MINNEAPOLIS — Sometimes they’re blowouts. Sometimes they’re nail-biters. Lately, the result has been all the same.
The Orioles lost, 5-2, to the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday night, extending their losing streak to a season-high four games behind an offense that once again started slow and struggled to piece together rallies.
Charlie Morton allowed three runs, his fewest in any start this season, but was entrusted with only four innings and wound up with his MLB-leading seventh loss of the campaign after surrendering the deciding home run to center fielder Byron Buxton.
With the loss, Baltimore (13-22) moved to nine games under .500 for the first time since July 2, 2022.
“We didn’t get a clutch hit in a big spot,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “I thought that we had some good at-bats tonight. It was good to see us use the whole field a couple times. We need to do more of that. … But just not getting the big hit and not getting the three-run homer or the two-run homer.”
As glaring as the shortcomings of their rotation have been, the Orioles’ offense has scored three runs or fewer in 12 of its past 15 games — and hasn’t plated a single run in the first inning over that span. Though they did manage to score first Wednesday on a solo home run by Ramón Lauerano in the third, that lead lasted only half an inning as Buxton took Morton deep for a three-run blast on a curveball he left hanging over the middle of the plate.
“It would be way easier just to go, ‘You know what, I don’t have it anymore. I just don’t have the physical talent to do it anymore.’ But the problem is I do,” Morton said. “There are just the outcomes and the results are so bad that there will be times just randomly in the day I’ll think about it. I’ll think about how poorly I’ve pitched and I’ll think about how bad the results are. And honestly, it feels like it’s almost like shocking to me.”
Morton, returning to the rotation after making his last three appearances out of the bullpen, cruised through his first two frames before giving up a leadoff single to left fielder Willi Castro and hitting second baseman Kody Clemens to set up Buxton’s second three-run homer against the Orioles in as many days. Morton returned for a clean fourth before Hyde pulled him at 70 pitches for Bryan Baker to start the fifth.
“I thought he was OK,” Hyde said of Morton. “He just hung that breaking ball to Buxton. We lost on two hanging breaking balls on the three-run homer and two-run homer [by Harrison Bader]. He covered four innings for us after kind of a weird ramp-up to start this game. Just really a three-run homer there.”
The Orioles cut the lead to one in the top half of the fifth when Laureano doubled and scored on a two-out RBI single by Heston Kjerstad. But they had a chance for more. Emmanuel Rivera followed with a base hit to flip the lineup and bring up Cedric Mullins, which prompted the Twins to yank starter Simeon Woods Richardson for former Orioles left-hander Danny Coulombe.
Mullins, who is 2-for-29 (.069) at the plate over his past seven games, came up first-pitch swinging and made solid contact with a line drive down the right field line that just hooked foul. However, Coulombe eventually won the battle with a swinging strikeout, stranding both runners and running his streak of consecutive scoreless innings up to 14 1/3.
It was the closest the Orioles would get to scoring a run the rest of the night. The Twins did tack on a pair of insurance runs with a pinch-hit, two-run homer to left by Bader off Keegan Akin in the seventh, but even a one-run lead would’ve been insurmountable in the end.
“Yeah, but that’s just how the game works,” Laureano said of whether he thought his home run could spark a bigger night for the offense. “We’ve got to fight from behind, learn how to do that, and mentally learn how to do that. It’s just very simple. We need to figure that out.”
Postgame analysis
The problem was, and continues to be, the offense.
Even with Jordan Westburg, Tyler O’Neill and Colton Cowser on the injured list, Baltimore has a deep group of hitters that on paper form a nightmare of a batting order for opponents to face. They tallied 10 hits in the contest to show signs of life but stranded six base runners and only had four at-bats all game with runners in scoring position. They went 1-for-4 in those situations.
Patience is the only course of action for a team so invested in its young core of position players like the Orioles. They have no choice but to wait for Gunnar Henderson (.711 OPS), Adley Rutschman (.663), Ryan Mountcastle (.557) and Kjerstad (.623) to turn things around. These are talented enough players to provide plenty of hope that can happen.
The Orioles are just running out of time for them to do it before the season gets away from them.
By the numbers
Over their past three seasons, the Orioles have spent exactly one day 10 games under .500 — May 18, 2022. They’re one more loss away from adding to that total, putting them in jeopardy of treading into territory this franchise hasn’t seen since the rebuild was in full swing.
It’s not an insurmountable hurdle — the New York Mets made the playoffs after starting 24-35 through June 2 last season — but the Orioles could soon find themselves in a place they have little familiarity with since emerging as contenders.
What they’re saying
Morton on his commitment to trying to see his struggles through and stabilize his season:
“It’s really hard for me to think that there’s not a possibility that I just go out there and have a decent stretch or a decent year. So, when I wake up and I think about, ‘Man, how poorly this has gone,’ it’s honestly like sometimes I don’t really know how to process it other than trying to be honest and rational with myself.
“There’s just no other way to do it. You either quit. You give up. You give in. Or you say, ‘What’s coming out of my hand still can get outs.’ It’s just finding a way to better implement it. And I saw that tonight. And I’ve seen that in numerous starts that I had.”
On deck
For the Orioles to salvage a game in this series, they will have to find a way to beat Twins right-hander Joe Ryan. The 28-year-old is off to a strong start to the season with a 2.93 ERA over his first seven starts. Baltimore will send Dean Kremer to the mound coming off his best performance of the year: seven scoreless against the Kansas City Royals. Kremer, who was struck in the leg by a comebacker in that game, will be pitching on five days’ rest.
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