Peter Schmuck’s short take: Orioles show again that good pitching is overrated

Here’s all you need to know about the first four games since the Orioles sold off three key players and still declared themselves capable of reaching the postseason.

They are 2-2, which I guess is pretty good when you consider that they have scored an average of 2.5 runs in those games, but pretty bad when you consider that they have scored just two runs total in the two games that would have vaulted them into the third American League wild-card spot.

Also not good is how the top of the lineup has responded to the departure of Taylor Ward, though it’s not like they were getting much done immediately before the trade deadline.

Get this: The top four slots in the batting order are a combined 4-for-47 since Monday.

I have no idea what’s going on there. Gunnar Henderson, Pete Alonso and two department store mannequins should be able to do more than that with 47 at-bats. It almost defies explanation.

Shane Baz pitched the game of his life and ended up with an eight-inning complete game, but he let a swinging bunt roll under his glove and gave up all the Texas Ranger runs a couple minutes later by serving up a two-run bomb to Rangers leadoff hitter Joc Pederson.

Did he lose focus for just a moment? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time he has let a bad break distract him, but in a world where teams actually score more than one run in nine innings, it should not have mattered. The Orioles caught Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi on a night he seemed to be gettable and just kept on wasting opportunities.

The other post-deadline damning statistic: The O’s are a combined 3-for-17 with runners in scoring position over the last four games.

What’s worse? This is starting to make me look bad, because I just wrote two columns hypothesizing that the Orioles might just get religion after Mike Elias decided to perform a scaled-down selloff. I mean, the O’s really do have a quality starting rotation and a number of good hitters, but they still don’t seem to have a prayer.

It took young Christian Franklin’s first major league hit in the ninth inning to get them within an inch or two of tying the game when maybe one or two productive at-bats from the top half of the lineup might have made that unnecessary.

Where this team goes from here is anyone’s guess, but I think I need to get out of the prediction business.