What To Expect On The Orioles 9-Game Road Trip

I’m going to make a brazen prediction about the Orioles latest make-or-break road trip: they won’t go .500 on it.

Okay, that a copout.

It’s nine games, so unless we get a rainout that’s impossible. Maybe we can get a snow out in Colorado. Just no weather delays because those games will start late enough.

It seems fitting that in another weird and lost season for The Birds they have this trek into September – at St. Louis then out to Sac-town to face the A’s and then finishing the trip with a midweek series in Denver and getting no turnaround time before the Red Sox (and Adley Rutschman, unless he breaks down again between now and then) come to Camden Yards.

So, yeah, a season that we told you was cooked back in May – and that has been bereft of much joy, and has only been on quasi-life support because the American League stinks – is really and truly on the brink here. Had the Orioles not taken three out of four against the Rays in Tampa to complete their last 10-day trek, it would already be over in the Wild Card standings too.

But because of that, we get to continue to watch a team that hovers between two games under .500 and eight games under .500 for months play against three middling to awful baseball clubs with something kind of on the line. So let’s be thankful for that. Because soon it will be over and labor unrest will be upon us and the Orioles feckless ownership group might be intent on keeping the fools running their baseball operations in charge, including Mike Elias.

After being awful on the road for most of the first-half of the season, the O’s are 11-8 in their last 19 away games. Here’s what to expect on the trip:

St. Louis

The Cardinals were supposed to be embracing a full rebuild for the first time in generations, yet they still find themselves with a superior record to the O’s They sit at .500 and they are as blah as you can get. They have a -2 run differential, and they are two-games below .500 at home … and they also don’t have anything to play for, as a .500 record in the NL gets you 5.5 games off the pace for a playoff spot, as well it should.

This should be a nice match-up for Trevor Rogers in game three of the series, if it is a rubber situation. Since June 1, the Cardinals are second-worst in MLB with a .216 AVG vs lefties at home (take a wild guess who is 30th in MLB at .208) and they have a pathetic .646 OPS vs them at home since then, 26th in MLB. Jordan Walker remains a monster in their lineup, but he is a .900 OPS guy on the road and .800 at home; he has 10 homers and 30 RBIs at Busch Stadium and 17-66 on the road.

Sacramento

The A’s are a disaster.

At 23-40 they are the worst team at home in MLB and they perform like a team that is sick of playing in a AAA ballpark. The lineup of young, emerging power hitters was supposed to carry them, but, well, we know how that can go. On the season, the Athletics are getting outscored by 1.4 runs per game, worst in MLB (of course they came back from 6-0 down Sunday against Houston when I had the ‘stros on the RL at +120 to win outright).

And in the Janet Jackson metric (What Have You Done For Me Lately) they are 8-22 in their last 30 games, and that, friends, is also worst in MLB. If the Orioles’ pathetic lineup, whether you want to look at starters vs subs or whether you want to quantify their misery by focusing on the 1-5 spots in the order can’t get it going in this cow town, then forget about it.

I could see Coby Mayo doing some damage in this park with the way he gets under the ball. He is second to only Pete Alonso (hits in 15 of his last 16 games – HYPER) on the team in home runs and RBIs on the road). Gunnar Henderson, somehow, has just 22 RBIs all season on the road.

The A’s team ERA at home is 6.50 (their pen has an ERA of 7.09 at home!). They are more than a half tune worse than any team in MLB. And, perhaps you saw this coming, but guess who is second-worst with a home ERA of 5.91 …

Colorado

You guessed it! The Rockies.

They are woefully short on quality arms of any variety and the cumulative impact of all the innings that have logged in this jet stream ballpark will have them on fumes here. The Rockies will force you to score to beat them at home, and, at 31-30 against teams below .500, they probably see the Orioles as a team they can beat. They are also miserably against left-handed pitching, as are the A’s, but the Orioles are quite thin on that commodity.

Regardless, the way this schedule breaks, this better be a gift from The Baseball Gods. The Orioles are terribly flawed, but going 5-4 here doesn’t feel like too tall a task. And if that’s the case they will probably be able to cull some fans back to Camden Yards for the final few home series and hit their marks for passable attendance figures, which is all these owners seem to care about anyway.

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