TORONTO – The New York Yankees tend to suck up most of the oxygen around them so it can easily feel like Aaron Judge and Co. are the main obstacle beyond the Tampa Bay Rays facing the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East this season.
Yet there the Baltimore Orioles are, quietly second in the division standings, with an enviable array of controllable players, sitting atop one of the deepest farm systems in baseball, without a single payroll dollar guaranteed beyond 2024. As much as any team in the AL East, they’re set up to be a problem well into the future, and so far this year, they’re showing that an unexpected emergence last summer was a legitimate transition into competitiveness, too.
“Well, it’s a lot more fun,” manager Brandon Hyde said of heading into a six-game stretch against the Blue Jays and Yankees looking down, rather than up, at them in the standings. “But it’s still really early.”
That it is, although the sample sizes are starting to congeal into something closer to meaningful, giving trends a little more weight. To that end, a cold week at the plate continued for the Blue Jays, who managed only one run in seven innings Friday against Kyle Gibson and couldn’t rally enough against bullpen demons Yennier Cano and Felix Bautista in a 6-2 loss to the Orioles.
Even with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. returning to the lineup as the DH after experiencing right knee discomfort earlier this week, the damage was hard to come by for an offence that now has 14 runs in its last five outings and 33 over the last 10.
Hitting with runners in scoring position continues to be a sore sport, a 1-for-7 night making it a 3-for-35 rut over the past four games, three of them losses.
“With how good we are, it’s frustrating,” said Kevin Kiermaier, who returned from a viral infection to single and score the first run of the season on Cano. “But even some of the best baseball players in world press at times and we’re not collectively as a unit creating any momentum. We’re trying. Guys are putting in the work. Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on it. You’ve got to go out there and try to play with confidence and get things going. We’ve had a couple innings here there where we get the fans into it but a lot of 1-2-3 innings, not a whole lot of hard contact. That’s something that happens.”
Some of the production should normalize once George Springer, who opened the first with a single but was thrown out at second trying to stretch and later added a double, finds his form and Guerrero locks in the way he can.
But given that Daulton Varsho, who regularly bats fourth, leads the team with 63 plate appearances with runners in scoring position but has a .167 average in those spots, the team may also need to readjust its lineup construction to better leverage its best hitters.
Bo Bichette, who made it 4-2 in the eighth with a run-scoring groundout off Cano, is tied with Springer for sixth on the team with 36 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, and he certainly needs more opportunities to cash runners in. Again, Springer getting on more should help change that, but with their thump down – they began the day 10th in the AL with 47 homers and eighth in slug at .407 – who’s getting the bulk of opportunities matters more.
“That plays a big part of it,” said manager John Schneider. “When you’re grinding and you’ve got to put two, three, four or five at-bats in a row together, you want to have that big blow with someone on base and some traffic out there. That usually leads to good things. It’s got to be one or the other. It’s got to be a lot of at-bats in a row pretty consistent, or it’s got to be, someone doing damage with guys on.”
Danny Jansen’s RBI single in the second got the Blue Jays off to a good start, opening a 1-0 lead. But a rare opportunity against the nearly untouchable Cano in the eighth, when Kevin Kiermaier singled to open the inning and Springer followed with a double, went unrealized after Bichette’s RBI grounder, Guerrero striking out and Varsho grounding to first to end the threat.
Up until then, Cano had thrown 21.2 shutout innings over 17 games out of the gate and “it was good to get that cat an earned run on the season,” said Schneider, but “still, you look at second and third, nobody out, you want to cash in more than one and if you make Felix work (in the ninth), hopefully he’s down tomorrow. The at-bats, they’re good. You still need to kind of finish them off and get that big hit.”
The Orioles demonstrated the difference as they did all their damage on big swings, Ryan Mountcastle hitting a three-run shot off Yusei Kikuchi in the third, Anthony Santander tagging Trevor Richards for a solo shot in the sixth and Adam Frazier getting Erik Swanson to push the game out of reach in the ninth before a crowd 32,485.
Mountcastle’s 15th homer in 43 games versus the Blue Jays was the key blow, turning an early 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 lead the Orioles never gave back.
“I don’t think the pitch was in a bad spot,” Kikuchi, who was pulled with two outs in the fifth to prevent him facing the first baseman a third time, said through interpreter Yusuke Oshima. “But my breaking balls weren’t going in for strikes, so it’s easier to zero in on the fastball.”
The home runs, combined with Gibson’s work getting a lead to the elite back-end relief duo, it was exactly the formula the Orioles are looking for.
“The last two weeks we’ve had much better starts form our pitchers,” said Hyde. “Only a couple of hiccups there can really tax your bullpen and did a better job the last two weeks of going deeper in the game. That’s been encouraging.”
Perhaps encouraging for the Blue Jays is that Springer collected his eighth multi-hit game of the season, Brandon Belt doubled and walked twice and is now batting .417/.533/.639 over his last 13 games and Jansen has nine RBIs in his last nine games. But they’ll need more to turn around a 5-10 record versus AL East opponents.
“Don’t forget how good the guys in this room are,” Kiermaier said of the mindset needed with his team in a hitting funk. “Baseball works in weird ways at times where you sit here and you hit, hit, hit and that’s contagious. And then sometimes unfortunately you’re on the other end, like, OK, is this going to be our breakout inning? You want to see some of these guys hit a line drive to get them going and get the confidence going again. It’s just been tough. I feel like the opposing pitchers have been throwing really well lately, but also at the same time, I feel like we’ve been played down to what our level of production could be. We’re going to keep working and get it going.”
