Colton Cowser's walk-off home run covers up ugly doubleheader performance by the Orioles

After being swept by the Rays in Tampa, the Baltimore Orioles desperately needed to bounce back and were fortunate to find themselves facing a wounded Tigers team that was 1-9 in their last 10 games. The Orioles won the series, so in a sense they "took care of business" and got back on stable ground over a disastrous roadtrip but even though they won, their performance on the field did not look that much better than it has all season and if not for one of the most unlikely home runs of the season the Orioles would be staring at three straight series losses and have one of the worst records in the American League.

If you watched the Orioles this past weekend, they looked like the exact same team that got swept by the Rays and blown out by the Nationals the week before. They were just fortunate to be playing one of the worst road teams in the league while their best player is hurt.

The Orioles looked shaky in every phase of the game in their series win against the Tigers

Chris Bassitt went 4.1 innings, 3 ER (after an opener), and Trevor Rogers went 4.2 innings, 4 ER. This has been a problem all year. You are not going to have a winning record when your starters can't get deep in games, and they put the team in a multi-run deficit in the first couple of innings.

The worst part is that the Tigers' offense has been terrible over the past few weeks. Over their previous two series, they scored 13 runs in seven games, that’s an average of less than two runs per game. The Tigers scored 11 runs in this series; nine of those runs came against the Orioles starters. Almost everyone else who took the mound against the Tigers' helpless offense made them look helpless. Against Bassitt and Rogers, they looked like an all-star team. That does not bode well for the Orioles' chances at building on this series win.

Brandon Young deserves a lot of credit for his 6.2 innings, 0 ER start, but that has been an anomaly for this rotation, and with how the Tigers have been playing recently, that's what a competent starting pitcher should do against the Tigers right now.

Moving past the Orioles' pitching, the Orioles offense also didn't have a weekend to write home about. Yes, they scored seven and five runs in the Orioles' two victories, but if you look at how they scored those runs, it doesn't feel sustainable. They benefited from several Tigers defensive miscues and some excellent batted ball luck. It's nice when the ball bounces your way, and the Orioles were certainly due, but it would be unwise to count on Jackson Holliday consistently hitting 330-foot pop flies that hit the foul pole.

If you take away Cowser's walk-off, the Orioles put up three total runs in 18 innings on Sunday. It felt like the offense was just trying to get home as soon as possible. They allowed both starting pitchers to efficiently cruise late into the game, collecting eight total hits and striking out 15 times.

Perhaps more concerning, either the rotation or the offense was the way the games were managed, which showed no growth or ability to adjust. The Orioles continue to try to lean into platooning despite the fact that the players on the roster who are on the roster to hit left-handed pitching flat cannot hit left-handed pitching. After going 0-7 in this series, Tyler O'Neill is now 2-40 against lefties this season, and yet the Orioles cannot pull their left-handed bats from the lineup fast enough to get O'Neill into the game when the other team puts a lefty on the mound. O'Neill has been a good hitter against lefties in the past, but at what point does his performance over the past two seasons in Baltimore outweigh the reputation he had when they signed him?

The Orioles are similarly stubborn when it comes to the bullpen. Keegan Akin has a career-long track record of melting down in high-leverage innings. He came into the series with a 13.50 ERA and was the only reliever to give up a run to the Tigers all series, and yet the Orioles continue to use him in high-leverage spots as if he's prime Andrew Miller.

Craig Albernaz talked a lot about accountability this offseason and in spring training. At what point are the worst players on this Orioles team going to be held accountable and see any sort of reduction in playing time?

At the end of the day, Cowser did hit that walk-off home run, and the Orioles did win this series. No amount of mistakes or poor play can reverse the result, but they'll need to play a lot better in their upcoming series against the Rays and the Jays if they want to avoid having their season ended before June even starts.

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