The injuries "excuse."

[Moose Milligan]

I wasn't really sure how to word the options in the poll, so feel free to read here and vote accordingly.

But it seems like there are some factions forming here on the OH surrounding the injuries the Orioles have suffered this season. 

Poll answer 1:  The first faction seems to be tossing up their hands about the injuries and using that as a reason why the Orioles haven't been performing well lately.  I don't need to rattle off the names of the injured players that have spent time on the IL as you already know them...but it's a list of significant contributors.  The first faction seems to feel that it's been a stretch of bad luck and there's nothing that could have been done to supplant the sheer amount of guys on the IL with trade acquisitions and guys up from the minors. 

Poll answer 2:  The other faction seems to think that the IL list is an excuse that that, somehow, Elias should have baked in contingency plans for every one of these players going down and that the "depth" should have been able to replace these players without any questions asked.  That failing to being able to replace the starting pitchers, bullpen pitchers and position players adequately is some sort of an indictment on his plans, his strategies and the fact that he "loves being the smartest person in the room."  To this faction, injuries merely should be a bump in the road and this train should have kept rolling without the players they've lost and the "depth" that has been mythologized around here is a mirage.  No matter how you chop it up, this is all Elias' fault and probably a little bit of Hyde's, too, seems to be the reasoning here.

Poll answer 3:  Anyway, that's how I see these two different camps.  I'm sure there's a third faction, where the stance is "somewhere in the middle" between the two positions so I've added that as an "other" option to the poll.  

 

[gtman55]

I voted Faction 1, but there's no concise answer for all this.

I honestly think there are only a handful of teams that could sustain the amount of injuries we've suffered.

I blame Elias for not being pro-active enough in the off-season when he knew Bradish and Means were iffy and Baustista was out. Burnes was a good move. Kimbrel? Yuck. And his trade deadline moves other than Eflin were "meh".

Hyde isn't the main problem but some of his decisions have been head scratchers.

The bottom line is the players gotta produce. And all too often, in the biggest moments, they've come up small.

[ChosenOne21]

I mean, we've had what seems like a ridiculous amount of injuries, but that doesn't excuse the healthy players slumping. And while maybe Elias could have done a better job building depth, I think it's nuts to expect him to have someone solid ready to step in for everyone who went down this year.

Edited August 23 by ChosenOne21

[Too Tall]

Injuries have been beyond belief compared to previous years but that is not the only problem I see and we are not the only team to sustain injuries. I don't like our hitting approach and depth in pitching. We've become inconsistent on offense and defense. This team use to have a spark - a swagger. They are either young and tired or beaten down by circumstance. I don't see leadership among the players. So I voted in between but with a bent to number one because I think that straw may be more than this young group can overcome. The Eflin IL was probably the nail.

[now]

Yeah, what they said. It's not just the injuries, and it's not all on Elias or Hyde. It's the players who have either regressed, failed to step up, or booted games away with shoddy fielding and failures in clutch situations. 

[Otter]

I'm in the middle.  Our play over the past two months is partly due to injuries and partly due to Elias' failure to build up sufficient pitching depth throughout the organization.  We were extremely lucky with injuries last year and this year we've been extremely unlucky...which tells me we're about even on karma and it's really not fair to put all the blame for our struggles on injuries.  Elias knew about the Bradish injury in January, and knew Means' and Wells' histories and fragility.

[Moshagge3]

In the last twelve days, the O's have lost games where the following happened:

-Albert Suarez throws 6.2 shutout innings

-Cade Povich throws 6.1 innings, 2 ER

-Cole Irvin throws 4.1 innings, 2 ER

-Trevor Rogers and Keegan Akin combine for 7 innings, 3 ER

Is Grayson Rodriguez exceeding that performance if he's healthy? I'm skeptical.

As for Westburg's injury, Urias has a .853 OPS since Westburg went down. He's filling in just fine.

[now]

3 minutes ago, Moshagge3 said:

As for Westburg's injury, Urias has a .853 OPS since Westburg went down. He's filling in just fine.

I was going to qualify that "just fine" with some of Urias's fielding lapses (along with a few gems), then remembered that Westburg had his own defensive miscues start to happen with more regularity. 

[Sanfran327]

When this much of your team is injured, it's no longer the real team. That we're still hanging around and near the best record in the league says a lot about the quality of the depth Elias has built up and acquired. 

I'm part of the "gotta tread water for another 4 weeks" club. We'll see how we look when we get our guys back. 

[LGOrioles]

The injuries have hurt on the pitching side especially and Westburg is a legitimately great player. But the last 2 months are still inexcusable.

They still have enough talent in their lineup to be a top 5 scoring team and with the pitching they’ve had at times (they still had G Rod and Webb most of that time frame and Eflin gave them 3 amazing starts), there’s zero reason they should be 25-30 in their last 55 games, with many losses not even being close. The players on the roster right now are capable of being much better than they have been recently. Getting Rodriguez, Eflin, Westburg, Coulombe, and Webb back isn’t going to help as much as we expect if guys like Rutschman, Burnes, Kimbrel, and Mountcastle continue to be terrible. 

[Surhoffan17]

9 minutes ago, now said:

Yeah, what they said. It's not just the injuries, and it's not all on Elias or Hyde. It's the players who have either regressed, failed to step up, or booted games away with shoddy fielding and failures in clutch situations. 

This. I don't want to single out Adley, but his struggles are the most perplexing and I think hurtful. Any of you guys with a better baseball eye see what's going on with him? Seems he swings early and often which was uncharacteristic, but that can't be the only thing? 

[Surhoffan17]

17 minutes ago, Moshagge3 said:

In the last twelve days, the O's have lost games where the following happened:

-Albert Suarez throws 6.2 shutout innings

-Cade Povich throws 6.1 innings, 2 ER

-Cole Irvin throws 4.1 innings, 2 ER

-Trevor Rogers and Keegan Akin combine for 7 innings, 3 ER

Is Grayson Rodriguez exceeding that performance if he's healthy? I'm skeptical.

As for Westburg's injury, Urias has a .853 OPS since Westburg went down. He's filling in just fine.

Perfectly put. To add to that, how much better would Bradish have been than some of those performances? The hitting is much of the recent issue. But we get those stupid games like the 9-5 win and 12-10 loss that skews our runs scored!

[wse120372]

14 minutes ago, Moshagge3 said:

In the last twelve days, the O's have lost games where the following happened:

-Albert Suarez throws 6.2 shutout innings

-Cade Povich throws 6.1 innings, 2 ER

-Cole Irvin throws 4.1 innings, 2 ER

-Trevor Rogers and Keegan Akin combine for 7 innings, 3 ER

Is Grayson Rodriguez exceeding that performance if he's healthy? I'm skeptical.

As for Westburg's injury, Urias has a .853 OPS since Westburg went down. He's filling in just fine.

This is the piece that has sucked my enjoyment out of this season. It goes back to Tony's post a few days ago regarding just how "anti-clutch" this team is right now. Players step up and nothing else goes right.

Everything just feels so empty. Kinda like drinking Milwaukee's Best after your palate has adjusted to Guinness. 

[HowAboutThat]

Part of it is of course the injuries, but that doesn’t cover everything. I vote for bad defense. Mateo’s defense is spectacular, and second base is really significant. Elias promoted three substandard Defense guys: Mayo, Holliday and Kjerstad. None of them has been here all season, but each has contributed bad defense that led to losses. And Gunnar has been playing awful defense, the whole left side has been playing sloppy fundamentals,as Frobby pointed out a couple nights ago.

I don’t mind winning a game 2-1, and we’ve been able to score runs and get a lead, and then cough it right back up with crummy D what, 5 times? Seven times? Certainly “Several times” cannot be argued.

So, despite everything, clean D would have made the difference between comfortable first place and a Schmuck article about not making the playoffs.

The injuries would overwhelm even the most prepared GM, but it can’t really be denied that Mike Elias didn’t make adequate preparations. It would be impossible to do everything, but he could have and should have done more. He knew what depth he had, knew what he needed, and decided to go into the season with that depth instead of making any additional impact trades or signings.
 

Maybe that’s because of the ownership situation, but that’s a thin excuse, when trades were still possible, and after Elias was able to blow at least 14 million on a tired closer in his mid-30s.

So defense.

The question of why the defense is so bad, when it was so good over the previous season +, and there have been no coaching changes, is the big question.

Edited August 23 by HowAboutThat

[AdamK]

The injuries to pitchers feels so rampant that I worry our pitching lab (or whatever) approach is contributing to it. 

I think this is excessive and I don't blame Elias, but I also hope the adjustments or optimizations we're asking pitchers to make isn't introducing mechanics that lead to injury.