MLB contender’s second-half collapse is bad omen for playoffs

BALTIMORE – For more than two years, the arrow only pointed up, up, up for the Baltimore Orioles, who sent a conveyor belt of young talent to Camden Yards, fortified where they needed and won more games than all but one major league team.
Only now has that group been forced to ponder failure. And they are almost out of time to develop coping skills.
“Baseball is not kind to you when you try harder, sometimes,” says Mike Elias, the Orioles’ executive vice president and general manager who stripped the team to the studs and then built a sustainable and enviable organizational structure, culminating in a 101-win season last year.
“It’s a game that can backfire on you when you get out of yourself.”
Tuesday, as the Orioles began their final homestand of the season, Elias took the rare step of briefing the media, not necessarily on the club’s rash of injuries but rather their collective freefall. It’s a weird spot: Baltimore is 84-67 and almost guaranteed a playoff spot for a second consecutive season, even if it’s likelier as the No. 1 wild card rather than a successful defense of its American League East title.
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Yet the mood around Camden Yards has been grim, a team that was quickly beloved for its youthful exuberance putting on a quiet public face as a collective slump stretches into its third month. Just 11 games remain, probably not enough time to make up a four-game deficit to the New York Yankees.
But even beyond playoff positioning is the lack of runway both to integrate injured players back in the lineup – and get their healthy but flailing All-Stars on track.
It’s a fairly stunning turnabout:
On July 7, the Orioles were 57-33, led the major leagues in slugging percentage (.480) and weighted runs created plus (120). They held a three-game lead in the AL East.
Since July 7, the Orioles are 27-34, rank 20th in the majors in slugging (.399) and 15th in WRC+, a near-league average 104. They’re closer to losing home-field advantage in the wild card than they are the first-place Yankees.
But opportunity abounds in baseball’s never-ending season, and Tuesday, from the front office to the clubhouse, the Orioles embraced escaping the rut.
The entire lineup changed its walk-up music, with All-Star Gunnar Henderson’s switch-up from Gwen Stefani’s “Sweet Escape” to 50 Cent’s “Magic Stick” particularly notable given the singalong nature of his usual ditty. The terminally punchless San Francisco Giants were in town.
“Figured just change something up a little bit, get everybody in kind of a funny mood,” says Henderson, whose 37 home runs and .904 OPS still rank fifth and seventh, respectively, in the AL. “Long-term it’s not gonna be my walk-up, but just doing it for the team. We’re trying to switch up the mood and do anything we can to win.”
It was a day for both renewal and reflection.
“It’s been trying for all of us. This is the first time, I think, that this group has experienced this kind of collective struggles since we’ve been a winning team,” says Elias, in his sixth season with the club. “This is a group that has had a really long track record – players and staff – of success here. Now, within the span of a few months, it’s gotten away from us.
“We’re going to figure this out and we’re going to get out of it. And I think it’s going to start tonight.”
Alas, for all of the Yale-educated Elias’s smarts, and the want-to of Gunnar and the lads, declaring a fresh start when a reigning Cy Young Award winner is on the mound is never wise. Blake Snell fairly toyed with the Orioles, striking out 12 in six innings of one-hit ball. The 10-0 loss was the ninth time in 11 games Baltimore was held to three runs or less.
The offensive malaise has many culprits, and surely twice as many players forced to believe it will end.
This is the thing: The nearly three-month funk can mean virtually nothing if the club finds its groove in a miniscule sample.
It’s called the playoffs, and the Orioles – division winners last year for the first time since 2014 – learned firsthand how capricious they can be. Baltimore went three-and-out, trucked by a Texas Rangers wild-card entry that won its first seven postseason road games and eventually the franchise’s first World Series.
Ballplayers are wired to know fortunes can change on a whim. Yet this funk is testing that notion to the extreme.
“That’s challenged every step of the way,’ says center fielder Cedric Mullins, who has enjoyed a mini-renaissance in the second half as his mates have cratered. “Just experiencing things we haven’t within the past year or two in terms of success rate and consistency. But these things happen. It’s baseball.
“I think about teams that have won the World Series in past years – take Texas from last year – they definitely were not projected to take it all the way. But they did. They hit their hot streak at the right time.”
Yet it’s an open question if some Orioles will find their groove before they report for spring training in February.
All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman has been in the biggest canyon. He was batting .300 (95 for 317) with 15 homers and an .830 OPS in 317 at-bats on June 27, a night he homered but also was hit in the hand by a pitch.
Since? Rutschman is batting .182 (39 for 214) with four homers and a .568 OPS.
Rutschman was the Orioles’ bell cow, his May 2022 debut as smashing a success as it was highly anticipated. The Orioles went 67-55 to finish that season, followed by their 101-win year. Even despite their second-half doldrums, Baltimore has played .600 ball (225-150) since Rutschman’s debut.
Yet after Rutschman, Henderson, Jordan Westburg and, this year, Colton Cowser made the big league transition look simple, the learning curve seems to have steepened. Jackson Holliday, the erstwhile No. 1 prospect, is batting .169 in 171 at-bats. Coby Mayo, their power-hitting young corner infielder, has looked overmatched in most plate appearances and after striking out in both at-bats Tuesday is 3 for 37 (.081) with 21 strikeouts.
No, it hasn’t been the blind trying to lead the blind out of this rut, especially when veterans like Mullins and Anthony Santander – who’s hit a career-best 41 homers – remain in the lineup.
Yet the bulk of the Orioles lineup is both young and of very high pedigree: Holliday and Rutschman were No. 1 overall picks, Henderson a near-consensus No. 1 prospect shortly after he was drafted in the second round.
Right now, the group is pressed.
“It’s easy to yell to relax,” says manager Brandon Hyde. “That doesn’t quite work. There’s been a lot of individual conversations, a lot of team stuff. Our guys just had a great hitters’ meeting talking about the process, being really positive. It’s doing everything you can do to control what you can control yourself.
“We’re still third or fourth in the American League in wins. To hang in there has not been easy. We’ve had some guys who have had second halves they haven’t before and going through adversity for the first time.”
With a narrowing window for correction.
OK, so the cavalry isn’t quite coming. But the Orioles will have a bevy of returnees returning just before the end of the season or perhaps early in the postseason.
For the lineup, that means the return of first baseman Ryan Mountcastle, soon to begin a rehab assignment after a wrist injury. And most notably, infielder Jordan Westburg, an All-Star in his second season whose broken hand augured grim times ahead.
Elias had just loaded up on pitching at the trade deadline when, a day later, Westburg was struck by a pitch and been out since. Unsurprisingly, the Orioles are 19-23 since.
Westburg had 48 extra-base hits and an .815 OPS in 390 at-bats when he went down. He should return for a cameo just as the season ends – a tall order to acclimate to big league pitching in a postseason environment.
But Baltimore will take what it can. And take uneasy comfort in knowing fortunes can turn in the smallest – and most important – sample.
“I think we’re going to make the playoffs and I think we’re going to do really well in the playoffs,” says Elias. “The players that have been putting a lot of pressure on themselves to pick up the rest of the lineup – they’re going to figure out the right approach and we’re going to get some guys back and feel like ourselves again before too late. That’s the goal.
“I believe in these guys. I believe in the staff. This has been an unpleasant stretch for the last part of the summer. We’re all wearing it, processing it individually, but we’re ready to pull this together.
“And I believe we will.”
The Orioles’ current roster has 10 players either acquired or promoted after the trade deadline. Finding a groove has been elusive, and while the club won’t use injuries as an excuse, the revamped group certainly hasn’t had a chance to gel.
Now, the runway’s almost run out. Go time awaits, a time for the club to prove its resolute attitude isn’t simply empty platitudes.
“This last little bit has been kind of weird,” says Henderson. “Kind of been out of sync. We know we’ve done it. We’ve got new faces but they’re all really awesome players. It’s kind of weird not getting through it but you just gotta keep pushing.
“Because eventually, it’s going to go our way.”
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