Orioles reset: With star Adley Rutschman, ‘homer hose’ and expectations, Baltimore is gaining national attention
The Orioles this past week received a significant amount of national attention— from Adley Rutschman’ s growing stardom to Ryan Mountcastle’ s nine-RBI game to the club’ s home run celebration. An April series against the lowly Oakland Athletics wouldn’ t normally garner national recognition. But then the Orioles broke out the“ homer hose” to mostly fanfare, as the...
During the rebuild, the light at the end of the tunnel was, at times, difficult to see.
Now, that light is more visible than it’s been to begin a season in more than five years, and the beams aren’t just in Baltimore.
The Orioles this past week received a significant amount of national attention — from Adley Rutschman’s growing stardom to Ryan Mountcastle’s nine-RBI game to the club’s home run celebration.
“It’s pretty cool for people to start noticing what we’re doing and all the good stuff that’s happening around here,” Mountcastle said. “It’s exciting, and I think all of our guys are excited to show everybody what we got.”
An April series against the lowly Oakland Athletics wouldn’t normally garner national recognition. But then the Orioles broke out the “homer hose” to mostly fanfare, as the celebration went viral on social media and made the rounds on sports television.
The next day, Mountcastle, the first player to slurp from the hose after smashing a long ball, blasted two home runs and tied the Orioles’ single-game RBI record.
Two days after that, Rutschman hit his first career walk-off home run and was greeted with a Gatorade bath as he touched home plate.
“I like our guys getting national attention,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “I like the fact that these guys are getting recognized for as talented as they are. I like turning on the TV and seeing our guys get talked about. I think that’s awesome.”
During the club’s four-year stretch as MLB’s worst team from 2018 to 2021, very little air time was given to the rebuilding Orioles. On the rare occasion they did end up on MLB Network or ESPN or going viral on social media, it was usually for a losing streak or an on-field blunder.
“Whenever we would turn on the TV, we would see nothing about the Orioles,” said Mountcastle, who debuted in 2020. “For it to happen now and for us to start winning games, it’s a lot of fun.”
“Some of these guys had a couple really tough years here,” Hyde said. “Now they’re seeing themselves in a positive way, and that’s great.”
The shift began last season when the Orioles went on a 10-game winning streak in July and then spent the summer as the sport’s biggest surprise, battling but eventually falling short of a playoff spot.
“From what we were from 2018 until last year, it was tough sledding,” said Mountcastle, who ranks second in the American League with six home runs. “But sometimes you’ve got to go through stuff like that to become a better player and a better team. A lot of us learned from it.”
Center fielder Cedric Mullins, who debuted in 2018, said the positive publicity about the Orioles is “refreshing” compared to how the team was received during their 100-plus-loss seasons in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
“It just makes things more fun,” Mullins said. “It means we’re playing better baseball.”
This weekend, Baltimore will play in their first nationally televised game at Oriole Park since it hosted the New York Yankees on Aug. 26, 2018; Saturday’s game against the Tigers will be broadcast on FS1. Last August, the Orioles played on ESPN in MLB’s Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Part of the attention is because the Orioles entered the season with internal expectations to push for a postseason spot. Coming off an 83-win season, Baltimore made modest additions to the club and is expected to get full seasons out of current and former top prospects Rutschman, Grayson Rodriguez and Gunnar Henderson. But the team, though interesting, has spent the early part of the season hovering around .500, without winning or losing three consecutive games at any point. The Orioles took two of three from the Chicago White Sox this past weekend to improve to 9-7.
Instead, the attention on the club, while potentially fleeting, has been largely due to its “personality,” as Hyde called it, with the water-themed celebrations.
“I think it makes it a lot more fun in a six-month grind of a season,” Hyde said. “I want our guys to be loose and have fun. All those things — the home run chain last year, the SeaWorld acts we have going on right now — those are all things that didn’t come from the coaching staff. It’s player generated. That’s when, for me, it’s awesome. That just shows you how awesome that personality is.”
Kyle Gibson, the oldest Oriole at 35 years old, said he expected when he signed a $10 million contract this offseason that the club would have more attention coming off its surprise 2022 campaign. But the 11-year veteran pitcher also knows it’s the club’s up-and-coming youngsters that are the reason the excitement is at its highest level since the rebuild began.
“It’s exciting for baseball when young prospects come up and do really well,” said Gibson, who won each of his first three starts as an Oriole. “They’re the future of the game. Then when you go and bring in a couple other players, you have a team that has been in a rebuild and now they become a team that is doing more to compete for a playoff spot, it’s really good for the game. And when it works and guys are playing really well and playing an exciting style of baseball — stealing bases, playing defense, pitching, hitting, doing the little things right — it’s exciting.”
What’s to come?
The health of the Orioles’ bullpen won’t matter as much this week as it did last week, as Baltimore has days off Monday and Thursday. The day off Monday is the club’s first since April 6.
The Orioles open the week Tuesday with a two-game tilt in Washington with the Nationals (5-11) in the Beltway Series. Baltimore will face right-hander Josiah Gray (0-3, 4.32 ERA) on Tuesday and left-hander MacKenzie Gore (2-0, 3.00 ERA) on Wednesday.
Dean Kremer, who has struggled through his first three starts of the year with a 9.49 ERA, will take the mound in the first game, but Wednesday’s starter has yet to be announced. Right-hander Kyle Bradish (bruised right foot) is eligible to come off the 15-day injured list that day.
The Orioles then host the Detroit Tigers (5-9) for a three-game series over the weekend.
What was good?
The offense.
Nearly every player in the lineup had a key hit this past week. Mullins went 3-for-5 in Sunday’s win. Jorge Mateo is regularly hitting baseballs harder than 100 mph. Austin Hays might be the only Oriole hitting the ball harder than Mateo. Ryan Mountcastle hit four home runs. Rutschman is getting on base nearly every game.
The Orioles rank in the top six in runs per game (5.9), on-base percentage (.357), OPS (.807), stolen bases (24) and home runs (22).
No MLB team is better than Baltimore at jumping on starting pitchers the second and third time through the order. And the club’s combination of power it displayed versus Oakland and on-base ability against Chicago has proved to be difficult for opposing teams to maintain.
What wasn’t?
If the offense is that good but the team is just 9-7, then the pitching is obviously the culprit.
But the pitching staff hasn’t been consistently bad, despite ranking 26th with a 5.27 ERA. Take Sunday’s win, for example. Relievers Mike Baumann, Austin Voth and Félix Bautista combined to pitch four innings of shutout relief.
However, in three games this week, the Orioles have allowed one or two big innings. In Wednesday’s loss to the Athletics, Dean Kremer allowed three runs in the first, and left-handers Keegan Akin and Cionel Pérez combined to allow three runs in the eighth.
In both of Rodriguez’s starts, the 23-year-old unraveled in an inning, although the Orioles came back to win both games. Rodriguez and Voth combined to allow five runs in the fifth Tuesday and then the 6-foot-5 right-hander gave up four runs in the first Sunday.
On the farm
The Orioles’ infield prospects frequently get the shine, but it was the organization’s outfielders who crushed the ball this past week.
Heston Kjerstad the Orioles’ No. 11 prospect, according to Baseball America, and 2020 No. 2 overall pick, hit four home runs in just 23 at-bats with Double-A Bowie this past week. Kjerstad, After spending most of spring training in big league camp, he’s hitting .314 with a 1.229 OPS.
Triple-A outfielders Hudson Haskin and Colton Cowser both hit over .400. Haskin homered and roped three doubles, while Cowser, the club’s No. 3 prospect, bounced back after a tough start to his campaign with two doubles, a triple and six walks.
Orioles at Nationals
Tuesday, 7:05 p.m.
TV: MASN2
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
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