These 2 flaws continue to be the Orioles undoing

Last night, Kyle Bradish gave the Baltimore Orioles exactly what they needed. With the bullpen gassed after a week of short and ineffective starts, Bradish went seven strong innings, striking out 10 and only walking one. It was a vintage Bradish performance, what Orioles fans have been waiting for all season. Unfortunately, the Orioles weren't able to capitalize on this excellent Bradish outing because of two things. Their stubbornness and their sloppiness.

If the Orioles don't rein in these two weaknesses, this season is going to get away from them.

The Orioles stubbornly refuse to accept that some of their players should not be getting regular playing time

Despite all of the evidence that has mounted up over the last two seasons that Tyler O'Neill and Coby Mayo are liabilities both at the plate and in the field, the Orioles continue to jam them into the middle of the batting order every time their opponent puts a lefty on the mound.

It's disappointing that this is the reality for both players, as the Orioles paid a lot of money to acquire O'Neill in free agency, and Mayo was once the team's top prospect. But just because a reality is disappointing doesn't mean it should be ignored.

Going into last night's game, this season, O'Neill was slashing .095/.174/.095 against left-handed pitching with a 30% K Rate. Last year, he hit .157/.254/.392 with a 30% K rate. This is not a blip; he is just not good at facing lefties anymore.

Mayo has a 95 wRC+ against lefties, so he's at least almost league average against them, but you know who has a better wRC+ against lefties than that? Samuel Basallo!

Craig Albernaz said after the game that the Orioles' inability to hit lefties has been their Achilles heel. That kind of phrasing makes it seem like something that is happening to them rather than something they're doing to themselves by consistently removing their best hitters from the lineup in favor of their worst.

That would be like if, before the Trojan War, Achilles took off his sandal and stabbed himself in the heel. Absurd!

Imagine you're a pitcher getting ready to face the Orioles, and as you're on your iPad preparing for the hitters you might face, your manager walks past your locker and says, "The Orioles just posted their lineup, they're starting Mayo over Basallo at DH." How would that make you feel? Joyful? Relieved? Slightly confused?  

The worst part is that there is no end in sight to this behavior. At every opportunity, the Orioles are doubling down on making sure they put their worst foot forward against lefties.

The Orioles sloppiness on defense has now cost them two games in a row

The Orioles sloppiness had taken a bit of a backseat to some of their other issues during their losing streak this week, but after two consecutive games where deciding runs crossed the plate as a direct result of routine plays being butchered by the Orioles defense, the heat is back on.

With the bad defense, there's not that much of an in-season solution that is going to make these guys better defenders. This is something that has to be an organizational emphasis, and as Craig Albernaz said a few weeks ago, it hasn't been one for many years in Baltimore. Maybe with time, Albernaz can change that, but right now the Orioles are reaping what they sowed.

One thing that can be changed, though, is for the coaching staff to recognize that they don't have a bunch of defensive stalwarts on their team and act accordingly. The most impactful decision of the entire day came when the Orioles tried to put the wheel play on a hitter who wasn't bunting, and what should have been a double-play ball became an RBI single and later a run.

First of all, this group of Orioles infielders is not the kind of group that screams "we're ready to pull off a complicated defensive play with multiple moving parts." Second of all, why is the wheel play on when the hitter isn't showing bunt? On a rewatch of the at bat, Gelof enters the box, takes practice swings, and stays in his normal batting stance until he swings normally and gets a hit.

The wheel play leaves you with zero defenders in position to field any routine ground balls. It's pretty important to be certain the opponent is bunting before you try to run that play. That's sloppy work to just guess and be wrong.

The Orioles wake up this morning in dead last in their division, and they are to blame for being there. There is still a lot of season left, and all it would take is a nice little win streak to catapult them into a playoff spot, but they're going to need to make changes to the way they're doing things if they want that to happen.

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