Big Bounceback in Baltimore

The opponent is irrelevant when you lose a game like they did Wednesday...getting a win is huge.

It’s easy to think that professional athletes should have the memory of your dog, but the reality is that human beings are out there playing these games. When there’s a loss like Wednesday night (and I’m going to get to that a bit, don’t worry), that’s the sort of thing that can linger. While Wednesday’s loss will conjure memories of a certain game in Cleveland that extended their 10-game losing streak to and then ultimately ended up reaching 19 games, this team is far more talented than the 2005 group. You just don’t know what that sort of loss can do in the short-term, which can then impact the long-term.

So the game starts and, I’ll be honest, I was nervous. Because of course the Royals were then in line to face the best the Orioles had to offer in John Means. In my mind, getting an early lead was imperative. If they went 1-2-3 in the first and then Carlos Hernandez gave up a run or two in the bottom half, it could be a “here we go again” situation. Whit Merrifield went down on the third pitch when he hit a weak ground ball, which brought up the number seven hitter in the American League, by average, Nicky Lopez.

He took a slider high and then got a fastball on the inside corner.

We know Hanser Alberto loved it.

We’ve seen a lot more of this from Lopez lately. He turned on that ball and hit a line drive to right-center that found its way over the wall for his second home run of the season. It’s also his second career home run in Baltimore, so he clearly likes hitting there. It seems almost silly, but I believe that swing allowed the team to breathe. It could change in the snap of a finger if the Orioles came out and scored some runs, but just getting on the board and taking a lead was honestly huge.

In the end, that was all the Royals would need. It wasn’t because Carlos Hernandez was great because he wasn’t. He wasn’t getting swings and misses. His velocity was down. His vertical break was down. His horizontal break was generally down. It just wasn’t his best day. And I know the Orioles aren’t the best offense in the world or anything, but the fact that it wasn’t his best day and he ended up throwing six shutout innings is a testament to the kind of pitcher he’s becoming right before our eyes.

His control was kind of a mess all night, and that’s something we haven’t seen from him for awhile. It’s worth noting that he wasn’t working with the best strike zone for the majority of the night. These are the called balls from him last night.

I count four obvious strikes just absolutely missed and two more borderline pitches. He threw 55 strikes in 89 pitches. Does adding four more strikes change the percentage much? No, it doesn’t, but you never know what a call going against a pitcher can do for the rest of that at bat and the rest of that game. But even with some bad calls, his command just wasn’t what we saw last game against the White Sox.

You might recall me talking about how there was a big hole in the middle of the zone that he just didn’t touch during his outing. This one is…slightly different.

That’s an awful lot of pitches right in the middle. The Orioles are a different offense than the White Sox and the night was a little different than last Friday. Even though Hernandez had to deal with a two-hour rain delay on Friday night, he had to deal with significant rain and some wind that made a small park play a lot bigger. He got an awful lot of outs or foul balls on those pitches down the middle, so he was fortunate.

But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still good. He made pitches when he needed to, and when he didn’t make the pitches, his defense picked him up. In the bottom of the second, he found himself in some trouble with two outs. He gave up singles to Pedro Severino and Jorge Mateo and then one of the few pitches in the middle of the plate that he got beat on allowed Andrew Benintendi to show off again in this series.

The Orioles didn’t get another hit. They had baserunners, sure, but not another hit. Cedric Mullins walked in the third. Trey Mancini and Severino walked in the fourth. And DJ Stewart walked with two outs in the ninth, but Benintendi shut down the only threat the Orioles had.

Back to Hernandez for just a minute. I think the rain had something to do with his losing the zone a bit. He didn’t seem to be missing by much until the rains came and then he really settled down after the rains stopped. He only had one strikeout and didn’t fool the Orioles a ton with a lot of harder hit balls. But again, I just love to see a guy pitch through adversity and get the job done. In the end, it was another very good start from the young righty. Now all he’s done in his last eight games (seven starts and that long relief outing in Seattle) is this:

48.1 IP
32 H
10 R
9 ER
32 K
13 BB
1.68 ERA

With his stuff, you’d really like to see more strikeouts. I can’t deny that. But the 32 hits in 48.1 innings shows how difficult he is to square up even when hitters are making contact. I think the strikeouts will come, and when they do, I think Hernandez is recognized as the ace of this staff.

The game ended up a laugher, but it wasn’t that way for, well, most of the game. But the tack-on runs started because of a great swing from one of the goats from Wednesday night. Means simply made a mistake on an 1-1 pitch. He tried to slip a slider down, but it stayed up and Dozier hit it hard for a double that chased him from the game. That was step one.

Merrifield hit a ball that looked better than it ended up, but Dozier was heads up and ran on Anthony Santander to make it to third. That set up Lopez to get a chance with the infield in and he snuck a ball past Jahmai Jones at second to score the second run. After that, I wouldn’t say it was the floodgates opening, but things opened up a bit. Salvador Perez singled off Jones’s glove. Then Benintendi singled on a ground ball deflected by Jones that scored Lopez and Carlos Santana got Perez home with a ground ball.

Then in the ninth, Dozier struck again with Michael A. Taylor on base.

When Dozier is putting that swing on the ball, he’s going to find success. It was middle-middle, but that’s a good swing. He hadn’t had a hit since last Thursday against the Indians, but he had walked twice in each of his previous two starts, so it’s fair to assume he was starting to see the ball well again. Look, this is a totally lost season for Dozier, but finishing strong is big to give him some added confidence heading into 2022.

Wednesday Night Thoughts

I hope it doesn’t seem like I don’t want to write when things aren’t going well because I love to break down the game, good or bad. But after that game, I was so angry, and I don’t ever want to write angry. Whether or not I should be angry about a baseball team I have zero control about is a fair question and something that we can discuss at another time because the reality is that I’m invested in this team and do get high and low with them at times.

That eighth inning had so many disasters that I don’t even know where to start, but to blame any one player for the result is silly because there is plenty of blame to go around. But also, I think the Orioles deserve some credit. They spoiled pitch after pitch.

Mullins was down 1-2 to start the inning and ended up fouling off two pitches before taking a walk.

Ryan Mountcastle was down 0-2 before taking a ball, fouling off two pitches, taking another and then getting a hit.

Severino was facing Josh Staumont, who was down 0-2 before taking three balls, fouling off three more and taking another ball for the walk (the fourth ball was probably a strike, for whatever that’s worth).

Santander was down 0-2 and got a hit on a curve that should have been three inches lower.

Stewart was down 0-2 before taking a couple balls and fouling off a couple pitches. He made the first out of the inning.

Ramon Urias got a hit on a hanging curve in a 2-2 count.

Jones worked Jake Brentz for four foul balls before going down on strikes.

And on the play that everyone remembers, the dropped fly ball, Mullins stayed alive on a couple nasty pitches with two strikes, fouling them off before hitting the infamous fly ball.

Royals pitchers needed to show better control. They need to find a way to put hitters away. And whether or not Edward Olivares cut in front of Dozier, the ball needs to be caught. I think the underrated mistake of the inning was Brentz facing Mountcastle after the error. He lived in the part of the zone you can’t live in against Mountcastle and gave up the two-run homer to give the Orioles a four-run lead. When that home run was hit, I absolutely knew the Royals would put up a couple in the ninth.

I think there’s plenty of blame.

There’s blame for Payamps. He looked dominant in the seventh inning, but came out and immediately didn’t look the same in the eighth.

There’s blame for Staumont, who struggled with control, which is something he hadn’t done in quite some time.

There’s blame for Brentz for both letting Kelvin Gutierrez beat him to tie the game and leaving that pitch over the plate to Mountcastle.

There’s blame for Olivares for coming out of nowhere and getting in Dozier’s sightline.

Kurtis Seaboldt @KSeaboldt

The white mark is where the ball landed. Edward Olivares is not even in the picture at this point.

And there’s blame for Dozier. How do you drop that ball?

And there’s absolutely blame for Mike Matheny here. He should have had someone ready quicker when Payamps clearly didn’t have it. I don’t love Brentz coming in for Jones and Gutierrez, but I get wanting him for Mullins. Still, I might have gotten Staumont out quicker and maybe gone to Barlow or Tapia for Urias, Jones and Gutierrez. And ultimately, the worst decision he made was putting Dozier in the outfield for defense while the best defensive outfielder in the game was sitting on the bench as designated hitter. They’ve been willing to lose the DH before and they should have been willing to do that again.

The good news is that it’s only one game and we can see that they found a way to not only come back, but win a game convincingly. I wanted to share some thoughts since I didn’t yesterday. I don’t know if I shined any new light on anything at all, but, well, I’m not (as) angry anymore, so here we are.