In expressing the difficulties of their ongoing rebuild, Orioles leadership has often pointed to not only the basement they had to climb out of, but also the ceiling they must reach as a member of the American League East.
The difficult pursuit that awaits the Orioles both in 2022 and on their eventual path to contention was on display in the season’s opening weekend, with the Tampa Bay Rays, the division’s reigning champions, completing a three-game sweep of Baltimore. Since sweeping the Rays in the clubs’ first series of 2020, the Orioles have gone 2-27 against Tampa Bay, dropping the past 15 matchups.
The Rays’ 18-1 record against Baltimore in 2021 went a long way towards clinching a division in which four teams won at least 90 games. The Orioles, meanwhile, dropped 108 games for the third straight full season.
“Honestly, it’s just a focus for each and every one of us to get better,” said Tyler Wells, who started Sunday’s 8-0 loss and allowed four runs in the second inning. “Right now, I think the end result is the least of our concerns.
“We’re three games into the season, and that’s never going to tell a full picture. I think that there’s so much more to this team than what happened last year.”
That’s certainly fair, and in all likelihood, this figures to be the year the progress the organization has been making everywhere but the majors begins to appear at Camden Yards. But there were few signs of it this weekend at Tropicana Field.
The opposing team in many ways represents the ideal of the Orioles’ rebuild. Despite modest payrolls, the Rays endlessly produce talented players and teams. Their pitching staff is a diverse mix of arm angles, velocities and primary pitches. A balanced group of position players allows for ideal matchups against any opposing arm.
“Down the road,” manager Brandon Hyde said, “I’d love to have that.”
The center of Tampa Bay’s lineup is a homegrown star who switch hits and once ranked as baseball’s top prospect, with a young, hard-throwing starter guiding its rotation. The hope is that the Orioles’ version of Wander Franco and Shane McClanahan — top prospects Adley Rutschman and Grayson Rodriguez — will soon be in Baltimore. But the greatness of the Rays comes in their depth.
“They’ve been a premier team in the game here for a while now, and it’s because they have elite pitching and a balanced lineup and always play really good defense,” Hyde said. “It’s just a tough team to play.”
The Orioles, to their credit, put up a fight in the first two games of the series, falling by a combined three runs before the Rays lapped that Sunday. Baltimore batters finished with a franchise-record 37 strikeouts in the series, missing on more than a third of their swing attempts against Tampa Bays’ gauntlet of arms.
“They have the clock,” outfielder Austin Hays said, describing how the Rays have pitchers who throw from a full collection of arm angles. “It’s a different arm slot on both sides. Every guy that comes out gives you a different look. The breaking balls are different, the heaters, speeds. But outside of that, it’s just they don’t leave a lot of balls middle. You don’t get a lot of mistakes.”
In recent years, the same hasn’t applied to those facing the Orioles’ pitchers. But the Rays’ hitters are able to capitalize even on pitchers’ top offerings. Francisco Mejía’s game-winning sacrifice fly Friday was a product of getting a down-and-away Jorge López changeup airborne. The next day, Jordan Lyles threw Mejía a two-strike, elevated fastball right where he wanted it, and Mejía “beat me to the spot.” Sunday, Wells felt the lone bad pitch among the 52 he needed to get five outs became a Brandon Lowe home run and ended his first major league start.
“It’s a tough lineup,” Wells said. “They were the AL East champs last year. And honestly, every lineup in the AL East is the same way. You got a bunch of guys who are going to continue to battle.”
The Orioles are trying to build a team that can do the same. One weekend in, they showed they have far to go.
What’s to come?
The Orioles’ celebration of the 30th anniversary of Camden Yards formally begins Monday with the team’s home opener against the Milwaukee Brewers. Fittingly, Baltimore area native Bruce Zimmermann gets the start on the mound, becoming the first Maryland-born Oriole to throw the first pitch of the year at the iconic ballpark.
It will have a different look, as well, with this week’s series against Milwaukee and the New York Yankees providing players with their first experience with Oriole Park’s new left field wall. This offseason, the team had the wall moved back about 30 feet, with the wall’s height rising more than 5 feet to meet the stadium’s bowl. Outfielders will spend pregame Monday getting used to the intriguing new angles, given they have spent the time since its completion in Florida.
What was good?
Sunday’s seventh inning spoiled this to an extent, but the Orioles’ bullpen — largely a mystery even before Tanner Scott and Cole Sulser were traded to the Miami Marlins — mostly delivered throughout the weekend.
Before Tampa Bay’s late four-run spurt, Baltimore’s relievers had allowed one earned run in 11 1/3 innings. That success largely came from pitchers who either weren’t with the Orioles a year ago or were working in different roles than they had previously.
After impressing in spring training, offseason waiver claims Bryan Baker and Cionel Pérez had strong Oriole debuts. Keegan Akin led Orioles rookies in innings but generally struggled in the rotation; he pitched three dominant innings behind Lyles, saying afterward he could get used to entering in relief. The first look at López as effectively the Orioles’ closer resulted in a loss, but his velocity spiked and he produced weak contact. Félix Bautista’s first major league outing — on his mom’s birthday, no less — featured strikeouts of two of last year’s top three finishers in AL Rookie of the Year voting over 1 1/3 scoreless innings.
It’s a small sample in each case, but Hyde seemingly has more velocity available to him than he ever has as the Orioles’ manager. Results along with it would certainly make his job easier.
What wasn’t?
After hitting his 30th home run to become the first Oriole with a 30-30 season, center fielder Cedric Mullins ended the season quietly, a stretch Hyde then excused as one slump within an excellent season.
Six months have passed since then, but Mullins has started 2022 even slower than he ended 2021, with a spring training also filled with struggles in-between. Mullins’ season perhaps began ominously, as a McClanahan fastball to the elbow made him the first Oriole to be hit by the first pitch of a season. He’s struck out in seven of his 12 plate appearances since, striking out multiple times in each game. He struck out more than once in three consecutive games only once in 2021: Sept. 28-30, days after his 30th homer.
Across seasons, Mullins has 12 strikeouts and only one extra-base hit in his past 42 regular-season plate appearances, a relatively small sample. This spring, he struck out in a third of his 33 trips to the plate.
He bounced back from a game-opening strikeout Sunday to single and steal second his next time up. There’s plenty of time for him to return to form. After all, he has only 29 steals and 30 homers to go.
On the farm
With all due respect to 2020 second-rounder Hudson Haskin’s three-homer Sunday with Double-A Bowie and Rodriguez’s one-hit outing in his first start at Triple-A, the focus here goes to Yusniel Diaz. After hitting the ball hard to all fields in spring training, the centerpiece of the Manny Machado trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers has kept that going in Norfolk.
Diaz, 25, homered twice Thursday among his four extra-base hits in five games. He’s also walked five times, slashing .389/.500/.833. Given how his 2021 season went — filled with injuries and, when healthy, immense struggles — the Orioles will likely want to see a longer stretch of success before they consider promoting the former top prospect to the majors. But he’s certainly off to a good start toward that effort.
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