O's Magic: Quick Hits from road series vs. Pittsburgh!
The Dean Kremer show, and Cano disaster as Orioles lose two of three to Pittsburgh.
Welcome back to another edition of ‘O’s Magic’, a Cool Sports Newsletter series made by a die hard Orioles fan! The Orioles lost two of three in their first road series of the season in Pittsburgh in three very entertaining games. There were some positive sparks, and some things that need to be fixed. Here are the quick hits from Baltimore’s series against the Pirates between the good, the bad, and the snow!
Things That Were Intriguing
Dean of Hitters
After a below average first start, Dean Kremer displayed perhaps the best game from an Orioles pitcher all season. A quality start, but more specifically 7 innings pitched, six strikeouts, no walks and no earned runs with only 22 of his efficient 91 pitches called balls. Overall he allowed one run but not earned. He was efficient. He threw with high velocity. He had a great game, and put Baltimore in a position to win game three though they were not able to pull away. Awesome performance from Kremer!
Keegan (A+)kin
Baltimore’s bullpen has had its ups and downs. The one consistent pitcher has been Keegan Akin. Akin has appeared one time in each series thus far for a total of 3.1 IP…and has allowed two base runners. No runs. No walks. He has five strikeouts as well, showing he is truly in command on the mound. He showed that against Pittsburgh, pitching one inning with two strikeouts and just two balls. Now, it is early. But in tight game situations, Baltimore has gone to what was their very inconsistent, minor league level pitcher last year and it’s worked. An amazing start to the season for Akin that you have to hope will continue.
Areas That Need Work
Streaky Hitting
Baltimore’s offense was very average in this series. Five runs in game one, four runs in 11 innings in game two and then just the two runs in game three. But something stood out; Baltimore scored only at times in the game. Not so much in game one, which was one of their best all around performances of the season. But in game two, Baltimore didn’t score until the 7th inning where they did most of their damage. And then in game three, all of their runs came in the 4th inning. Baltimore did this against Kansas City, but just happened to survive because they did it in the important times of the game. While it does show they are dominant when they got hot, the O’s need to start showing more consistency at the batters box or more losses will start to come.
Yennier Ca-NO
While he was one throw away from getting out of it, Yennier had a horrible bottom of the ninth inning. He got the bases loaded with no outs quickly, after two singles and a walk. He ended up getting to one out with no runs, and then was one Henderson throw away from the O’s getting the double play and allowing no runs. But whether Henderson makes the throw or not is besides the point. Cano is seemingly not in command at the mound. It’s early, but in five appearances he has a significantly lower Strikeout:Walk ratio and is on pace for more than double the amount of walks he pitched last year. His pitches are just not finding the zone at a healthy enough rate either. This is resulting in him having to pitch about 1,198 baseballs this year if he wants to pitch 72.2 innings again, a near 200 more pitches than last year in that amount of time. It’s early, but it’s definitely been a CaNO-Good start for the 2023 All Star!
The Orioles take the field tomorrow against Boston in their second road series of the season, where the Orioles look to fix some of their glaring flaws, and continue some of their amazing pitching play!
Chase Coburn
chasecpc@gmail.com
chase@chasessportsnews.com
Wiz Talk with Chase
Cool Sports Network
chasessportsnews.com
chasecoburn.substack.com
Instagram: chases_sports_news
Twitter: Chase Coburn (@coolsportskid)
Sports 4 Kids: youtube.com/sports4kids126
Chase’s Sports News YT: youtube.com/@csn504