Offense cooling off in 2nd loss to the A’s

Losing the series and their 2nd game in a row 4-2 to Oakland, the Orioles have now found themselves back in last place in the AL East and are now 4.5 games back from division-leading Boston. That’s still not bad, but it may continue to get worse if the O’s can’t find a way to win on the West Coast. However, Britton is on the mound tonight so I’m liking the chances of a win to avoid the sweep today.

As for last night’s game, the Orioles scored 2 runs off of 6 hits but each hit came at inopportune times and weren’t followed by more hits except in the 4th inning when 3 singles scored a run. The only other run scored came in the 3rd when Adam Jones hit an RBI single after Josh Outman gave up back-to-back walks. He walked 5 batters but it didn’t cause him too much damage.

The O’s pitching wasn’t terrible, this was just another story of no offense. Bergesen didn’t have a bad start. He did give up 9 hits but only gave up 3 runs and got 5 strikeouts. He didn’t complete 6 innings though due to a high pitch count. Despite the not bad start, he got sent down to Triple-A Norfolk today and the O’s are expected to call up LHP Pedro Viola to take his spot until Matusz comes back (which is this Wednesday against Seattle!!!!). Rapada and Jim Johnson got their job done but Koji gave up a homer to Mark Ellis in the 8th to allow them to go up 4-2. At that point, it didn’t matter because the offense could not string any hits together.

This isn’t the end of the world and it’s not a huge deal. Yes, the offense hasn’t been hitting like they were at the last home stand, but that’s to be expected and so are a few off days every now and then. They’re 2 games below .500 and only 4.5 games back with Matusz coming back so everything is looking pretty good, at least good compared to past seasons.