriguez: In the two starts Rodriguez would have made since (he would have pitched last night too but Suarez was pushed back to today) Suarez has not allowed a run 11.2 innings. So while we lose Suarez in the pen, where he hasn't exactly been nails, He has done well replacing Grayson.

Mateo: Until bringing up Livan Soto the other day, the Orioles never have really replaced the utility expert but have gone with a series of infielders and outfielders as extra guys, none of which were ever used very effectively by Hyde and more of so less sat in the bench. Norby, Stowers, Maton, Kjerstad and more playing time for Urias all were his replacement. 

Perez/Soto/Krook/Vespi/Baker/many others for Coulombe: Now the biggest loss in my opinion was when Coulombe went down on 8 Jun. The Orioles have not been able to find another high leverage lefty to help in the pen so that means Perez got bumped up from his 6th/7t inning role to higher leverage. 

Now Perez hasn't been terrible in high leverage situations:

But he absolutely struggles with two outs and runners in scoring position.

His 27% inherited runners scored is the best of his career, but Coulombe hadn't allowed an inherited runner to score all season, stranding all 13 runners he inherited after having a 22% rate last season.

We all know Soto has been an utter disaster for the Orioles, Vespi was more of a mop up guy, and Krook is a AAAA lefty. So in the end, losing Coulombe has certainly hurt.

Clutch Hitting:

The Orioles offense overall since June 21st (50 game stretch) has been the 4th best for fWAR (9.4) that is dragged down a bit by their -11.3 fWAR defense. But how clutch are they over this period? Well, according to Fan Graphs Clutch rankings, the Orioles are the 20th best clutch team.

So how about that bullpen, how clutch are they? How about 24th or 6th worse in the MLB over this span.

How many times has the bullpen just come in a shutdown the opponents in close games? As per fangraphs "A Shutdown is when a reliever accumulates greater than or equal to 0.06 WPA in any individual game. The number of Shutdowns are scaled to Saves + Holds, which is where the .06 thresholds originated."

How about 27 of 30?

So basically we have an offensive team and a bullpen that are anti clutch. This why this team is so frustrating to watch. Those close games and comebacks that the Orioles were known for last year has been replaced by one of the worse clutch teams in baseball.

So basically we have a team that when they win, they do it without needing clutch situations to win. Luckily they do have an offense and a few starters that generally give them a chance to win like that. But when this team is in those tie games or down or up by one late, don't get your hopes up with this crew. 

So what can be done about this? Honestly, not much now that the trade deadline has come and gone. Elias' trades netted three guys who have helped in Eflin, Dominguez and Jimenez to a lesser extent, and two guys who have been disasters so far in Soto and Rogers. 

The Orioles are now living and dying with Urias at 3B, McCann starting more than he should because of Adley's back, and a bullpen that literally has not one guy you feel totally confident in coming in a shutting a team down. When you add in their unclutchiness, you get a team that is not a lot of fun to watch late in close games and there's not a lot Elias can do at this point but hope guys snap out of there funks and become the guys they were last year.

Good stuff Tony. In the last two years, the bullpen could shut offenses down enough to allow the Orioles a real chance. This year the bullpen lets a lot of games get away after the Orioles rally. And as you note the offense had done a poorer job of cashing in when needed. It’s getting harder to be optimistic about the end of the season and the postseason. 

[e16bball]

Just want to mention that the “unclutch” portion of this is just a measure of recent results/outcomes, not anything that’s a real trait or characteristic of these players. Though I personally would probably make an exception for Cowser, who I think appears to have a bit of a Haysian tendency to press way too much in big situations.

But otherwise, this is basically the same team as last year. And last year, the hitters rated #1 in the league in the “clutch” metric. The relievers ranked #5 in the league in the same. 

There is very little predictive value in that particular measure. Being good (or bad) at it for a while means very little about whether you’ll continue to be good (or bad) at it moving forward. I would not be at all surprised if we ended up being top 5 “clutch” team for the rest of the season. That’s where we all have to hope that things start to click, because it makes a huge difference in the outcomes without any major change in the actual skills.

[ORIOLE33]

Right now I want to give this team that old Buttermaker speech from the Bad News Bears when he lit into the team. "For years, you've been laughed at, crapped on and now you have a chance to spit it back in their faces and what do you do? You're out their like a bunch of dead fish."

[waroriole]

With the lack of defense and situational hitting this team seems very fundamentally unsound. Add things like veteran’s refusal to hold runners and I just don’t think they have the right guy leading this team. No opinion on who would be the right person, but I don’t think it’s Hyde. 

[accinfo]

6 minutes ago, waroriole said:

With the lack of defense and situational hitting this team seems very fundamentally unsound. Add things like veteran’s refusal to hold runners and I just don’t think they have the right guy leading this team. No opinion on who would be the right person, but I don’t think it’s Hyde. 

Yes firing the manager will make all the injured players healthy again.  His pinch hitters this year are hitting 360.  Seems to be making many good decisions in those situations.  

[Aristotelian]

13 minutes ago, waroriole said:

With the lack of defense and situational hitting this team seems very fundamentally unsound. Add things like veteran’s refusal to hold runners and I just don’t think they have the right guy leading this team. No opinion on who would be the right person, but I don’t think it’s Hyde. 

Is this something Kimbrel and Burnes just started doing under Hyde? 

I wonder if the 12 teams above us in SB allowed will also fire their managers.

[StottyByNature]

I’m always dubious of the idea of being clutch.  Certainly there are going to be players who are able to remain in control of themselves when the pressure ramps up, but for the most part in a game like baseball there is randomness to it.

This is why I cringed at the idea that the floor of this team was last years win total because it was over-inflated by some perhaps lucky (albeit exciting) comebacks and well-matched run totals in some series.  To wit, in this past series we scored 5, 10, 1, and 4 runs.  The Sox scored 1, 12, 5, and 2 runs.  You could take those totals and make this a 3-1 series win for the O’s which happened a lot last year.

This is partly why I believe the baseball playoffs can be a bit of a crapshoot.  As long as we can get Rodriguez and Westburg back I still think we have as good of a chance as anyone assuming we get to the playoffs. 

[luismatos4prez]

2 minutes ago, StottyByNature said:

I’m always dubious of the idea of being clutch.  Certainly there are going to be players who are able to remain in control of themselves when the pressure ramps up, but for the most part in a game like baseball there is randomness to it.

This is why I cringed at the idea that the floor of this team was last years win total because it was over-inflated by some perhaps lucky (albeit exciting) comebacks and well-matched run totals in some series.  To wit, in this past series we scored 5, 10, 1, and 4 runs.  The Sox scored 1, 12, 5, and 2 runs.  You could take those totals and make this a 3-1 series win for the O’s which happened a lot last year.

This is partly why I believe the baseball playoffs can be a bit of a crapshoot.  As long as we can get Rodriguez and Westburg back I still think we have as good of a chance as anyone assuming we get to the playoffs. 

Agreed.

What we think of as clutch is often an outstanding player who played on outstanding teams and thus had time to shine in big moments.

Derek Jeter, Reggie Jackson, and David Ortiz's playoff numbers are not significantly different than their regular season numbers.

[glenn__davis]

I actually like that the "clutch" numbers are down a bit.  That should turn around.

I can certainly put a positive spin on this.  Outside of Santander I'd say no one has been particularly "good" in this stretch, at least not compared to expectations.  Even Burnes has had his lulls.  We've had injuries, we've some lacking performances, we have guys like Mounty and O'Hearn who I think have 2 HRs combined in the past month or so.

They're really not playing very well, and what does that look like?  Around a .500 team.  This roster playing "poorly" is around a .500 team.  They're not in freefall as some of the resident Chicken Littles might have you believe, they're not in any serious danger of missing the playoffs (could it happen?  Sure but not likely).  It's mid-August and they're a good Skubal performance away from being tied for 1st again.

I agree this team hasn't been humming for a while, but if not humming is around a .500 club, it could be a lot worse.  Let's just hope they've got a good stretch coming up in about a month and a half.

[mddisney]

this team has been through a lot with the injuries esp to the starting rotation.  I sure hope that they get on track and sweep the Mets.  The rest of season is going to be a challenge.... 

[Sports Guy]

Let’s not forget that we had unsustainable RIsP numbers last year and Frazier was excellent in those situations.  Those are random stats.

The Os, as a team, are actually third in all of baseball in WPA. They are 16th in the clutch metric that FG uses.

Edited August 18 by Sports Guy

[glenn__davis]

7 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Let’s hope forget that we had unsustainable RIsP numbers last year and Frazier was excellent in those situations.  Those are random stats.

The Os, as a team, are actually third in all of baseball in WPA. They are 16th in the clutch metric that FG uses.

Yeah, last year was kind of a magical year where everything just went well all year.  Those years are rare even for great teams.  It's why many thought this year's team might actually be better but with a worse record.

Even with some guys struggling they're still grinding and hanging in there.  Now some of that for sure is also that no other teams have really wanted to run away with it this year.

[HowAboutThat]

6 hours ago, survivedc said:

Higher upside? I’d say the team that has been 20 games over .500 since June, that has a CY Young winner, an MVP candidate and another guy 2nd in the league in home runs. 

And yet, despite those guys, the Os have been under .500 in the last 50 games, and it hasn’t been close. I think that validates @LookitsPuck’s point.

The Os are a good team playing dreadfully badly. They were playing badly before all the losses, and now they are playing worse.

The tend is downward. We can only hope they figure out the problem and improve the basic quality of play.