The Tanking Will Continue Until Morale Improves: the 2022 Baltimore Orioles

The exact point is that that itself is the problem for an organization that has supposedly been rebuilding since 2018.

i don't really see how that's the case if the prospects are still there? it's just ignoring every bit of context to make a provocative tweet. the covid year didn't help, nor did major injuries/illnesses to hall and kjerstad. i will 100% say that adley should've been up last year (he still would've been injured this year so he still wouldn't be on the team) and rodriguez should've made it to AAA and started this year in the majors. i am currently pretty furious that bradish isn't starting in the majors, though he struggled at AAA last year so i can see why they started him there again. but the rest of the prospects are still there, they're playing at the levels expected of them and being promoted pretty liberally after they come to succeed at said levels.

and santander or hays or mancini should be traded asap to make room for stowers, but then the scoccas of the world would just tweet about the bad tanking team recommitting to an endless death spiral by trading away actual major leaguers in their arb years.

everyone knows where this team started when elias actually came in. zero analytics, zero international signings, one of the worst farms in the league, an expensive go-nowhere major league team that was 2 years past any hope of being a couple FA signings away from competing again. prospective GM brady anderson. this was never going to be a rebuild like the jays or braves or tigers or white sox or padres who all started light years ahead of where this team was. there was never any sensible reason to think this team would be able to follow that sort of a timeline.

>when elias actually came in. zero analytics, zero international signings,

did not realize it was this bad. i remember about 8 years ago they were so good for a team that looked just okay-ish on paper. i just assumed they knew what they were doing behind the scenes

it was a team that combined a group of great players amassed by the previous regime with a GM that was almost supernaturally good at supplementing those players with random guys he found. there were almost never any holes on the roster.

it was also a team that sacrificed its 2016 first round draft pick for yovani gallardo

re: baby birds

would love to see stowers up sooner rather than later, dl hall will probably debut this year...a lot of people like drew rom and i'm also curious how quickly they'll move prieto and cowser.

...also think they'll give akin, wells, lowther and kremer (once healthy) a few chances to sink or swim. don't know what the leash is like for gutierrez. owings probably not long for this world.

psyched bradish is getting the call tonight. hope he gets an extended look.

Bradish certainly earned the extended look.

Walk-off unearned run on a terrible bunt!

Enjoying the Orioles playing like an ordinary bad team instead of a historically bad team!

orioles hitters in may (admittedly only eight games all at home and mostly against mediocre teams, but still): .293/.343/.448

that's v. good!

pitching is also above average but they're not getting a lot of strikeouts (relatively speaking)

Kyle Bradish is!

honestly whenever i encounter his name i start imagining (you know, if he were a yankee, or a hitter) what kind of home run call john sterling would give him

yesterday i went to opacy for the first time since the pandemic. nice to see big felix in action and a walkoff earl weaver special in the much ballyhooed left field extension.

Dang lucky you being at that game -- how was turnout?

Sounds like no Adley today, booooooooo

turn out was good! 23K paid.

happy adley day, friends.

much excited

i like the new era

Nice comeback tonight, down 6 in the 7th at Fenway, end up winning by 4.

Heck of a night for Tyler Wells!

This game is going well but that moment where it's up to McKenna and Owings to get the runs in is kinda hard to take

Grayson Rodriguez has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 right lat strain, Mike Elias said this morning, which likely won't pin him to a return to action until September.

Elias wouldn't rule anything out, but focus is on Opening Day 2023. There's a chance Rodriguez is done for '22.

— Zachary Silver (@zachsilver) June 5, 2022

Not feeling the morale improve tbh

should probably tank for a bit longer

This sucks but I don't see any reason this would have been any less likely to happen if he were in Baltimore.

Anyway, I definitely think morale is improving!

xp true, but he’d be getting paid and accruing service time

elias is no doubt secretly thrilled

Yes, good point, I was thinking about "to what extent does this timing suck for the Orioles" but the extent to which it sucks for GR himself is much greater

Maybe the DL Hall call-up comes earlier now, I dunno

beginning to wonder if gunnar henderson isn't up before the end of the year.

Holy moly, I did not expect a promotion this early for him (and Westburg too)

interesting to compare him this year to witt last year...witt's almost exactly a year older.

Gunnar homered in his first game in Norfolk

pic.twitter.com/bfwdzkbmeY

— Matthew Sprague (@MSprague518) June 9, 2022

stowers finally debuting! as a vax replacement lol

adley bomb off of berrios. guys, he may be adjusting.

If the Orioles (12-9 in June) win 2 of their next 5 games, they will claim their first full winning month since August 2017. It's been almost 5 years!!!!

— Matt Kremnitzer (@mattkremnitzer) June 25, 2022

also:

have allowed one run on 13 hits in their last 27 innings

have the same number of wins as the white sox

better record over the last 10 games than the yankees

not allowing myself to get excited. it still feels like a lot of the reasons we're doing better this year are going to get traded at the deadline... bullpen guys, mancini, santander. and i wonder if players like mullins and hays are going to still be around by the time the younger guys are settled. right now the only big 'post-tank' pieces are adley, mountcastle and bradish, still a lot of holes to fill.

they broke the glass on stowers. definitely curious to see when he next comes up. definitely seem to be avoiding trial by fire for the sexier mi prospects, but w/ jones out of the picture, maybe vavra's next man up? pretty amazing what westburg and henderson are doing at nrofolk, though.

don't think stowers is up full time until santander is traded, or maybe mancini but they probably want him in the outfield. i'm not pinning a lot of hope on stowers though.

cowser, mayo and norby all promoted to AA despite not blowing the competition away at aberdeen. wouldn't be surprised to see any of them hit the ground running simply because ripken park is a cavern and bowie is a bandbox.

btw, rutschman above 100 ops+/wrc+

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-orioles-arent-good-but-they-are-interesting

Orioles are winning a lot of fun games lately.

so...morale's pretty good!

.500 BABY

The orioles may be good *and* interesting

Certainly makes the wild card race more fun

They are not, in any objective sense, a good team, but there is a lot of fun stuff going on. I think my pre-season picks of Mullins, Rutschman, Rodriguez, Hays, Mountcastle and Mateo to be interesting things about the 2022 O's was not THAT far off, and would be closer if not for injuries to Means/Rodriguez, but I totally missed the coming together of the bullpen and the Tyler Wells Experience and Mancini coming back this strong and of course Rougned Odor just kind of being fun as hell despite not being that good at baseball per se.

Ten in a row, my goodness.

i mean, MAYBE i could have seen dean kremer stepping up like he has, but the efforts of tyler wells and spenser watkins have been astonishing.

Polite as ever, but thanks, didn't know.

And just to set your troubled mind at ease, I did search "Baltimore," but not Orioles. I tried, I really tried.

lol not really