‘Losing sucks’: The Orioles’ underperforming offense as much to blame for terrible start as poor rotation

Hands down, the most disappointing team in baseball this year is the Baltimore Orioles. Expected to be a World Series contender, the Orioles are instead 15-27 and have one more win than the Chicago White Sox, last year’s 121-loss team. Baltimore’s minus-74 run differential is second worst in baseball, better than only the historically bad Colorado Rockies (minus-137).

“This is frustrating. Losing sucks. It’s not fun,” O’s DH Ryan O’Hearn said Thursday (via MLB.com). “Nobody in here is having a good time, and I promise you, nobody cares more than the guys in this clubhouse. With that being said, we have to keep fighting. There is no other option. You have to keep fighting. You can’t give up. You can’t give in. I believe in the guys in this clubhouse. We have talented players. We just have to keep fighting. There is no other option.”

Thursday’s loss to the Minnesota Twins (MIN 4, BAL 0) was Baltimore’s third straight loss and ninth in their last 11 games. They were swept in the season series by the Twins, going 0-6 while being outscored 37-14. The Twins made sure to dunk on the O’s properly following Thursday’s loss:

The starting rotation, which has been decimated by injuries and corner-cutting, is the single biggest reason the Orioles are in last place and such a colossal disappointment. Their starters rank 28th with a 5.66 ERA and dead last with minus-0.2 WAR. Last by a lot too. The Miami Marlins are 29th with plus-0.5 WAR. Baltimore’s rotation is almost a full win worse than the next worst team.

As bad as the rotation has been, it is not the only reason the Orioles find themselves in the AL East cellar. Their offense has woefully underperformed too. Thursday was their sixth shutout loss of the season, third most in baseball behind the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates (seven each). The O’s have scored two runs or fewer 17 times. That’s the fifth most in baseball.

Here’s where Baltimore’s offense ranks a little more than 25% of the way into the season:

A year ago, the Orioles averaged 4.85 runs per game, fourth most in baseball, and they were near the top of the league in almost every important offensive category. They did lose 44-homer man Anthony Santander to free agency, though losing one player should not cause an entire offense to collapse. Not when the roster has as much high-end young talent as the O’s.

Injuries are certainly part of this. Colton Cowser, last year’s AL Rookie of the Year runner-up, has played only four games because of a thumb injury. Jordan Westburg went to the All-Star Game last season and has been limited to 23 games by a hamstring injury. Star shortstop Gunnar Henderson missed the start of the season with an intercostal strain and is just now rounding into form.

There is also a good deal of underperformance from Baltimore’s healthy players. GM Mike Elias signed outfielder Tyler O’Neill to the biggest free-agent contract of his tenure (three years, $49.5 million) and his reward is a .188/.280/.325 slash line. Heston Kjerstad, the No. 2 overall pick in 2020, has failed to launch. He’s hitting .208/.264/.356. Bench guys like Jorge Mateo have been dreadful.

No player embodies the 2022-24 rise and 2025 fall of the Orioles better than Adley Rutschman. If you know what’s wrong with him, give the Orioles a call. They just might hire you because it seems like no one has any idea why Rutschman has gone from being the No. 1 overall pick in 2019 to an ascendant star to now a comfortably below-average hitter and middling defender.

Rutschman is hitting .200/.300/.329 this season and his .629 OPS ranks 20th among the 23 primary catchers with at least 100 plate appearances. This is not just an early-season slump, either. Rutschman’s offense cratered in the middle of last season and has continued into this season. Look at the numbers:

That is almost a full season’s worth of plate appearances of Rutschman, a 27-year-old in-his-prime player, being one of the worst hitters in baseball. He was a star in the first three years of his career. That .274/.365/.447 slash line is so much better than the average catcher output, but Rutschman has suddenly stopped hitting. He’s performing like a journeyman backup these days.

There was some thought that last year’s midseason offensive collapse was injury-related. Rutschman took a foul tip to his right hand last June 27. It was heavily wrapped after the game and Rutschman returned to the lineup the day after. He only missed one game. Here’s the foul tip. This is a direct shot to the bare hand:

The foul tip coincides perfectly with Rutschman’s collapse at the plate, and that makes sense, right? If your hand is aching, you can’t grip the bat properly, and if you can’t grip the bat properly, you won’t be able to hit. Players never want to miss time. They all want to play hurt and that’s admirable, though sometimes you do need a break. Perhaps Rutschman needed one after the foul tip.

Rutschman and his hand had an entire offseason to rest and heal, yet his offense remains in the tank. It’s possible the hand injury led to bad habits at the plate and he’s been unable to correct them. And it’s possible the hand truly has nothing to do with his decline at the plate. Rutschman insisted last year that he was fine. Whatever it is, his sudden decline has been disastrous for the O’s.

Baltimore’s rebuild was centered around bats. The O’s hired Elias in November 2018 and he has never used a first-round pick on a pitcher, and he’s drafted only five pitchers before the fifth round (one of the five did not sign). Five pitchers among 32 total picks before the fifth round. A little over half the players drafted each year are pitchers. Not for the O’s under Elias, though.

The Orioles have prioritized bats the last few years because hey, pitchers break, and you can’t count on them staying healthy long enough to help the MLB team. Also, pitcher development is better than ever. This is the build-a-pitcher era and it is much easier and more commonplace to unearth contributors in the later rounds of the draft, in minor trades, and even on waivers.

Whether you agree with Baltimore’s approach to pitching is irrelevant. Elias & Co. took this approach, built around bats, and now the offense is underperforming. Add in a lack of pitching depth and some pitching misfires (Charlie Morton, Trevor Rogers, etc.) and you have a team that can’t keep runs off the board and also has a hard time scoring itself. It’s a perfect, disastrous storm.

Baltimore’s postseason odds have dipped from 81.2% on Opening Day to only 4.9% on Friday, according to SportsLine. It is, by far, the largest postseason odds decline in baseball. It’s only May 16. The O’s have plenty of time to dig out of this hole, but it will require a massive turnaround pitching-wise, and also the offense waking up. The rotation being bad isn’t too surprising. The offense being one of the worst in the league though? That’s where the plan really went off the rails.

“I think we’ve been pretty good at flushing the past, going out, trying to win a game any way we can,” Cedric Mullins said Thursday (via MLB.com). “There’s multiple ways to do it. Sometimes, it’s slugging. Sometimes, it’s pitching. Putting that all together is what we need to get it consistent. So that’s what we’re fighting for.”