It was a subpar week for the Baltimore Orioles as they took on two teams well below .500 in the Los Angeles Angels and the Oakland Athletics. The O’s went 3-3 this week, including a... The post Who’s Hot, Who’s Not: Apr 22nd-28th appeared first on Marylandsportsblog.com.

Kimbrel was wearing a different Orioles uniform on Sunday but the result was the same as when he pitched on Friday. | Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images The closer turned a lead into a loss and got nobody out in the process The Orioles have a pitching staff problem. Perhaps that should be more focused: The Orioles have a bullpen problem. Or maybe even more zoomed in still: The Orioles have a Craig Kimbrel problem. The closer returned to the mound on Sunday afternoon looking to put the memory of Friday’s disaster behind him and all of the rest of us. Kimbrel blew it, recording zero outs before leaving the game mid-batter with an injury or “injury” but in either case he stuck around long enough to give up two runs and send the O’s towards a disappointing home series loss to the Athletics as they dropped the finale, 7-6. There is no way not to sugar coat it. That’s a bummer. This was a cascading problem that the Orioles were building up to in Sunday’s game, one that got rolling when Albert Suárez made his third start of the season with a goal of beating the “Even Mike Wright debuted with good big league starts once” comments. Suárez did not beat the charges. Against what has up to this point been a sad Oakland offense, Suárez labored through a rough four innings. By the end of the outing, he’d given up four runs on seven hits and thrown 83 pitches. While Suárez struggled, the Orioles offense was able to do even better with its output against Oakland’s starter Paul Blackburn, who brought a 2.03 ERA into the game and left it with a 3.34 after giving up six runs in four innings. Blackburn was socked by third inning home runs hit by Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle, then taken deep again in the fourth by Ramón Urías. Safe to say that they had Blackburn’s number today. The Orioles actually led the game, 6-4, by the time that Suárez took a seat for the day. This was also part of the story because it meant that the team could not just deploy the punt relievers (for my money, Mike Baumann and Yohan Ramírez) and let them soak up a couple of innings each on the way to an obvious loss. The game was close and they had to use relievers with an eye to winning the game, even though the starter only went four. Keegan Akin pitched two innings on 32 pitches, allowing no runs to score or even any runners to get on base. That bridged the game at least to the seventh. Ought Akin have gone another inning? 32 pitches is his high for the season up to this point. Also, he brought a 4.09 ERA into the game, so it’s not like he’s one of the super reliable guys. Akin did his job on Sunday and it would be up to other guys to do theirs. Others did not. With two lefties and then Tyler Nevin due up in the seventh inning, the Orioles turned to lefty Danny Coulombe to get the job done. Coulombe retired the two lefties and then gave up a solo homer to Nevin, cutting the Orioles lead to 6-5. Manager Brandon Hyde got Coulombe out of there after the minimum three batters; Jacob Webb got the last out to finish the seventh. Should Webb have stayed on to pitch the eighth, saving Yennier Cano for the ninth inning? Given what ended up happening, the answer is obviously yes, but at the same time, let’s be real: The idea of Webb pitching the eighth inning in a one-run game is probably not exciting to many fans and probably not to the Orioles brain trust either, so of course they didn’t do that. Cano got the eighth, in which he gave up a two-out single but otherwise no damage was done. The 8-9-1 hitters were due up for Oakland in the ninth. After what happened on Friday, you had to wonder, would they really go to Kimbrel again? Would it be better to give him more rest and just take their chances with Dillon Tate trying to save the game? Again, in hindsight, the answer to that second question is yes and to the first it should have been no. Different versions of today’s events are unknowable. We can only know what we saw. What we saw is not always what really happened, but that’s not something we need to get into right now because many baseball events are straightforward and Kimbrel’s pitching certainly was one of the ones where there is no doubt. If you were watching, you knew after one pitch, or maybe two if you wanted to wait before panicking, that Bad Craig was back. They were nowhere near the strike zone, and ultimately Kimbrel walked former O’s prospect Darell Hernaiz on four pitches. Pitches three and four did not come close to the strike zone either. After starting off the next batter, catcher Kyle McCann, with a fifth pitch nowhere near the strike zone, Hyde and trainer Brian Ebel came out to check on Kimbrel. They chose to leave him in after one warm-up toss. Kimbrel continued on with the sequence against McCann, evening the count back up after two called strikes, but then he couldn’t find the putaway pitch and after eight pitches there was a 3-2 count, he left a fastball belt-high instead of where he wanted it, and McCann blasted it into the right-center field seats. Ouch. One more pitch out of the strike zone to start the next batter was enough for Hyde, and Kimbrel got the mid-at-bat hook. After the game, Hyde told reporters that Kimbrel was suffering upper back tightness. He said that he noticed some awkward walking around between pitches but left Kimbrel in because Kimbrel said he was good. I don’t really blame Hyde for this act of trust, but it sure didn’t work out. Dillon Tate relieved Kimbrel and recorded three outs to close the barn door after the horse had bolted. As all of this Orioles bullpen drama was going on, the offense was stymied by Oakland’s bullpen, which ended up putting five zeroes on the board after coming in relief of Blackburn starting in the fifth inning. That’s not great. Six runs should be good enough, though. It would have been if it wasn’t for Kimbrel having a complete disaster of a game for the second time in three days. Félix Bautista ain’t walking through that door, not until spring training 2025 at the earliest. The 2024 Orioles are going to have to figure it out. They will have an easier time figuring it out if their starting pitchers can more reliably complete the sixth inning than not. Suárez’s short game was certainly a factor today, and perhaps will lead to his coming out of the rotation with the return of John Means, who was brilliant in his final Norfolk rehab outing. For now, the Orioles have got one guy to trust out there (Cano) and a few guys it would be fun if they can trust (Akin, Coulombe, Tate, Webb). This mix will presumably be shaken up this week with the return to the rotation of Kyle Bradish and Means, which ought to give the O’s a much-needed long man in the bullpen once a starter is dropped into the bullpen. That doesn’t solve any late-inning high-leverage problems, and by the way, the Yankees are coming to town for four games, so it’s not getting any easier for a unit that’s gotten a lot of work early on. I expect a roster move for a fresh reliever tomorrow. New York obliterated the Brewers on Sunday. The Yankees will bring a one-game divisional lead into town. Clarke Schmidt and Grayson Rodriguez are set to start the 6:35 Monday game. Box score.

The Baltimore Orioles second baseman and Major League Baseball’s top prospect, Jackson Holliday has been optioned to the AAA Norfolk Tides, after two weeks in the majors. Holliday made his debut on April 10th, 2024,... The post Jackson Holliday Optioned Back to AAA, Ryan McKenna Called Up appeared first on Marylandsportsblog.com.

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