Only a few days ago, the Orioles seemed to be just one of the 20-something major league teams that have gotten off to a disappointing start.
Now, they’ve fallen into a hole and they can’t seem to stop digging.
This was supposed to be the year of the vibrant young starting rotation and the big-swinging offensive attack. Now it’s starting to look like they’ve picked up right where they left off the past year and a half.
It certainly doesn’t help that the O’s showed up in the Bronx at a time when the Yankees seem to be on an unstoppable roll, but they arrived a troubled team plagued by injuries, inconsistency and sloppy play.
Who would have thought when the season began that little more than a month into it new manager Craig Albernaz would have had to turn to three emergency starting pitchers or post a lineup in Cleveland that included two minor league call-ups in the middle of the batting order (Johnathan Rodríguez and Weston Wilson) that most Orioles fans had never heard of?
Pass the panic button.
Okay, so it is pretty early and the Orioles did not figure to be knocking the Yankees on their backsides under normal conditions, but when they look totally overmatched and are facing a four-game sweep unless they show a pulse Monday night it’s hard to feel like a turnaround is just a trip to Miami away.
Maybe this could be a darker before the dawn situation. After all, the 15-19 record has them only one game out of third place in the supposedly tough American League East and would put them just one game out of second place in the AL West and NL East. If you want to find a possible bright side in a month that features another series against the Yankees and two series against a surprisingly formidable Tampa Bay Rays club, the other first-place teams they face in the next three weeks – the Tigers and Athletics – are barely above .500.
Who knows what’s going to happen in this strange season, but when your Opening Day starter goes on the injured list with the flu and your best homegrown starter in a couple of decades can’t find his way out of an 0-2 count, it’s hard to get too excited about the future. Hopefully, Shane Baz can carry his last start into tonight’s series finale and give the O’s a fighting chance to avoid the indignity of a four-game sweep.
The wise guys who set the odds on everything – no doubt including the frog-jumping contest in Calaveras County – have started to lose faith. The futures odds on the Orioles winning the World Series just jumped from 22-to-1 to 30-to-1.
Even I wouldn’t make that bet and I’ve got a big parlay on three very promising frogs out in the silver country. I’m hoping a few of you are Mark Twain fans or this column just went off the rails.
Still, like everyone else around here, I’m waiting for that big run that Pete Alonso predicted a few days ago. He certainly appears to be back in gear at the plate, but the breaks definitely are still beating the boys.
Just ask Taylor Ward, who watched Aaron Judge pluck two potential long balls off the top of the right-field fence in the first three games of this series. This is one of those times where it seems like every broken bat turns into a hit for the other guys and too many line drives turn into outs for the Orioles.
Or it just feels that way, but something needs to change soon.