Still think this team didn't choke under pressure?

[baltfan]

20 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

Not that it matters but how do you know he wasn't?

He just doesn't appear to be, but I admit he could have been and we just couldn't tell.  

[Tony-OH]

57 minutes ago, EddeeEddee said:

I don't really consider it choking when a team that has struggled for several months loses two games in a row.  The O's went 29-37 since July 7 (the date when they tied their best W/L margin for the season).  The offense had showed the ability to go utterly MIA some time after the All Star Break.  This was just more of that.

You do know that this is not just because of just two games, right? The two games were just a culmination of the concerns that many of us were highlighting over the second half. 

[JR Oriole]

Brandon Lowe to me is a good example of how I think playoff nerves and previous performances can have a big impact a player. Regular season 16.0 WAR, OPS of .812.....pretty solid and consistent player across the board over his 7 seasons.

But in the postseason over 120 plate appearances, he is a .115 hitter with an OPS of .423.  120 plate appearances is not that small of a postseason sample size all things considered, and what I wonder about with a guy like him is how much pressure he puts on himself to come through after failing in the past. And I can see it just building on itself.  

Adam Jones was a very poor postseason player relative to his regular season accomplishments, but his 63 plate appearances were a lot less than Lowe.  

David Ortiz was a beast in the regular season and a beast in the playoffs, so really he was a guy who was able to perform just as well under big pressure as he did in the regular season.

 

[terpoh]

6 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

What stats do you look at to determine if it was a good offense or not?

Well, my point was that the season stats were skewed because of what we did in the earlier parts of the season. We led baseball in home runs by a large margin, and thus, we scored a lot of runs. We were up near 55% of our runs being scored by the homerun when things were rolling. I don’t know what that number was later but wouldn’t surprised me if it was even higher.

The writing was on the wall that when our torrid homerun pace slowed, so would our run production. Much more so than a team who scored in a more Balanced fashion.

so while the overall runs per game was high throughout the season, it was not a representation of what the offense was doing in August and September. We finished 4th in mlb I believe which looks great, but we were 1st for a large portion of the season.

[Sports Guy]

4 minutes ago, terpoh said:

Well, my point was that the season stats were skewed because of what we did in the earlier parts of the season. We led baseball in home runs by a large margin, and thus, we scored a lot of runs. We were up near 55% of our runs being scored by the homerun when things were rolling. I don’t know what that number was later but wouldn’t surprised me if it was even higher.

The writing was on the wall that when our torrid homerun pace slowed, so would our run production. Much more so than a team who scored in a more Balanced fashion.

so while the overall runs per game was high throughout the season, it was not a representation of what the offense was doing in August and September. We finished 4th in mlb I believe which looks great, but we were 1st for a large portion of the season.

They were 15th in runs scored in both August and September. Not great but not completely horrific either…they also were incredibly unlucky as well.

[Roll Tide]

7 hours ago, BRobinsonfan said:

First.  Adley's fall off the cliff is most troubling.

And the 2nd half was abysmal - there's no denying that.  But how much do you attribute to injuries and how much to "approach" or coaching?  I don't think management did a great job in replacing those injured players. 

One thing I wonder about is the difference in OBP between 2024 and 2023.  It seems like OBP was down league wide - but the O's went from .321 in 2023 to .315.  It does seem like they changed they de-emphasized getting on base at the expense of the long ball.  Adley went from .374 in OBP in 2023 to .318 this year - a 56 point drop.  Home runs are nice, but you need to have some people on base when you hit them.  While our 2024 HR total was 235 (as compared to 183 in 2023) our runs scored fell from 807 in 2023 to 786 this year.   

If you want to attribute some of it to Westburg getting beaned or the Mateo accident fine. I’m not blaming the pitching. There were too many times where the Orioles did little against the mediocre 5 ERA starters in the second half. 

[EddeeEddee]

2 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

You do know that this is not just because of just two games, right? The two games were just a culmination of the concerns that many of us were highlighting over the second half. 

Then I guess they were choking for about three months.  I'm just saying the term "choke" suggests a team playing well that suddenly stopped playing well.  Not that the Orioles were god awful the second half, but they were bad enough that we were all gnashing our teeth most days.   

[terpoh]

40 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

They were 15th in runs scored in both August and September. Not great but not completely horrific either…they also were incredibly unlucky as well.

Yea. Surprised to see 15th for September, but would bet it was coincided with our homerun pace slowing. We were unlucky and running 3-4 non MLB level starters out there every night.

[Tony-OH]

35 minutes ago, EddeeEddee said:

Then I guess they were choking for about three months.  I'm just saying the term "choke" suggests a team playing well that suddenly stopped playing well.  Not that the Orioles were god awful the second half, but they were bad enough that we were all gnashing our teeth most days.   

I guess I'm not sure why that term bothers you so much. I mean, choking vs performing poorly under pressure is pretty much the same for me. If the tone is softened by just saying that they performed poorly under pressure, I'm fine with using that.

At the end of the day, I truly feel this team allowed pressure to affect their performance offensively. The more they failed, the more they put pressure on themselves. This is why they tended to break out in games where they would all hit. I think the pressure was released a bit and their talents came through.

Then, the next game after a slow start, it was more of the "Here we go again," mentality which again caused pressure to build. They are humans and most humans react differently under stress/pressure.  

[Baseball fandom]

3 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

You do know that this is not just because of just two games, right? The two games were just a culmination of the concerns that many of us were highlighting over the second half. 

Tony I think after reading EddeeEddee post he's actually agreeing with you but what he's saying is that it wasn't a choke job because what we saw from these 2 games is how they've been playing since June. . I guess his point was it would be a choke job if they were rolling coming into the playoffs and then these 2 games like this. 

[Baseball fandom]

6 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I guess I'm not sure why that term bothers you so much. I mean, choking vs performing poorly under pressure is pretty much the same for me. If the tone is softened by just saying that they performed poorly under pressure, I'm fine with using that.

At the end of the day, I truly feel this team allowed pressure to affect their performance offensively. The more they failed, the more they put pressure on themselves. This is why they tended to break out in games where they would all hit. I think the pressure was released a bit and their talents came through.

Then, the next game after a slow start, it was more of the "Here we go again," mentality which again caused pressure to build. They are humans and most humans react differently under stress/pressure.  

Ok now that I agree with too. 

[EddeeEddee]

12 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I guess I'm not sure why that term bothers you so much. I mean, choking vs performing poorly under pressure is pretty much the same for me. If the tone is softened by just saying that they performed poorly under pressure, I'm fine with using that.

At the end of the day, I truly feel this team allowed pressure to affect their performance offensively. The more they failed, the more they put pressure on themselves. This is why they tended to break out in games where they would all hit. I think the pressure was released a bit and their talents came through.

Then, the next game after a slow start, it was more of the "Here we go again," mentality which again caused pressure to build. They are humans and most humans react differently under stress/pressure.  

Yeah this isn't really worth arguing about and I sort of agree with you, but I can't ignore Adley being terrible for 3 months, Gunnar also going through a mini slump the past couple of weeks, Cowser just being Jekyll and Hyde throughout the season, and Santander's overall lack of plate discipline.  

On top of that the O's have been flat out dominated by some good starters the past few months -- the game against Snell is a good example.  And then they've also been shut down by some no name starters like that Cannon guy on the White Sox.  

This just isn't a team that has played confident baseball for a long time except maybe after winning their last 5 of 6 -- but even in those games the Yankees were not playing all out and the Twins looked like they had given up.

But in terms of pressure, we do have to give credit to the O's pitchers.  They were very good and seemed to handle the pressure well.  Maybe KC isn't that great of a hitting team overall, but the pitchers did a much better job handling playoff pressure than last season.  It makes me want Burnes back even more though I know it's unlikely.