The Red Sox Series, 9/9-9/11

[Just Regular]

The Red Sox joined the Orioles yesterday in dropping a game to the White Sox last week, and were swept in their non-White Sox series, but Minnesota's stumbles are keeping them in vague striking distance of AL6.    They go to Yankee Stadium for the big 4-game series right after this one.

The pitching matchups - AL Active Roster K-bb standing as SP, 50 inning minimum, a batch of 65 today:

(62) Povich v. (43) Bello

(53) Suarez v. (30) Kutter C.

(48) Kremer v. (5) Pivetta

The Orioles starters perhaps tier like Burnes-Eflin-Grayson, then gap, then these three.    All are capable of throwing good games.    ERA is kinder - Suarez and Kremer 22nd and 43rd there, giving some representation above the Bottom 25%.    Sooner or later, one or more of these pitchers will have the Nestor Cortes Life Experience as the finish line nears.

Trevor Story's bad shoulder injury early has ended up not being season ending and he is 2 games back.   An infielder with pop, he maybe gives a little preview of the kind of rust Westburg may be trying to shed fast in a couple weeks.

Impending free agent Tyler O'Neill is the hottest bat - Duran and Devers have been cooler lately.    Devers and Ceddanne Rafaela's last 30 days wRC+'s are in the 50's, lower than Adley's in the 60's, but not lower than Holliday's in the 40's, among qualified Bats.

Manny Machado look alike Brennan Bernardino is the only LHP on the staff for the moment, so maybe a chance for Orioles platoon sensitive bats to get going a little bit. 

Povich's 5.76 ERA 12 starts into his career I believe without looking it up beats Bradish and Grayson's, and he is coming off a fine game.    Are his Rookie Integration Taxes paid up?     Fenway traditionally tough on all LHP.

[Sports Guy]

Hopefully Cowser can find some of his Fenway magic again this week.

[Moose Milligan]

Looking forward to Bello schooling us again like he has all season.  3 games, and our slash is .180/.286/.279 against him.  That's right, our slugging is lower than our OBP against him.

I might not even watch tonight.  

I mean, who am I kidding?  I'll watch, but it'll be hate-watching.

[Fiver6565]

4 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Looking forward to Bello schooling us again like he has all season.  3 games, and our slash is .180/.286/.279 against him.  That's right, our slugging is lower than our OBP against him.

I might not even watch tonight.  

I mean, who am I kidding?  I'll watch, but it'll be hate-watching.

Feels like i‘m hate watching most games these days LOL. 
 

Any belief that this team is going to ‘go on a run’ is just blind faith at this point. This team is like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates - you really have no idea what team is going to be on the field. Will Povich give up 8 runs in three innings?  Or will he give up 1-2 in 6?  Will the offense mash 4 homers?  Or not even get 4 hits? Regardless of opponent you just can’t possibly anticipate. 
 

Also all these lineups with Jimenez, Maton , Rivera and the like are giving me 2021 vibes way too often. 

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, Fiver6565 said:

Feels like i‘m hate watching most games these days LOL. 
 

Any belief that this team is going to ‘go on a run’ is just blind faith at this point. This team is like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates - you really have no idea what team is going to be on the field. Will Povich give up 8 runs in three innings?  Or will he give up 1-2 in 6?  Will the offense mash 4 homers?  Or not even get 4 hits? Regardless of opponent you just can’t possibly anticipate. 
 

Also all these lineups with Jimenez, Maton , Rivera and the like are giving me 2021 vibes way too often. 

Yesterday was certainly a hate-watch.  Then I got in the truck and hate-listened while doing errands.

I'd like to see some guys come off the IL and get back to playing normal but the clock is ticking and I'm afraid that's too much to ask for.  I'd like to believe that the team can go on a run but as you said that's blind faith.

[RavensNOsGuy]

At this point if you told me they went 9-9 and finished 91-71 I'd be more than satisfied. Probably wouldnt be good enough for the division though unless 2 or 3 of the wins were against NYY.

Hard to see them beating any decent team in a series though right now.

[Moshagge3]

Usually a trip to Boston is a good prescription for an ailing offense. To take advantage of Fenway Park you have to hit it out of the infield, though.

[Jim'sKid26]

Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint but this team looks like an overweight and non-athletic weekend warrior trying to complete a 10K. It's not fun to watch. 

[LookitsPuck]

Will be lucky to win 1. The unfortunate thing here is that this offense just hasn't gotten it going. 

32 runs in 7 games in September. Yeah, that sounds solid at 4.6 R/G. But 2 of those games were against the White Sox where the Orioles scored 22. That means in the other 5 games they've scored a whopping 10 runs or a miserly 2 R/G. That is downright pathetic, and once again - that's not playoff caliber. 

Even before the month turned to September, prior to hitting in hitter friendly Colorado, they barely averaged 3 R/G against Houston and the Dodgers.

It seems if you take out the few huge offensive explosions, this club finds it hard to score 3-4 runs/game. I reckon the median runs scored for this team lately has probably been around 3 or 4. And that's just not good enough, to be honest.

[LookitsPuck]

2 hours ago, Moshagge3 said:

Usually a trip to Boston is a good prescription for an ailing offense. To take advantage of Fenway Park you have to hit it out of the infield, though.

Or make it out of the batter's box.

[OriolesMagic83]

3 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Looking forward to Bello schooling us again like he has all season.  3 games, and our slash is .180/.286/.279 against him.  That's right, our slugging is lower than our OBP against him.

I might not even watch tonight.  

I mean, who am I kidding?  I'll watch, but it'll be hate-watching.

Just be really negative and then if the O's win, you can say you were doing the reverse jinx.

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Just be really negative and then if the O's win, you can say you were doing the reverse jinx.

That's what I'm going for.

[dtk9119]

19 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

Will be lucky to win 1. The unfortunate thing here is that this offense just hasn't gotten it going. 

32 runs in 7 games in September. Yeah, that sounds solid at 4.6 R/G. But 2 of those games were against the White Sox where the Orioles scored 22. That means in the other 5 games they've scored a whopping 10 runs or a miserly 2 R/G. That is downright pathetic, and once again - that's not playoff caliber. 

Even before the month turned to September, prior to hitting in hitter friendly Colorado, they barely averaged 3 R/G against Houston and the Dodgers.

It seems if you take out the few huge offensive explosions, this club finds it hard to score 3-4 runs/game. I reckon the median runs scored for this team lately has probably been around 3 or 4. And that's just not good enough, to be honest.

Exactly what I was gonna say. 1 game, probably the Suarez game.. This offense is in the toilet with no end of the mediocrity in sight.

[RavensNOsGuy]

Their median runs per game based on baseball reference data is 4. So it is almost a full point lower than their mean of 4.93/game. So what that is saying is there has been many more games with 4 or less runs than 5 or more runs. FWIW, the mode is also 4 runs/game which is probably expected based on the other data points. My personal opinion is that the median/mode are much more powerful numbers after 144 games than the mean. Would need to compare this to other teams to see if there is as big of a delta or not.

 

Just looked at the Yankees and they have a mean of 5.03 runs/game and their median is 5. So their unbiased average is much closer to their biased average which is different than the O's.

Edited September 9 by RavensNOsGuy

[SteveA]

As badly as we have played for 2 months now, we STILL have not lost more than 2 in a row since before the All Star Break.   So I'm going to cling to that and say we get the W tonight.   Then one more in the series and take 2 of 3.

I am as perplexed by the hitting slump as everyone else.   But I refuse to believe it is "real" and somehow indicative of talent, and that it is impossible or even unlikely that we will break out of it.   Adley IS better than the numbers we have seen for several months.   Just by virtue of age, Holliday is a guaranteed lock to put up better overall numbers than he has so far.   O'Hearn, like Adley, has enough of a track record that we know he is better than what we have seen the last month or so.   Santander is slumping which was somewhat expected due to his great stretch, but that slump won't last forever either.

There's absolutely no reason this team should have so many games with no hits for the first 3-4 innings, or only 2 or 3 hits for the first 6, 7, innings or even the game.     It sure as hell leads me to question what kind of hitting coaching we have, but I refuse to believe the team we are putting out on the field should have those kind of games with the frequency that they have been.   So I can only conclude that it will end.   Gunnar has started getting hot.   If a couple more hitters join the fun it can be contagious.