OAKLAND – When I talked with Trey Mancini before Monday's road trip opener, he - like much of Birdland - was hopeful that the eighth inning on Sunday would be a turning point for the Orioles offense.
They scored five runs and got three big hits with runners in scoring position in beating the Yankees 5-0. But whatever good was created there didn’t make it to the West Coast, at least for the series opener. The Orioles lost 5-1 at Oakland and were held to seven hits and went 1-for-7 with RISP. They have yet to have hits in double digits in a game in 2022.
On the plus side, the O’s pitching has obviously far exceeded expectations at this early stage. But we are seeing some quality stuff from several arms - in both velocity and secondary assortments - and the Orioles are executing their pitching game plans extremely well through 10 games.
The staff ERA went down Monday night, to 2.86, which is fifth-best in the majors and a far cry from the 5.85 team ERA for the 2021 season.
Mancini is, of course, impressed with the pitchers, including one he noted that pitched last night and continued to get noticed.
“They look great. Keegan (Akin), especially, has stood out so far this year," he said. "He’s looked incredible out there. Kind of beaming with confidence, I would say, so that’s always good to see. We have a lot of guys with a lot of talent.
“Sometimes here it’s just, either (through) trial and error or just needing a lot of experience before finding your footing and kind of becoming who you want to be as a pitcher, and we’re starting to see that with some of them.”
Akin retired all six batters he faced in the seventh and eighth innings last night and has now started his year with 7 2/3 scoreless on two hits with 0.26 WHIP.
But the Orioles offense produced just one run Monday, and that was the seventh time already in 10 games they have scored two or fewer. The club’s season total of 22 runs is not, actually, last in the majors. Arizona has scored only 21.
But a big positive and a big change from a year ago is the club’s walk rate. Right now is it 11.6, which is second best in the big leagues. Last season Baltimore batters ranked 28th in the majors with a 7.5 walk rate.
Of course, the thinking goes that walks produce on-base chances for the team and escalate pitch counts, and eventually some hits will fall and runs will be scored because those runners are on base. The Orioles do have the worst K percentage in the majors, but their exit velocity as a team is up a bit over last season, so when they do make contact, they rate in the middle of the pack in how hard they strike the baseball.
So far, so good, for O’s hitters in the swing-decisions department.
“Overall, our pitch selection has been pretty good,” said Mancini. “I’d be willing to say luck hasn’t been on our side in a lot of ways, too. Sometimes that is going to happen, but hopefully that can even out a little bit over such a long season.”
As I wrote months ago, some of the concepts implemented in batting practice on the O’s farm last year are in place now in the majors under new co-hitting coaches Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte. Hitters are challenged more in their BP routines and pre-game cage work, and batting practice pitchers try to simulate the pitch arsenal the hitters will see that night.
The focused training, Mancini hopes, will eventually pay off in crooked numbers.
“Yeah, especially with the training we do in the cage," he said. "It’s high-intensity stuff, and a lot of that is you realize what pitches you can handle and what you can’t. When you make that your main emphasis and you practice that before games, I think it’s going to show up. I think it has been. The pitch selection, it is something we keep track of every day. We get reports every day about our pitch selection, and it’s been really good so far.”
The Orioles have won just 30 percent of their games so far, true. But if the pitching can hold up and the bats start to heat up, the talk of the team making solid improvement this year could turn out to be more than just talk.
“I think we have definitely higher expectations for ourselves than the past few years, and like we have been saying, this is the year we want to see things start to turn a little bit and start going in the right direction,” Mancini said.
Hyde’s homecoming: While some in the O’s traveling party may be 3,000 miles from home on the West Coast, out here is home for O’s manager Brandon Hyde. He was born in Santa Rosa, Calif., about an hour north of Oakland, and crafted a nice baseball career at Santa Rosa Junior College. One of his close childhood friends growing up there, Tim Cossins, is on his coaching staff in Baltimore.
Hyde broke into an instant smile Monday when asked about returning to his home state this week.
“The West Coast road trip is not (just) another road trip for me,” he said. “It’s always a special trip for me. To see my parents (Barry and Lucy), see my sister and her family. I’ll see a bunch of friends. Still have, pretty much everybody I grew up with, you know, lives in northern California still. Same town, same neighborhood. So, to have some of those guys come to see me, as well as some are going to (Anaheim) too, it is always fun for me and fun to catch up.”