Orioles Shutout In Consecutive Games, Listless And Lifeless In A 5th Straight Defeat

Mike Elias, after seven years of mostly failure as a baseball executive in Baltimore had the audacity to crow about his alleged "young core" of mashers this winter and the potent lineup he had built, which free-agent slugger Pete Alonso would put over the top.

This farce was running to every microphone he could find in February to explain how his Big Bad Birds were going to crush their way to the top of the AL East (you have the stomach for this?). But smart baseball folks know he’s the worst kind of fake smart guy, the guy who wants to be right more than he cares about his product being truly sound, let alone great. So he’ll keep propping up his favorite players – the glory boys he really needs to work out: Adley Rutschman (finally gone), Gunnar Henderson (he’ll be gone this winter) and Jackson Holliday (major slump, again) - and crossing his fingers.

So the lineup is filled with failures who are pressing and succumbing to bad habits and doing too much, and aside from a few road trips where Alonso was on a Babe Ruthian year, this has been another bad lineup with more flaws than strengths. And Elias is a laughingstock, with consecutive shutout losses to the Red Sox the exclamation point on another lost season. It was 5-0 Saturday at Camden Yards after 1-0 on Friday, and this team really is as fraudulent as the charlatan who constructed it.

Since crawling back to .500 the Orioles have rolled over five straight times (69-74). They were utterly dominated by the Rockies’ horrible starting pitching and Ranger Suarez on Friday (six total hits in the game, all singles), then Sonny Gray, who owns the O’s and has been stellar, had his way with Elias’s Enigmas for seven frames of dominance Saturday.

In their five games prior to Saturday, the Orioles, through the first six innings (30 innings total), produced two homers and seven RBIs in 118 plate appearances, with 23 strikeouts and seven walks. They combined for a pathetic slash of .220/.271/.303 for a .574 OPS in that span. And in seven innings Saturday, Gray struck out seven (he did walk three) and gave up just three hits and was rarely in any sort of trouble.

Albernaz Running Out Of Excuses

On Friday the Orioles wannabe puppet skipper tried to pretend that a lineout in a shutout was “getting something going,” but even he seems tired of the same trite word salads he’s been tossing around for five months now trying to pretend a few hard-hit outs mean something. He could barely muster the energy to gush about the guy on the mound for the other team like he used to.

“It seems like our guys are offensively pressing a little bit," Albernaz said during a post-game press conference where it seemed the novice finally got a grasp on just how sideways this season has been. "Tying to do too much … We just couldn't get anything going offensively."

The months-long winter sales job of a suspect roster - and the hiring of another inept game manager under Elias's thumb - was always shameful, perpetrated by a front office that should have been fired after the 2023 trade deadline. Instead, we get threats from vacant and barely-awake ownership to keep Elias around here forever. (How's that winning seven-of-every-10 games thing working out?).

We barely even got the nominal faux-drama tonight, the kind that used to get Alby all jazzed up about how hard his losers fight and grind.

With Gray gone after seven and Boston’s top relievers basically unavailable and/or not needed with a five-run lead, the Orioles tried to pull the one lame stunt at the plate that’s kept them from already being totally out of Wild Card contention (three back and fading): Ambushing a fastball from a low-tier reliever late in the game.

And they had their chance in the 8th, but Holliday struck out with two on and no outs and Alonso struck out with the bases loaded and two outs. It’s not rocket science as to why they stopped scoring: Henderson is having a terrible season, they don’t have a true leadoff hitter (or just refuse to keep Blaze Alexander there), and Alonso, in the last six games, if 3-for-23 with one homer and three driven in and he was 0-for-3 Saturday. This after three weeks with a 1.500 OPS.

Of course, Albernaz, truly an insipid parody of an MLB manager, had his hands all over the loss too. Besides another ridiculous lineup (we all know that’s Elias but he makes the skipper wear it), his Little League infatuation with the contact play got another runner thrown out at home when the game was close. Oh, and he left 36-year-old starter Chris Bassitt in too long, with the veteran convincing his boss how to do his job.

Bassitt doesn’t have a whole lot to offer in the “stuff” department or velocity, and he walked four in 5 2/3 (91 pitches) and should have been done after five because he is obviously a five-inning guy at this point. Three hits and a walk later the Red Sox had a 2-0 lead, and Albernaz tried to defend leaving the starter in with the bases loaded.

“I just wanted to see where Bassitt was physically, just to make sure he was in the best spot,” Albernaz said about keeping him in after the mound visit, before mumbling something about learning something from something in his quest to pretend was ever right for this job.

Rico Garcia gave up a hit allowing an inherited runner to score and Albert Suarez gave up two more in the seventh. This bullpen has been performing way over any reasonable expectations for months, but lacks real put-away arms and guys with wipe-out stuff; like the tepid lineup, that collapse is in the works, too.

So we get opposing fans again making the most noise and chanting "Yankees suck," while the Orioles merely wilt.

"We're just falling on our faces right now," Albernaz offered, perhaps the most honest thing he's said in a season where he was routinely disgraced himself and this franchise in front of the media.

When do the "Fire Elias" chants start? Does "Fire Alby" come first?

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