Ok, so yesterday I took you on an intestinal tour talking about my hernia surgery, so how’s bout today we do something a little more pleasant and talk some inside baseball stuff as in what the hell is wrong with the Orioles?
Put simply it comes down to hitting and pitching and their lack thereof. (If you thought you were in for some astute baseball observations here on the O’s current problems, my apologies to you. I ain’t no Boswell.)
At last season’s All Star break the Orioles were on pace to win 100 games and had moved into first place with a great come-from-behind win over the Yankees.
That was the Sunday 14 July game that Herbie, JW, Brian and I attended where the Orioles beat the Yankees to take over first place leading into the All Star break. Life was good in the hood.
The O’s record at the time was 58-38 for a whopping 20 games over 500. That was the highlight however, because they would eventually finish the 2024 season going 33-33 and lose both post-season playoff games to the Royals. Their woes have followed them into this season as they have come out of the gate playing and looking abysmally and are currently at 13-20.
Now for the inside baseball stuff, the cognoscenti and baseball smarties invariably talk about something called the “regression to the mean” which is just a fancy way of saying “what goes up must come down.” In the case of the Orioles however, the challenge is trying to figure what that mean is: are they a good team just going though a bad stretch here, or are they what they are showing – a 500 team that is very mediocre. Just what mean are they regressing to? Know what I mean?
But May was one of their best months of the season last year so here is to some optimistic hoping that they can shake out the kinks and put together a couple of wins. Get back to 500 and go from there.
In case you didn’t notice, I quoted David Clayton Thomas there so here is his tune:
