The Orioles Are Failing Collectively And Individually At The Plate

One of the many failures of the Mike Elias era is the inability to construct a roster able to succeed as a collective, while at the same time having a player development strata that manages to also undermine every individual who comes their way.

No one gets better around here and the more the sample size expands, and the more time they spend around Elias’s major-league staff (including the current woefully inept version or any of the three he’s had the ridiculous privilege of staffing) the more flawed they become. It’s one of the many reasons why he should have been fired years ago.

It’s well established he can’t develop an impact pitcher going on a decade and how no clue how to identify, evaluate or cultivate arms. He overpays in free agency, madly, and misses on the best values the market has to offer every single year. He was supposed to be building a hitting factory to overcome all of that, just focusing on experienced college bats at the top of the draft, but he can’t it right there either.

They've scoring 64 times in their last 17 games (3.76 runs/game) while their season spirals away.

We can assess it simply (and please play along with me; it’s yet another Orioles off day, what else are you going to do?). Based on where the player was drafted or what he’s being paid or what he’s displayed in the past or what he role was supposed to be, how many of the Orioles hitters are exceeding expectations? How many are meeting them? How many are falling well short?

It’s yet another exercise that illuminates the overarching ineptitude of this baseball operations regime. We’re going to exclude Jackson Holliday and Dylan Beavers for lack of playing time, and we’re going to rank them within each subcategory.

Overachievers

1) Samuel Basallo – He and Pete Alonso are the best run producers since the start of May, he has one of the more mature two-out approaches on the roster and, in a clubhouse that is so, so soft, he powered through his puppet skipper’s silly attempts to shame him about his toughness to become a middle-of-the-lineup mainstay at just 21.

2) Blaze Alexander – Since April 28th he has been Ted Williams with slightly less power. I have some concern that playing everyday and moving around so much in the field will hasten the inevitable regression, but credit this staff for helping his timing mechanism to get right.

Achievers

1) Pete Alonso – After a slow start he’s who he was hired to be. Leads the team in pretty much every offensive category and been great at first base. But the lineup still stinks and O’s brass and half-wit lazy buffoons in the media sold you he was going to fix their frat boy clubhouse. Eh, notsomuch.

2) Coby Mayo – His overall numbers are bad and he’s never going to play third base, but with Tyler O’Neill being one of the worst players on a major league roster, and Mayo crushing lefties among the best in MLB, that’s enough given how bad this team is. The fact he isn’t in Norfolk is a win by Orioles player development standards.

3) Taylor Ward – This might be a stretch, but they badly needed a leadoff guy with Gunnar Henderson caught in a season-long vortex of frustration, and he proved that and was leading the league in walks for a while and is getting on base 38% of the time. Of course they got him for pop and there’s been none of that and he’s serviceable at best in left.

4) Leody Taveras – With the offense inept much of the season, he was getting on base and scoring runs on his own and playing CF all the time because they didn’t trust anyone else. The sample size got overexposed and he’s hit the wall, but he wasn’t supposed to crack Elias’s allegedly quality roster in the first place.

Underachievers

1) Gunnar Henderson – Totally lost season across the board. On the bright side his complete and utter collapse isn’t two-plus years like Adley Rutschman’s devolution to AAAA hitter since June 21, 2024.

2) Rutschman – You gotta suit and play bro. His stans in the media will pretend like a nice three weeks to start the season mean something. He’s not in the top 20 in innings caught and His OPS is below .700 since May 1. Trade him already. Basallo is so much better. and younger and signed

3) O’Neill – One of the worst hitters in MLB, but was brought in to mash lefties and has been one of the worst in the majors at that since being signed for a mind-numbing $19M/year. Cannot move in OF or on bases. Injury always lurking.

4) Colton Cowser – A top five pick who is supposed to an impact bat – whose only quality as a hitter is power – was stuck behind Taveras in CF much of the season. We are coming up on 90 games and he has 8 homers and 27 RBIs. Prone to long slumps, and playing better now in the field and striking out less.

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