Gunnar Henderson of the Orioles finishes a very good three-game series against Minnesota, going two for four today with a home run. He wound up seven for thirteen in the series, homering in each game. That helped Baltimore to a sweep. Henderson collected multiple hits in five of his last nine games to raise his OBP to .346.
Colton Cowser keeps knocking out the extra-base hits. He doubled and homered in two at bats against the Brewers to raise his slugging percentage to 1.077. Seven of his eleven hits have gone for extra bases.
Unfortunately, that’s all the offense the Orioles have tonight as the Brewers lead the game 4-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning.
Jackson Holliday makes his major league debut tonight in Boston with the Orioles. In ten games at AAA this season, the 20-year-old hit .333/.482/.595 after hitting .267/.396/.400 in 18 games there last year. Holliday proved to the Orioles he has nothing left to prove at the minor league level.
The Royals and Orioles play a back and forth game, Baltimore coming out on top as Jordan Westburg hits a walk-off home run in the ninth to give Baltimore the win 6-4. Westburg had not done much so far this season, but he gets a memorable night under his belt. It’s only the fourth home run of his 71 game career.
The Angels get a well pitched game from their staff to down the Orioles 4-1 and record their first win of the season. Reid Detmers allowed two hits in five innings, and the bullpen gave up just one more. The group did walk five batters, but two of those walks went to the red hot Gunnar Henderson which might have been a better strategy than pitching to him.
Three teams scored at least twelve runs Saturday afternoon, one of putting thirteen men across the plate. The Braves and Phillies looked evenly matched coming into the season, but for the second day in a row Atlanta pounded their division rivals, winning on Saturday 12-3. Four separate Braves picked up three hits, including lead-off star Ronald Acuna Jr. and ninth place hitter Jarred Kelenic.
The Guardians posted a slightly larger margin of victory, with a 12-3 win over the Athletics. The A’s new catcher got a rude welcome to the majors:
Six Cleveland players stole bases off Kyle McCann, a 26-year-old catcher making his major league debut.
Chron.com
The Guardians collect four doubles, a triple, and a home run as part of their fifteen hits.
The Orioles continued the Angels pain with a 13-4 victory. Gunnar Henderson missed the cycle by a double, while Anthony Santander doubled and homered. Both drove in three runs. New Angels leadoff man Anthony Rendon has yet to reach base.
Corbin Burnes of the Orioles pitched six innings against the Angels, striking out eleven and allowing just one hit, a home run by Mike Trout. Meanwhile, the Orioles hitters generated 10 hits and drew six walks on their way to an 11-3 win at home on opening day. Catcher Adley Rutschman led the offense with two hits and a walk.
The division previews finish with the AL East. To help with evaluations, a crude runs created per game is calculated from Musings Marcels projections for both batters and pitchers. I then average these for the core of the team. The nine position players, the five starting pitchers, and the closer. I weight the pitchers as 90% starters, 10% closer. The selection of players comes from the FanGraphs Roster Resource.
The bottom line is a Core Winning Percentage based on the RC/G of the core batters and core pitchers using the Pythagorean method. You can see the spreadsheet with the data here.
Note that the core winning percentage (CWP) is going to be high, often the core is going to be over .500. We are basically looking at the best players on the team. Don’t take that as a prediction of team winning percentage, take it as a way to compare teams in a division.
New York Yankees
Aaron Judge and Juan Soto both project to over eight RC/G. Two players generating that much offense covers a lot of ills. That’s especially true when the team owns core set of pitchers who are the best in the division. Note that despite a poor season in 2023, Carlos Rodon still projects to be very good, as his 2023 makes up a small part of the projection. Nestor Cortes also comes in below four RC/G, and Gerrit Cole is waiting in the wings. The Yankees right now have the depth to sustain the Cole injury.
That wasn’t true of the offense in 2023, and may not be true this season. I suspect there is upside with Anthony Rizzo regaining his brain health. Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton both hit well in spring training. If those two sluggers are back to their 80% of their old selves, the Yankees have the depth to survive a stubbed toe. This could be a very good season in The Bronx.
Baltimore Orioles
The Orioles lineup consists of seven players in their prime years. The front office brought along their talent to mature at the same time, and now they have a chance to build on a division championship. With catcher Adley Rutschman and shortstop Gunnar Henderson each over 6.0 RC per game, the Orioles project to be the strongest team in the division up the middle. Offensively, the biggest weakness appears to be at first base; that position, however, tends to be easy to fix.
The rotation should benefit from the addition of Corbin Burnes. That takes pressure off the young Grayson Rodriguez to be the ace. The pair offer a pretty good 1-2 punch for an excellent offense. Bringing in a good veteran like Burnes is what young teams do when they are ready to go to the next level.
Tampa Bay Rays
I have my doubts about the Rays this season. They are weak offensively up the middle in a division where everyone else is pretty good. As far as the bat is concerned, Jose Caballero is no Wander Franco. Losing both Franco and McClanahan for a full season is a very tough blow.
I do suspect the Rays put a very good defensive team on the field, however, something that is not measured here. If a good defense can drive down the pitcher core RC/G by a quarter of a run, that might give them enough to compete for the division.
This is a good team, I just don’t think they compare as well to recent seasons.
Boston Red Sox
The Red Sox project to own the second best offense in the division in 2024. We know that Rafael Devers shines at the plate, but Triston Casas looks ready to join him. He showed signs of getting on base at a high rate and hitting for power. As he moves into his age 24 season, it’s the right year to take that to the next level.
In addition, there is an upside to a healthy Trevor Story. He ranked in spring training. If can produce a run over his 4.62 projection, the Red Sox core winning percentage should move over .600.
The pitching is the weak spot for the team. Giving Bryan Bello a long-term contract indicates the team believes he will improve his 5.09 RC/G projection, and we’ll see if he can assume the mantle of ace this year. It’s not a bad rotation, and the offense and a decent bullpen could keep them in a division race. It’s a year to be bullish on the Red Sox.
Toronto Blue Jays
The Blue Jays rank last in the division in Core Winning Percentage, but just a hair behind the Red Sox. In fact this is not a bad team, they just play in a very good, balanced division. I can’t help but think the Blue Jays should be at the top, not the bottom.
Five years ago this was a team on the rise. They brought a long a large group of young players, almost all of them related to other major leaguers. Only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette turned into stars, and Guerrero peaked in 2021 at seasonal age 22.
The veterans the Blue Jays brought in to complement that group are now old, and not producing as much. The group projects to be the lowest scoring team in the division. Guerrero is still young enough to find his 2021 form again, but the window is closing on this group to produce a championship.
The pitching side is okay. Alek Manoah‘s fall from the rotation hurt, but maybe the shoulder issue that showed up this spring actually started last year? When a player gets that bad that fast, it’s a good bet there is an injury. If he comes back at full strength in a month or two, that will be a positive for the rest of the season. Right now, however, it looks like the Jays could finish over .500 and last in the division.
Predictions
Here is how I see the probabilities of the teams winning the division.
Any of these teams might get hot, might make the right trade, or find a prospect is ready to contribute and pull away from the rest. In an odd way, despite this being a good division, I can imagine the AL East not sending a wild card to the playoffs. The five teams might beat up on each other enough that none of them have an outstanding record. The upside is that every AL East intra division series should be a good one.
Orioles owner Peter Angelos died today, Saturday, at the age of 94:
Angelos had been ill for several years. His family announced his death in a statement thanking the caregivers “who brought comfort to him in his final years.”
Angelos’ death comes as his son John is in the process of selling the Orioles to a group headed by Carlyle Group Inc. co-founder David Rubenstein. Peter Angelos’ public role diminished significantly in his final years. According to a lawsuit involving his sons in 2022, he had surgery after his aortic valve failed in 2017.
“I offer my deepest condolences to the Angelos family on the passing of Peter Angelos,” Rubenstein said in a statement. “Peter made an indelible mark first in business and then in baseball. The city of Baltimore owes him a debt of gratitude for his stewardship of the Orioles across three decades and for positioning the team for great success.”
ESPN.com
My thoughts go out to his family and friends, and to all those in the Orioles organization.
Angelos bought the Orioles at the end of the 1993 season. In the 30 years he owned the team they accumulated a 2191-2497 record, fifth worst in the majors, and by far the worst in the AL East. It is sad he was not able to restore the glory of one of the great teams of the second half of the twentieth century.
The 2024 series on team offense continues with the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles finished seventh in the Majors and fourth in the American League in 2023 with 4.98 runs scored per game.
This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts* as the source of default lineups. That Brandon Hyde batting order is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):
The spread between the best and worst Orioles lineups is just 0.2 runs. That usually means the hitters own similar skills, and most have okay OBPs with a some, but not a lot, of power. The Orioles do put their two best hitters at the top of the order, and a ninth place hitter who can get on base in front of them. The LAT would like to flip Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman, but in general it’s not wise to lead-off with a catcher, especially at home. Batting second gives Rutschman time to get his gear off and prepare for the transition from defense to offense.
The Orioles and the LAT show a disagreement about Ryan O’Hearn. The Orioles plan to bat him fourth, an important LAT slot. The LAT bats him eighth, indicating that O’Hearn projects to be the worst hitter in the starting lineup.
Baltimore employs a good analytics department, so I suspect they see something in the data. Camden Yards should be a better power park for O’Hearn than his previous home in Kansas City. The FanGraphs projection on the roster page does show O’Hearn with an OBP similar to the Marcels projection, but FanGraphs projects higher power. I’d love to see the Orioles be correct here.
Jackson Holliday offers huge upside potential to the Orioles. In two seasons as a teenager, he played at every minor league level and posted outstanding OBPs at all of them, often accompanied with power. If he can produce decently at seasonal age 20, the numbers above may be a floor for the Orioles season.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
Previous posts in this series:
*This is the best source of roster information I’ve seen, with everything on one page.
Word leaked that the Orioles and Brewers swung a deal than that moves Corbin Burnes to Baltimore:
The Brewers will receive infielder Joey Ortiz, left-hander D.L. Hall and the 34th pick in the 2024 draft, sources said.
While Milwaukee had fielded trade offers for Burnes all winter, the shrinking time until spring training had left some teams believing the Brewers would hold on to the 2021 National League Cy Young winner. Up stepped the Orioles, who won 101 games last year and feature perhaps the best young core in the major leagues but had questions about their rotation.
ESPN.com
Ortiz is about to enter his peak years, and hit well at AAA. Hall, in 33 MLB innings, struck out 42 batters and walked eleven. He had control issues in the minors. So Milwaukee didn’t get all that much for the star pitcher, but they didn’t want to lose him to free agency for nothing after the 2024 season. Both Ortiz and Hall are useful and cheap. It’s a good deal for the Orioles.
Maryland politicians got a dose of their own medicine over the Orioles sale:
The other members of the Board of Public Works who signed off on the lease — Treasurer Dereck Davis and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, both Democrats — told The Baltimore Banner that they weren’t notified of the sale, either.
Davis spoke out at the Board of Public Works meeting, saying he felt Angelos lied to state officials.
In December, Angelos had placed a call to Moore to assure him that the Orioles were not for sale — which came after reports that Rubenstein was close to buying the team.
Davis said he was troubled by the fact that Angelos “categorically denied that that they were for sale” and then went and sold the team.
“I feel lied to. I feel misled,” Davis said.
TheBaltimoreBanner.com
Maybe they weren’t told over a lack of trust.
It looks like the Orioles will be sold soon. It’s interesting, a lot of teams tear down before they sell, but the Orioles are on the rise and appear to be getting a very good price.
Great pitching and great hitting in game three of the ALDS between the Rangers and Orioles put Texas in the ALCS. Nathan Eovaldi allowed one run in seven innings, walking none and striking out seven. The Rangers batters collected eleven hits, five for extra bases, as they take the game 7-1.
Texas sweeps away the AL East leaders, the top two teams in terms of wins in the league in 2023. They get a few days off as the ALCS begins Sunday in either Houston or Minnesota.
The Rangers pick up four more hits in the second inning, the most recent a home run by Adolis Garcia to give the Rangers a 6-0 lead. The Orioles intentionally walked Corey Seager to prevent him from getting a hit again, but his teammates appear to be unstoppable as well. The Orioles are going to the bullpen after 1 2/3 innings.
With one out in the bottom of the first inning, Corey Seager homers to give Texas a 1-0 lead over Baltimore. The get two more hits in the inning, but the Orioles get out of the inning with just one run allowed.
The Orioles score three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning, but they needed six and the Rangers win game two of the ALDS 11-8. That’s four straight wins on the road for Texas in this post-season. They return home Tuesday needing to win one of the two home games to advance to the ALCS.
The Rangers showed equal opportunity getting on base, with eleven hits and eleven walks, five of those walks going to Corey Seager, a record for a post-season game. Three Orioles pitchers walked at least three batters. Texas collected just three extra-base hits in the game, one of them a grand slam. There were so many men on base, any hit was going to score a run. They are a great offensive team, and it showed today.
The Orioles had a runner Jorge Mateo, on second with one out and one run scored in the bottom of the fourth inning. The Rangers led 9-3. Adley Rutschman hits a ball to shortstop and Mateo tries to advance to third. It looks like a bad play, but Corey Seager at SS for the Rangers bobbles the ball. Mateo is safe, and Rutschman is safe.
In the Hidden Game of Baseball, Palmer and Thorn thought the runner should always try for third on the play, because if the play above happens, it’s a huge win for the offense. I wish announcers would stop calling it a bad play.
Mateo scores on a sacrifice fly, and Baltimore cuts the lead to 9-4 after four innings.
Jacob Webb of the Orioles comes into the game in the top of the third inning to face Mitch Garver of the Rangers. The bases were loaded on three walks, and when the count goes to 3-1 John Smoltz says the fans would not be happy with another walk. Garver hits the next pitch for a grand slam to leftfield.
At least he wasn’t walked.
The Rangers lead the Orioles 9-2. The Rangers drew seven walks in the game so far.
Aaron Hicks of the Orioles singles with the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the first to drive in two runs after the Rangers left the bases loaded in the top of the inning. Hicks kept his bat back and was able to go with the outside pitch and poke it the other way into rightfield. Gunnar Henderson scored the second run with a head-first slide to the foul side of the plate, far enough away from the catcher to avoid the tag by close enough to the plate to catch it with his left hand.
Baltimore is up 2-0 at the end of one.
Update: Leody Taveras doubles to deep left-center with two on to tie the game in the top of the second inning. In the old configuration it might have been a home run, but in this one, the runner scores easily from first.
Update: Taveras scores on an infield hit to the pitcher. The Rangers are in the lead 3-2.
Update: The Rangers keep hitting and score two more runs in the second inning. That chases Orioles starter Grayson Rodriguez. Texas leads 5-2.
The Texas Rangers make it three for three on the road in the 2023 post-season with a 3-2 victory in Baltimore. The Orioles pitchers brought the power, with the Rangers striking out 16 times. The Rangers hitters brought power of their own, with three doubles and a home run to the Orioles double and home run. Texas went seven for eighteen on balls in play, a BABIP .389.
The Orioles did threaten late. In the eighth inning, the first two Orioles walked, but Anthony Santander hit into a double play. In the ninth, Gunnar Henderson, led off with a single, but was thrown out trying to steal. It appeared that Henderson ran on his own, and the manager was not happy with him.
The Rangers gain homefield advantage in the best of five series.
Evan Carter of the Rangers picks up where he left off in the AL Wild Card round. He walked in the second inning, then doubles in a run in the fourth inning. He scored on a single, and the Rangers lead the Orioles 2-0. Carter went three for four with two doubles and a home run with three walks in against Tampa Bay. He has yet to hit a single in the post season.
The Rangers and Orioles kick off their series Saturday at 1 PM EDT in Baltimore. The following table offers an offensive comparison:
| 2023 Batting (AL Ranks) | Rangers | Orioles |
| Runs per Game | 5.44 (1st) | 4.98 (4th) |
| Batting Average | .263 (1st) | .255 (6th) |
| On-Base Average | .337 (1st) | .321 (7th) |
| Slugging Percentage | .452 (1st) | .421 (7th) |
| Home Runs | 233 (1st) | 183 (9th) |
| Stolen Base Percentage | 80.6 (6th) | 82.6 (2nd) |
| BABIP | .310 (1st) | .305 (4th) |
The Rangers finished first in every category that matters, and they weren’t bad base stealers. Texas did see more home runs from their right-handed hitters than their left-handed hitters, so the deeper dimensions in leftfield at Camden Yards, may hamper their home run totals a bit.
Note that the Orioles run scoring ranked higher than any of their three batting averages. The team hit better with men on base and with runners in scoring position, including an increase in OBP. Once they started a rally, they kept them going. Power increased in those situations as well, moving runners farther.
Both teams did a great job finding holes with balls in play.
The next table proves a comparison from the defensive side:
| 2023 Pitching and Defense (AL Ranks) | Rangers | Orioles |
| Runs Allowed per Game | 4.42 (9th) | 4.19 (5th) |
| Earned Run Average | 4.28 (11th) | 3.91 (5th) |
| Strikeouts per 9 IP | 8.5 (12th) | 8.9 (10th) |
| Walks per 9 IP | 3.1 (7th) | 2.9 (4th) |
| Home Runs per 200 IP | 27.6 (9th) | 24.4 (2nd) |
| Defensive Efficiency | .703 (2nd) | .696 (9th) |
The Rangers ERA rank is a bit misleading, since their defense prevented unearned runs. The Orioles lead the Rangers in ERA by nearly 0.4 runs, but in overall runs allowed they only lead by about 0.2 runs. The defensive efficiency of the Rangers allows the pitchers to win with a low strikeout rate.
The Orioles staff also owns a low K rate, and with a less efficient defense they’ll allow some hits. Their strength, however, is stopping home runs, and if they can keep the Rangers in the park, they’ll have a chance to win the series.
This is a really nice mix of teams with good, young hitters. The Rangers look like the better team, as they win the offensive comparison hands down while the teams are much closer on the pitching side. If Texas can limit walks like they did against the Rays, the advantage gets bigger. I put the chances of the Rangers winning this series at 53%.
The Rangers sweep the Rays with a 7-1 win on Wednesday afternoon. The team that ranked ninth in runs allowed per game held Tampa Bay to one run, one walk and no home runs in two games.
The Rangers offense is healthy again, and their great youngsters Josh Jung and Evan Carter shined in the series as well. They move on to face the Orioles.
The Orioles decided the AL East race tonight with a 2-0 win over the Red Sox. The best they Rays can do is tie Baltimore for first place, but the Orioles hold the tie breaker. Tampa Bay gets the top wild card seed and will host the first round of the playoffs.
Dean Kremer started and pitched 5 1/3 shutout innings, striking out eight. Over all the pitching staff allowed just three hits and one walk to secure the division, with ten strikeouts total.
Anthony Santander homered in the first inning for the only run the Orioles would need.
The Orioles and the state of Maryland reached an agreement on a new 30-year lease on Camden Yards:
Between innings, a message appeared on the scoreboard telling the crowd about the agreement between the Orioles, the state, Gov. Wes Moore and the Maryland Stadium Authority. The Democratic governor and Orioles chairman John Angelos were shown on the video board.
The team’s lease was to expire at the end of the year, so this was a welcome announcement for fans — part of what could be a big night at Camden Yards. The Orioles had a chance to clinch the AL East title with a victory.
ESPN.com
The Orioles lead the Red Sox 1-0 in the eighth inning.
The Rays lead the Orioles 4-3 as the teams play in the bottom of the tenth in Baltimore for a share of the AL East lead. As they try to resolve this contest, the loss by the Rangers to the Guardians gives both AL East contenders a berth in the post season. One will likely win the east, but at least both will be wild cards.
Zach Eflin finished five perfect innings against the Orioles, striking out seven of the twelve batters he faced. The game is on Apple TV, so it might be tough to see. The Rays lead 3-0 as Eflin has thrown just 56 pitches.
Update: Sorry, jumped the gun on the perfect game. There was an error and a double play, but Eflin faced the minimum number of batters.
Update: The Rays score four runs in the top of the sixth to take a 7-0 lead.
Update: Heston Kjerstad, in his second game, homers leading off the sixth inning to break up the no-hitter. It’s Kjerstad’s first major league hit. I also saw the replay of the error in the first inning, and it sure looked like a hit to me. I won’t be surprised if that play is changed to a hit.
The Rays and Orioles play in Baltimore with the AL East division title on the line. You can tell the players take the game seriously as Cedric Mullins just made one of the best diving catches you’ll see. Taylor Walls hit a low fly ball to deep right center. Mullins raced over, laid out airborne, and his glove met the ball perfectly for the out. It saved a run as the Rays had a runner on first base with two out.
The teams are scoreless as the Orioles bat in the bottom of the second inning.
Update: Ryan O’Hearn homers in the second inning to give the Orioles a 1-0 lead.
The Orioles appear to have suspended announcer Kevin Brown (no, not the pitcher) for talking about the previous years of poor play by the team in Tampa Bay:
The Orioles are finally back on top, and now everyone is going to be talking about the mistreatment of an announcer. What a huge mistake by whoever brought this about.