The New York Yankees entered play on June 1 with a 40-19 record and a 2.0 game lead over the Baltimore Orioles in the AL East. Since then, they’ve gone just 39-38, barely hovering over .500. Notably, their division lead has fallen to just 1.5 games in that span, as the Orioles have also failed to get much going over the last three months.
There are many causes for Baltimore’s subpar play. Injuries have ravaged them. Adley Rutschman has just a 94 WRC+ since June 1. Most notably, their bullpen has been frustratingly bad.
Their 4.23 bullpen ERA since June 1 is good for 23rd in the majors. Despite all that has gone wrong on that end for a while, the Orioles did very little to address that weakness at the trade deadline. They added Seranthony Dominguez who has been closing lately and Gregory Soto, but that’s it. They took another rough loss on Saturday thanks in large part to Craig Kimbrel, whose season has fallen completely apart.
The right-hander entered a 5-5 game in the eighth inning and proceeded to allow two runs to give the Colorado Rockies a 7-5 lead which they would not relinquish. Kimbrel even having to appear in that spot amid his struggles shows that Baltimore did not do enough.
Orioles failure to meaningfully address bullpen haunts them once again
Dominguez has been mostly solid as an Oriole, allowing five runs in 15 innings of work (3.00 ERA) but he also allowed walk-off home runs on back-to-back appearances for two crushing Orioles losses. Gregory Soto has been a disaster, allowing eight runs in 8.2 innings in his short Orioles tenure, good for an 8.31 ERA. That’s what the Orioles acquired.
The Orioles do have some good pieces in their bullpen like Dominguez, Yennier Cano, and even Kimbrel when he’s right, but Kimbrel has struggled mightily for a while now.
Kimbrel was locked in as the team’s closer for the first half of the season and even had a case to be an All-Star, but his performance since the break has been awful. He blew a save right before the All-Star break and those struggles have carried over, as he has a 7.43 ERA in his last 14 appearances. He’s taken three losses, blown a save, and hasn’t recorded a save since July 7 — almost two months ago.
Without Kimbrel being his old self, the Orioles don’t have a reliable late-game arm to close games out for them. Dominguez is inexperienced late in games, Cano has been better as a set-up man, and Felix Bautista has been out all year.
The Orioles used some of their ridiculous prospect capital to get starting pitching help, but didn’t do enough in the bullpen. In what will almost certainly be an incredibly tight finish, the lack of bullpen help could be what haunts the Orioles in their hunt for back-to-back AL East titles.
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