The Phillies are just a half-game ahead of the Mets. They’ll be looking to stomp on the disappointing Orioles.
The Orioles traded a bunch of players all across the galaxy of 2025 contenders and will be spending the rest of the season having occasional reunions with some of their former teammates. The Phillies, on the other end, reached out their tendrils and acquired several guys ahead of the deadline. They did not trade with each other, not this year, and the Orioles traded away their ex-Phillies from those 2024 deals. So none of those reunions will be happening over the next few days.
One player is still hanging around from the 2024 trades between those teams. The Phillies have Seth Johnson pitching out of their bullpen. When the Orioles traded him to Philly, he was a starting pitching prospect, so his value has come down. Two recent bad outings have elevated Johnson’s small sample ERA from around 3 to over 5. That’s across nine games. It is perhaps not worth continuing deep regret about what the O’s surrendered to get Gregory Soto.
As for the Phillies overall: They’re in a dogfight with the Mets to try to win the NL East this season. After yesterday, when the Phillies won and the Mets lost, the Phillies are a half-game ahead. This series against the Orioles represents games that they should be winning. The Mets will be playing the Guardians, a team that squad should probably beat if they want to regain the top spot soon.
The Orioles have played some of the contenders well this season. Their 6-4 record against the AL East-leading Blue Jays stands out in particular. But for the most part the Orioles are bad against good teams, with a 29-37 record against above-.500 clubs. It’s one of the reasons why they are where they are in the standings. Recent Orioles games against the Cubs just showed us more of why.
The offense is not what has been carrying this Phillies team. Compared to the league’s other postseason contenders, their run output is fairly pedestrian, at 4.67 runs per game. That’s better than the Orioles (4.36 R/G) and Philly’s competition, the Mets (4.39 R/G), but it pales compared to teams like the Dodgers (5.14 R/G) and Cubs (5.21 R/G). This team’s strength is in its pitching, particularly its rotation.
What do you think it’s like to root for a team in 2025 that has three starting pitchers with an ERA under 3? That’s what Philly has going on. Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez, and Ranger Suárez are making good things happen. On the bright side for the Orioles, only one of these three guys is scheduled to pitch over the next few games.
Game 1: Monday, 6:45 ET
- BAL starter: Cade Povich – 13 G, 5.15 ERA, 4.12 FIP, 1.500 WHIP
- PHI starter: Jesús Luzardo – 22 G, 4.31 ERA, 2.98 FIP, 1.372 WHIP
Povich is being activated from the injured list to make this start. His last game with the Orioles was June 15, after which he landed on the IL with a hip injury. These last two months are important for the 25-year-old Povich, who now has close to a full season’s worth of big league innings with uninspiring results. Things are better for him this year than last year: He’s upped the strikeout rate and slightly cut the walk rate.
Even so, batters are hitting .287 off Povich. That’s a bad, bad number. If he doesn’t look like he belongs even at the back of a big league rotation by season’s end, he should be far down the depth chart after whatever plans the Orioles make going into 2026.
Luzardo joined the Phillies after an offseason trade with the Marlins. They gave up two players of little immediate consequence to get him in hopes that he might bounce back to success he had in 2022 and 2023. The strikeout and walk rates are as good as they’ve ever been, but Luzardo is getting victimized horribly by batted ball luck (.348 BABIP compared to a .306 career mark). He’s probably not helped by the Phillies having one of the league’s worst defenses in the outfield.
Game 2: Tuesday, 6:45 ET
- BAL starter: Dean Kremer – 22 G, 4.27 ERA, 4.04 FIP, 1.266 WHIP
- PHI starter: Taijuan Walker – 23 G, 3.82 ERA, 5.21 FIP, 1.356 WHIP
Kremer is one of a number of Orioles who was no good at all in April and has been on an arc of improvement ever since. On April 27, Kremer gave up five runs in 5.2 innings to see his ERA jump to 7.04. In 16 games since that point, he’s rolling to a 3.39 ERA while averaging almost exactly six innings per start. If he ever could post a full season like that, I’d probably not react so badly to the times where he ends up as the #3 Orioles starter – or like now where he’s pretty much the #1 starter.
Can Kremer keep that going to the end of the season? It’s one of the questions facing the Orioles as they take stock of what they’re carrying over into 2026. He’s hit a rough patch over his last couple of starts, giving up a total of eight runs across 11 innings, with three home runs allowed.
Walker is kind of the opposite of the previous day’s starter, Luzardo, in that he’s sporting an acceptable ERA but an unsightly FIP. Most of the time, pitchers with 6.9 K/9, 3.1 BB/9, and 1.7 HR/9 are not going to be able to hold it together and do well. Walker spent all of June pitching in relief, after which he rejoined the rotation and picked up where he left off: Mostly fine but always doing enough to leave you thinking he’s on the precipice of disaster.
Game 3: Wednesday, 12:35 ET
- BAL starter: Trevor Rogers – 9 G, 1.44 ERA, 2.60 FIP, 0.746 WHIP
- PHI starter: Ranger Suárez – 16 G, 2.68 ERA, 3.01 FIP, 1.132 WHIP
I’m always curious to find out whether games that look like they’re going to be pitcher’s duels end up as such.
In Rogers’s case, every game I’m curious to see if he can keep this resurgence going. He hasn’t allowed more than three runs in any game this season, and he’s only allowed three runs once in nine starts. He’s fresh off fairly well dominating a potent Cubs lineup over eight innings, though regrettably since the Orioles offense was also dominated in that game, Rogers took the loss despite allowing just one run on four hits and zero walks.
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There are 50 games left in the Orioles season. These are the next three of the 50. How many wins do you think it would take for you to feel satisfied with the remaining months of this season? Right at this moment, I feel like if they went 26-24 to at least show they’re above .500 after the trade deadline, that would be good. I don’t have much hope of their getting that started in this series.