[Baltimore Sun] 5 things we learned from the Orioles’ week, including a sad end for Craig Kimbrel
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The Orioles continued their malaise as they crept toward clinching a playoff spot, losing four of six to the Detroit Tigers and San Francisco Giants.
Here are five things we learned from their week:
The Orioles keep finding new versions of rock bottom
They had no chance.
The Giants scored in the top of the first, and out came Blake Snell to command the mound at Camden Yards. The two-time Cy Young Award winner froze his former teammate, Austin Slater, with a changeup. Next, he got Adley Rutschman to fly out meekly on a 97.2 mph fastball. He finished his opening stanza by striking out the Orioles’ best hitter, Gunnar Henderson, on three straight fastballs, the slowest of them 96.6 mph.
The score was 1-0 with eight innings to go, but already, hope had fled the ballpark. The game got much, much worse, with the Giants going off on starter Albert Suárez and sending Craig Kimbrel to DFA land with a humiliating ninth-inning barrage. The 10-0 final score was almost beside the point, however. The greater takeaway was that this version of the Orioles had no capacity to fight back against a pitcher of Snell’s quality.
We would never have said that about this club in the early months of the season. At their mid-June apex, the Orioles hammered four home runs off the Phillies’ Zack Wheeler and four days later, hung seven runs on the Yankees’ Luis Gil, the American League ERA leader at the time. Even when they couldn’t muster anything against a starter, they’d hang around and pull out a win against the bullpen.
That indomitable spirit is missing, or at least it was until Anthony Santander parked a walk-off home run in the right-field stands on Thursday to save the club from being swept by the Giants. Too often, the Orioles get behind and stay behind as they drag to the finish line. They’re still second in the AL in runs scored and first in slugging, but those numbers feel like vestiges of something that existed before, not reflections of what the club is now.
Manager Brandon Hyde never thought the misery could last so long. “Our offense is way better than we’re performing,” he said Thursday. “I was thinking today, we probably had eight or nine guys who could have made the All-Star game, and the second half has been rough for most of them. It’s just unfortunate.”
Injuries to Jordan Westburg, Ryan Mountcastle and Ramón Urias strained their depth. Top prospects Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo and Heston Kjerstad are fighting growing pains that come with hitting in the major leagues in your early 20s.
There are many explanations for how the Orioles lost the one-through-nine potency that characterized them early in the season. That doesn’t make it any less shocking to watch their helplessness at the plate night after night.
One hit against the Tigers last Friday felt like bottom. But then Snell came to Baltimore and toyed with them. They stranded eight runners against lesser pitchers the next night. With the playoffs less than two weeks away, the Orioles can only hope they’re done finding new depths.
Baseball careers rarely end in glory. Craig Kimbrel’s probable last chapter was a particular bummer.
Going out on top is the great lie of professional sports. Ted Williams got to be the god who did not answer letters, as John Updike wrote it after watching Williams homer (and not tip his cap) in his last major league at-bat.
The vast majority of players, even the greatest, stop not by choice but because they can no longer perform to acceptable standards. They fade into mildly sad twilight.
The Orioles bet, against loud objections from many fans, that Craig Kimbrel had one good year left. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)
The Orioles bet, against loud objections from many fans, that Kimbrel had one good year left. He would never be the blinding force from his early days with the Atlanta Braves. That guy was about as untouchable as any reliever in baseball history. But Kimbrel still struck out 12.3 batters per nine innings and made the All-Star team for the Phillies in 2023. Perhaps he could still spin his curve and buzz his high fastball enough to keep the Orioles afloat while Félix Bautista healed up for 2025.
It worked in the first half of the season. Kimbrel started great and bounced back from a rough stretch well enough to make another compelling All-Star case. In mid-July, he lost it. He couldn’t throw strikes when he wanted to. He couldn’t keep the ball in the park. His velocity dropped. Every quality that made him great was suddenly beyond his grasp, and he couldn’t grab them back.
Hyde tried to give him chances when he couldn’t do any damage. But it became clear the Orioles could not trust Kimbrel to pitch in the postseason. They cut the cord after the Giants piled six runs on him in 2/3 of an inning.
Perhaps some other club will give the 36-year-old Kimbrel a chance in 2025, if he even wants that. But it’s difficult to envision after watching him pitch the last two months.
Kimbrel thrived far longer than most on the high wire that is a big league’s closer’s life. At his best, he was one of the best ever. He might make the Hall of Fame. All those points matter more than the depressing sight of watching him walk off the mound at Camden Yards on Tuesday night, unable to get one last out.
Corbin Burnes’ win in Detroit was the best thing that’s happened to the Orioles this month
As Hyde pointed out Thursday, the Orioles are pitching well enough to win most nights. If we’re searching for a glimmer in the gloom, that’s it.
Burnes, the club’s ace through four months and a major reason for its postseason optimism, was part of the problem in August, allowing 28 hits and 34 runs in 25 2/3 innings. He had come back from ugly months during his great years with the Milwaukee Brewers — never one this bad.
He avoided catastrophe in his first two starts of September, but the Burnes we saw last weekend against the surging Tigers was a whole different animal. He did more than limit damage and keep the Orioles in the game. He held batters on a string again, inducing them to swing and miss when he pleased. He got whiffs with his cutter. He got them with his breaking stuff. His changeup missed bats.
Orioles starter Corbin Burnes looked sharp in his latest outing against Detroit. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)
Seven strikeouts hardly told the tale. For seven innings, Burnes was glorious.
“Best start of the year for him,” Hyde said.
“If I can go out and execute pitches and command the cutter and spin the ball the way I want to, I can do this on every given night,” Burnes said. “Month of August, we didn’t do that. I left a lot of balls up. I left a lot of balls over the plate.”
If the Orioles have any chance of recapturing the “mojo” general manager Mike Elias referenced in an attempted pep talk Tuesday, they’ll need this version of Burnes to put them ahead in playoff series. In Detroit, he was the pitcher they traded for, the puzzle piece that just might pull the whole thing back together.
For a day at least, Jackson Holliday found his way out of the wilderness
Going into Thursday’s series finale against the Giants, Holliday’s September had been nearly as bad as his 2-for-34 April cup of coffee. A .370 OPS isn’t within shouting distance of replacement level. After his brief August power outburst, baseball’s No. 1 prospect again looked incapable of laying off the wrong pitches and punishing the right ones. His defense was shaky enough that he might not have played at all if Westburg and Urias were around.
Holliday came to the plate in the fourth inning Thursday with two outs and runners on second and third. He took Logan Webb’s first pitch, a sweeper, for a strike. It was the type of clutch scenario that has confounded the Orioles generally and Holliday specifically for weeks.
Webb followed with a changeup, perhaps thinking he’d lure the kid further off-balance. Instead, Holliday lined a single past shortstop to put the Orioles up 3-2. It was a thoroughly professional bit of hitting from a prospect known for his precocious approach as he rocketed through the minors.
That’ll play. pic.twitter.com/HIAQscKQJm
— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) September 19, 2024
“The main focus I’ve been working on lately is just hitting line drives with every pitch,” he said. “Over the past few games, I’ve been able to do that. I got a changeup, and I was able to stay through it.”
Holliday followed that up by leaping to snare Mike Yastrzemski’s 104 mph line drive and get Orioles starter Zach Eflin out of the fifth inning.
We’ve seen the 20-year-old Holliday flounder enough that it would be premature to call this a breakthrough. For now, call it a tantalizing reminder that a great player exists within the overwhelmed rookie.
“He’s got a ton of talent, as we all know,” Hyde said. “Hopefully, this gives him a little bit of confidence, honestly.”
The Orioles are going to clinch a playoff spot, but how much joy will accompany it?
The math says it’s inevitable. The Orioles built enough cushion that the teams chasing them in the AL wild-card race are going to run out of time. It seems less and less likely next week’s series against the Yankees will have much bearing on the AL East race, but this club will play in October for a second straight year.
The euphoria of 12 months ago, soaked in champagne and smelling of cigar smoke, will not accompany this clinch. As Hyde said Thursday during a reflective pregame news conference, last year feels like a long time ago. Every step over the last two months has been so, so difficult. Even the wins.
How will Baltimore celebrate clinching a playoff berth in 2024? The euphoria might be limited after a sluggish second half. (Stephanie Scarbrough/AP)
The Orioles cling to hope. Westburg, Mountcastle, Urias and reliever Danny Coulombe are on their way back. Grayson Rodriguez might follow, fortifying the bullpen if nothing else.
Late-season performance often says little about what a club will do in the playoffs. The Orioles learned as much last year when they were bludgeoned by the Texas Rangers, who had played .500 ball for months.
“They kind of got pissed off and started swinging the bats, and we ran right into it,” Hyde said.
He wants to believe a similar productive rage is brewing in his clubhouse. The Orioles bounced and hollered Thursday as they waited for Santander to reach home plate after his walk-off. “That’s who we are!” he bellowed toward the dugout as he rounded the bases. He and his teammates had thirsted for such a moment, a “breath of fresh air,” Eflin called it.
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We’ll see.
Asked before the game to pinpoint when this season started to get away from the Orioles, Hyde said, “I’m not talking about that yet.” A sweeping statement of that ilk might suggest he thinks the season is already over. That’s the last message he wants to convey, to fans and especially to his players.
The Orioles have a few more weeks to pull out of their spiral. Win a couple playoff series and the sense of failure enveloping the club would be gone.
Belief in that possibility is hard to come by around Baltimore. The Orioles are about to clinch a playoff berth. What follows will determine whether anyone feels like celebrating.
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