The first few games of the season could have gone better for each of these teams.
Things could certainly have gone worse for the Orioles over the first extended weekend of the season, in which they split their four-game series with the Jays. Look no further than their next opponent, the Boston Red Sox, who went 1-3 over their first four games and scored a total of just 11 runs in that series against the Rangers. That included just six total runs after the Opening Day win.
For the Orioles, it’s going to be important to start getting some positive news on injury recoveries during this series. That starts with Jordan Westburg, who did not play yesterday due to some kind of injury or illness on which manager Brandon Hyde did not elaborate. It continues with Colton Cowser, who hurt his thumb while sliding into first base and had to leave Sunday’s game early. (Don’t slide into first base!)
It also includes Gunnar Henderson, who becomes eligible to be activated from the 10-day injured list on Thursday, in time for the last game of this series. If you’ve been looking at the box scores and eyeball test impressions for his games at Triple-A Norfolk, you might be thinking that Henderson’s going to need more than just five games of rehab to get his defensive play fully dialed back in after missing the final month of spring training.
Possibly the biggest story surrounding the Red Sox, one that will definitely become the biggest if it drags on, is that displaced third baseman Rafael Devers is hitless on the young season, with 12 strikeouts in 16 at-bats. Pretty bad! Devers is signed through 2033. If it turns out the Red Sox knocked him off course by signing Alex Bregman, that could look like a colossal blunder unless Bregman really pays off for Boston.
Outside of Devers, one of the big things going into the season for the Red Sox was when they would choose to debut their top three prospects, Roman Anthony, Kristian Campbell, and Marcelo Mayer, each of whom is in the top 12-15 of many of the big prospect lists. Campbell is the only one who made the Opening Day roster, likely signaling he’ll be the only one eligible for a possible bonus draft pick if his season goes well. Campbell, a 22-year-old second baseman, has a 1.286 OPS through his first four games.
Game 1 – Monday, 2:35pm
Note: This game start time was changed from its original schedule.
- BAL starter: Cade Povich (2024 stats with O’s: 16 GS, 5.20 ERA, 4.79 FIP)
- BOS starter: Sean Newcomb (2024 stats with OAK: 7 G, 6.30 ERA, 7.07 FIP)
If you’re a Povich booster, you’re probably already well aware that he rebounded from an initial few months of struggling against major league competition to posting a final month of a 2.60 ERA and .558 OPS allowed over five starts. The Orioles have already showed some faith in Povich by putting him in the MLB rotation to begin the season. Of course, you could also argue they showed no faith in him by signing Kyle Gibson late in spring training.
This start is going to feel more important than it is because if Povich does well, then after one turn of the rotation, Orioles fans will be able to feel good about Povich and Zach Eflin, with something of an incomplete grade for Tomoyuki Sugano. If Povich is pretty bad then he’ll join Charlie Morton and Dean Kremer in that group and it’s really going to feel like a mess in the rotation.
Reliever-to-starter conversions are all the rage lately and it seems like the Red Sox are trying that with Newcomb. The 31-year-old lefty made this team out of spring training as a non-roster invite. He hasn’t pitched more than 35 innings at the MLB level since the 2019 season and he hasn’t been a full-time starting pitcher since 2018, when he was with Atlanta. He is the first left-handed starting pitcher that the Orioles will face this year. I hope that they make the Sox look stupid for galaxy braining themselves into thinking Newcomb can fill a spot in the rotation.
Game 2 – Wednesday, 6:35pm
- BAL starter: Zach Eflin (2024 stats with TB/O’s: 28 GS, 3.59 ERA, 3.76 FIP)
- BOS starter: Garrett Crochet (2024 stats with CWS: 32 GS, 3.58 ERA, 2.69 FIP)
Ought the Orioles have acted more aggressively in pursuing a top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher this past offseason? If the answer to that is yes, then they probably ought to have pursued the one ace or ace-ish pitcher who got traded, that being Crochet. The guy was brilliant when suddenly converted into a starting pitcher for the go-nowhere White Sox a year ago, striking out 209 guys. He also averaged well below five innings per game started and it’s really still something of a mystery to me how much he’ll succeed long term.
Crochet was fine enough in his Opening Day start, allowing two runs in five innings. Eflin went an inning farther and probably could have gone for seven innings if the Orioles had given him a chance. Eflin, like Povich, has to prove that his end of the season with the O’s a year ago wasn’t a fluke. Before being acquired by the O’s, his ERA was over 4 with the Rays. That’s not the kind of pitcher that they are counting on in having Eflin as the #1 starter for this season.
Game 3 – Thursday, 1:05pm
- BAL starter: Charlie Morton (2024 stats with ATL: 30 GS, 4.19 ERA, 4.46 FIP)
- BOS starter: Tanner Houck (2024 stats with BOS: 30 GS, 3.12 ERA, 3.32 FIP)
Each of these pitchers was pretty bad in his first outing of the season. Morton was blasted out of the game before he could get through the fourth inning, still managing to allow seven hits in 3.1 innings. Houck at least made it into the sixth inning, though he allowed four runs, including two home runs. Maybe that will be a good sign for the Orioles offense, for which early on it seems that home runs will be an important part of their scoring.
Morton only had 12 quality starts (6 IP or more, 3 ER or fewer) out of the 30 that he made a year ago. He’s really miscast as the #2 in this starting rotation, but that’s the way it shook out with the also-miscast Dean Kremer behind him, as well as unproven import Tomoyuki Sugano and Povich, who failed his initial MLB tests. The longer it takes Morton to look like he belongs, the more anxious I am going to be about him and this rotation as a whole.
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Assuming no postponements, a three-game series will have a winner as a matter of basic math. The team that comes out with the win of this series will probably be starting to feel better about the problems it showed over the first four games of the season and the other one will probably feel worse about its problems now carrying on through the first seven games.
There are obviously no must-win games in March or April, but for the Orioles it would be nice to have a strong start to this season so it feels like they have chased away their second half blues from last year. If they cannot do that, then it may start to feel like that stuff is carrying over, and that won’t be great.