O's Magic: Kyle Bradish and John Means...how fast can you come back?!
Quick Hits from the series that saw Baltimore lose two of three to Milwaukee.
Welcome back to another edition of ‘O’s Magic’, a Cool Sports Newsletter series made by a die hard Orioles fan! Coming off of their sweep against Boston, Baltimore came home and won just one of three against a Milwaukee team, and more specifically a Brewers offense that could not stop scoring…or a Baltimore pitching rotation that could not stop allowing runs. But an outburst of home runs allowed Baltimore to keep the streak alive of regular season series without getting swept. Here are the quick hits from the Orioles very interesting home series.
Things That Were Intriguing
Touching Off On Bombs
We mentioned last article that the Homer Hose is alive and well. And it was used a ton in this series. Baltimore scored 12 runs in the series…eight of which came off of home runs. In fact, Baltimore now ranks 6th in the MLB in home runs thanks to Colton Cowser, Jordan Westburg, Anthony Santander, Cedric Mullins and Gunnar Henderson, who have all totaled 3 or more home runs thus far this season, all of which a top 30 mark in the MLB. Not only is this impressive, but Baltimore is only 11th in runs and 18th in hits, so them hitting out of the park at a high rate has been a necessity from them to win games. And they sure have done that.
Adley’s Value at Catcher
The Orioles allowed 11 and 11 runs in the first two games of this series, by far their worst pitching performances of the season. They came with James McCann at catcher. However, in game three the Orioles just allowed four runs, and it came with Adley Rutschman at catcher, ending Milwaukee’s six game streak of at least seven runs scored. This has actually been a pattern all season. The Orioles have a 3.44 ERA when Rutschman starts at catcher, compared to a 6.16 ERA when McCann starts at catcher. Now, like in this series Adley may sometimes get the better pitchers. But this is a drastic change in ERA. And this is not to be criticizing McCann, but more praising Rutschman for what he does as a catcher. I think all of us are always tempted to criticize a part of Adley’s game because of the expectations surrounding him, but as a catcher he does a phenomenal job and we need to appreciate it.
Areas That Need Work
Pitching
I’m keeping it broad. I’ll target more on the starting pitching which seems to need more work, but the bullpen also has some inconsistencies as well. For the starters, Tyler Wells pitched an awful outing on Friday night, going just four innings with 90 pitches—only 54 of which were strikes—striking out three, and allowing seven base runners and four runs. It gets worse the next day, as coming off of one of the best starts of his career, Dean Kremer followed it up with four innings of work, 55 strikes on 85 pitches, 11 base runners, just three strikeouts and six earned runs allowed; eight total. The next day things got better with Corbin Burnes who went five innings and only allowed two earned runs, but even he had some struggles. Though he’s not who I’m worried about. Wells, Kremer and Cole Irvin are not consistent enough for Baltimore to win games. Kyle Bradish and Johns Means need to get healthy soon, or Baltimore needs to do some fixing because they have to have a better pitcher in this rotation ASAP.
A solution in the bullpen though may be Cade Povich. With the Tides this season in AAA, Povich—who was acquired from the Twins in the Jorge Lopez deal at the 2022 trade deadline—has taken a huge step in his development. Povich won the first International League Pitcher of the Week award, and has followed it up with many consistent performances. And the strikeouts is the main thing for the O’s No. 9 prospect, as he became the first Tides pitcher since Grayson Rodriguez—who’s strikeout record he just broke—to strike out nine or more batters in two straight outings. I would love to see Povich up in the bullpen in the later portion of the season if he keeps this up.
An Error Has Occurred
I was going to mention this a few series ago when the Orioles lost the final game of the series to Pittsburgh off of an arrant throw from Henderson, and earlier in the game making an error as well. But I let it slide. Now, it is getting out of hand. The O’s made an error in every game this series, totaling four. Four errors in a single series! Now, part of it could be because of the some of the positional movement over the past few games, but this is still unacceptable. Baltimore is top ten in the MLB in errors, and when you have a pitcher not in command on the mound, it doesn’t help that the fielders have no clue how to help him out. A combination of errors leading to four too many of them in this series!
The Orioles lost two of three, which isn’t great but isn’t terrible considering they ran into a hot offense in Milwaukee. The Orioles continue their home-stand later today against the Minnesota Twins.
Chase Coburn
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