Orioles finally win, but their rotation's biggest flaw remains an issue

The Baltimore Orioles finally won a game yesterday as they survived a 9-7 win against the Miami Marlins to end their five-game losing streak. Just getting a win is a big relief, after losing by a combined 35 runs over the previous five games, it was beginning to feel like they might go 0-127 for the rest of the season. However, despite the win, the Orioles showed many of the exact same flaws that were on display during their losing streak.

The biggest flaw is, of course, the pitching staff. Chris Bassitt started the game and looked like a bad high school pitcher, throwing 90 mph fastballs with absolutely no idea where they were going. Rookie Anthony Nunez gave up back-to-back homers in the 7th, and Andrew Kittredge finally blew the lead in the 8th. They were fortunate that the Orioles managed to score two more runs in the ninth, or the story of the game would have been that the Orioles' pitching was once again really bad.

The fact that they won doesn't mean that the Orioles' pitching wasn't really bad. It was really bad. This was a Marlins team that was averaging well under four runs per game over their last 20 games, and they scored seven against the Orioles. The Orioles were lucky it wasn't more; the Marlins had 16 base runners over the course of the game. Seven of those reached by way of the walk or HBP. A few bad bounces and the Marlins win that game by five.

The entire Orioles rotation has been dealing with poor command this season

Command in general has been a real problem area for this Orioles pitching staff. The Orioles are a bottom-five team in baseball by walks per nine innings. The Orioles' starting rotation has a combined ERA of 4.98. If you were to go one by one through each of the Orioles starters and ask why each one is having a bad season, the reason for all of them would be the same: Bad command.

With the way the Orioles pitching staff is spraying the ball around and putting runners on the bases, the only way the Orioles can win is if their offense puts up big numbers every night. The Orioles have not won a game without scoring more than five runs since they played the White Sox a month ago. Having to score five runs or automatically losing is a lot of pressure to put on the offense, and even if they were to do it, there would be plenty of nights where they still would lose.

If the Orioles had scored six runs in every single game during their five-game losing streak, that would have made them one of the best offenses in baseball over that span, and they still would have lost every game. Last night, if they'd only scored six runs, they would have been handed their most demoralizing defeat of the season.

That being the case, it is hard to feel like the Orioles' struggles are behind them. Instead, it feels like the Orioles' struggles are right with them, and they were lucky to outlast them for a night. They are the same team that got given a swirlie by the Yankees last weekend, and if they don't make a change, that same bully that put their head in the toilet is coming back for their lunch money next week.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow