Orioles Lack Of A Closer Is Taking A Toll, Tyler Wells Trade Looming Large

The Orioles have largely gotten away with not having anything resembling a true MLB closer this season. That might be changing drastically moving forward.

Even with Ryan Helsley was being paid to sporadically attempt to perform as one, he wasn’t actually doing the job. And they’re going to be stuck with him next year, because he's not opting out like Tyler O'Neill was never opting out. Mighty Felix Bautista is rounding into form in AAA after successive major surgeries, and perhaps could add to the mix, but he is not what he once was not should he be expected to be after missing so much time.

In the interim, as the Orioles (69-72) have lost three straight at a time they can’t afford it and have lost all of those games by two runs or less and have blown leads in two of them. They came a ridiculous game-saving catch away from blowing a lead Monday in Colorado too; one wonders if this issue might finally bite them. Because right now, they sure could desperately use a multi-purpose reliever like Tyler Wells, the best thing left in their pen heading into the deadline and it wasn’t close.

But he’s shutting down games for the Rays now. Because Elias stinks at pretty much everything, but in-season roster management is truly and totally beyond the realm of his limited capabilities.

Of all the moves failed baseball exec Mike Elias made at the deadline, this was always the most quizzical. He really wanted to get former draft pick Michael Forret back in his org after over-paying for league-average starter Shane Baz in a winter trade, and so he was always going to want to do business with Tampa again to try to get some of those kids back (we figured he’d sent Rutschman there, but the Rays are smart and probably knew he was damaged goods). Tampa fleeced Elias for Bryan Baker – now an All Star closer – before the deadline last year, and well, let’s just say the Orioles have a lot of work to do with Forret in AAA next season.

Regardless, high-leverage spots are becoming an issue, the ninth inning and extra innings are becoming an issue, and after facing pretty bad teams lately, the challenge is much stiffer for their relievers ahead. Will the preferred choices – Andrew Kittredge, Yennier Cano and Rico Garcia - hold up? They’d better, because we know this team doesn’t really hit consistently and the mudded mess for the final Wild Card spot gets more jumbled by the day.

From a scale of 1-10, here’s my level of concern with the particulars involved here:

Kittredge

Level Of Concern: 7.5 of 10

He was the beneficiary of the Colton Cowser Catch Of The Century in center in Coors field Monday, or his numbers would look a lot different. Kittredge, 36, is game and wily, he has been better than expected after a very slow start, but he’s also near the end of his career and too many balls are put in play and this is usually an awful defense behind him.

Kittredge has allowed at least one hit in nine straight appearances, yielding 13 hits over 8 2/3 innings overall in that stretch. Balls are being squared up and not often enough staying on the ground (22 fly balls and 11 line drives over last 40 batters faced). He’s not walking people, but we know this isn’t wipe out stuff and no team in MLB saw this guy as a closer, let alone that keeps pretending to be in the mix to go to the playoffs. (Yet sold Wells).

Cano

Level Of Concern: 9.0

They seem to be backing off him and preferring him to try to get a quick ground ball to get them out of a jam, while limiting the volume. It’s not working. Cano has completed an inning of work just once in his last nine outings. They also rode him pretty hard in the first half and he might be fatiguing and his signature pitch is certainly suffering.

Nick Sogard, not exactly Ted Williams, smashed a sinker for a homer off Cano Thursday to put Boston ahead, in another one of those inherited runner spots, with the overmatched puppet skipper HYPER opting not to stick with a lefty-lefty matchup there with Luis De Leon on the mound (Sogard has reverse splits the Orioles would contend; it’s Nick Sogard vs a lefty he’s never seen before, I’d contend, and Cano is in rough form).

The league is hitting .438 off Cano’s sinker since Aug. 1 (20 plate appearances). He’s thrown 152 total pitches since Aug. 1 and picked up 17 swinging strikes. He has a 9.00 ERA (but 3.67 FIP) since the start of August, allowing 10 hits in 7 IP; yet another guy who just has too many balls being put in play (and a defense behind him that can’t handle some of the slow rollers he does induce).

Bottom line: In last nine outings he’s logged four total innings and faced 23 batters, producing just seven ground balls, to 14 line drives/fly balls. Major red flag. We’ve seen him collapse before. I would have made trading him a top priority at the deadline and wrote as such; they extended him.

Garcia

Level Of Concern: 5.0

He’s out of his midseason funk and back to being functional, but man does he give up the long ball and that scares the heck out of anyone when we start talking about closer situations. Still, I suspect we see him more in that role moving forward. He has a 0.90 ERA his last 10 IP, there aren’t a lot of other options, and if he can keep the ball in the park, he’s usually quite good.

I don’t love the four walks in that span, and one K/inning as a closer is not what you are looking for either. But as a team the Orioles are averaging 8.2 Ks/IP in the 9th and extras on the season – bottom 10 in baseball – and it’s dipped to 8.1/IP in those innings since the start of August.

So, will they end up throwing Bautista to the wolves despite everything in this article? Did you see what Craig Albernaz did to De Leon in his debut? Of course they will. This is falling apart.

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