The O’s are 3-10 in last 13 games just five games above .500. The AL central teams are bullying them and treating them with zero respect. Why should they?
Big leads blown, poor starting pitching, errors, base running errors, batters who watch three straight strikes and walk back to the bench, and a manager who refuses to pinch hit at the bottom of his lineup. If that’s for you, then you’ve enjoyed this team over this stretch.
This could be a slump, or it could be that the other shoe has dropped on a team that looked like it was winning on smoke and mirrors earlier in the year rather than being good.
This might be a bit of a rant, but there are bad at bats, then there are embarrassing at bats and Chris Davis in the 8th inning today had what can only be described as an embarrassing at bat with the tie run at 2nd. After getting to 3-0, he watched two straight fastballs in the middle of the plate and then a curve ball, never moving the bat from his shoulder. Not that his choke job should come as a surprise, after all, he was slashing .148/.289/.262/.552 when runners are on base this year coming into the game. Eight of his 10 homers have been solo jobs.
That’s not what you want from your $21 million a year first baseman.
That wasn’t the only embarrassing at bat. How about JJ Hardy watching three straight fastballs for strikes to end the game? I know he homered earlier in the game when the pitcher accidentally hit his bat, but how does he get to bat with Hyun Soo Kim or even Wellington Castillo on the bench? I guess his veteranosity outweighs his .524 OPS he was sporting coming into the game or his .196/.234/.265/.498 slash line against RHP.
The problem with this season is we spent the first part trying to figure out how in the hell the Orioles were winning so many games? Now, we are seeing their true colors come out. This team is slumping, and they are never as bad as they look when slumping, but this is not a good team. This is a team that is still threatening to send out one of the worse starting pitchers in MLB on Sunday in Ubaldo while picking up a waiver wire utility guy like that is going to change their fortunes.
Whether the bad losses and blown leads have affected the hitters or not, this offense is in one of it’s cold spells, the kind of cold spells that teams constructed of one dimensional power hitters go into. Then again, they really haven’t been all that good most of the year.
The shoe has dropped and unless some guys turn it around big time this team is going to be near the bottom of the Division by the All-Star break.
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