Many Orioles are failing to get it done so far this year. Some failures are more impactful than others.
The 2025 Orioles season remains stuck in the muck. Even Monday’s delightful explosion of profanity from Ryan O’Hearn, which in better times would be the rallying cry that sparks massive approval, bought the team all of one game before the misery returned on Tuesday. We check in on another week of O’s baseball that mostly kept things feeling grim, though winning the series against the Yankees was better than the alternative. Since last time, the Orioles have gone 3-4.
This series looks at each Orioles game, the most crucial play that happened in it and who was involved, and the Oriole who contributed the most positive to a win or negative to a loss. These determinations are made using the Win Probability Added stat, which you can find in game logs on Baseball Reference or FanGraphs.
Here’s how that looked over the last seven days:
Game 24
- Result: Orioles beat Nationals, 2-1
- Orioles record: 10-14
- The biggest play: Félix Bautista closes out the game by getting a 6-3 groundout (+16%)
- The biggest hero: Cade Povich (.288 WPA)
This is a unicorn for the Orioles so far this season, but it can be done: A starting pitcher has a good game, keeping the other team mostly off the board even while the offense isn’t doing a whole heck of a lot. Povich gave up an early run and that was it. He pitched into the seventh inning, allowing only five baserunners overall, grinding down the Nationals chances of winning 2-4% at a time and just continuing to do it.
The game ended with the tying run on third base, which is why Bautista’s getting the final out turned up as the biggest play of the game. The Orioles got their two runs with a pair of singles that scored a man on second base (+14% for each of Ryan O’Hearn and Cedric Mullins). Yes, hitting with RISP can be done by this team. It’s just not happening consistently enough to win most games.
Game 25
- Result: Orioles lose to Tigers, 4-3
- Record: 10-15
- The biggest play: Javier Báez gives Tigers 1-0 lead by hitting double off of Brandon Young (-15%)
- The biggest goat: Heston Kjerstad (-.177 WPA)
This was a bad start in the first game of the doubleheader from Young, in part because he managed to walk five guys while pitching only 4.2 innings. However, despite giving up three runs, he didn’t end up too far into the negatives (-.027) because he managed to avoid true disaster. And as far as WPA is concerned, the big failure of that third run scoring goes against Bryan Baker, who inherited the runner and let him score (-.088).
In this game, the Orioles went just 1-8 with RISP, so even though three players had three hits apiece, nobody following after them ever got the big hits to drive them in. O’Hearn did much to try to carry the team to victory (.272) but nobody else could follow up with something good – particularly Kjerstad, whose big negative is driven by tapping into a fielder’s choice/out at home when the O’s had men on first and third with no one out in the sixth inning.
Game 26
- Result: Orioles lose to Tigers, 6-2
- Record: 10-16
- The biggest play: Riley Greene hits three-run home run off Charlie Morton in third inning (-24%)
- The biggest goat: Morton (-.231 WPA)
This second game of the doubleheader saw the Orioles try out Keegan Akin as an opener to see if that would shake out something other than failure from Morton. Akin retired five of six batters he faced. The Orioles still got Mortoned anyway, as the 41-year-old began his first full inning by putting two men on base before he gave up a titanic dinger that turned an early 1-0 Orioles lead into a 3-1 deficit.
That big swing proved to be enough for the Tigers, in part thanks to more failure with RISP, just 1-6. Ramón Urías also ended up with a rough number (-.218) as he went 0-3 in this game, including grounding into a double play when the tying run was on first base in the seventh inning. Seranthony Dominguez gave up three runs in the bottom of that inning (-.101) to really put the thing out of reach.
Game 27
- Result: Orioles lose to Tigers, 7-0
- Record: 10-17
- The biggest play: Báez hits two-run double off Dean Kremer to give Tigers 2-0 lead (-20%)
- The biggest goat: Kremer (-.139 WPA)
Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, the reigning AL Cy Young winner, struck out 11 Orioles over six innings on the way to Detroit sweeping the O’s. That was an incredibly good start by WPA (.311). I’m envious! Maybe we’ll have a pitcher like that some day, if Elias ever develops a good pitcher who stays healthy, or signs a good pitcher, or trades for a good pitcher with more than one year of contractual control.
The Orioles only got six men safely on base all game: Five hits and one walk. As a result, seven of nine batters were in the negatives by WPA. Shoutout to Jorge Mateo, who tried (.120). It did not make a difference for getting the Orioles into the win column.
Game 28
- Result: Orioles beat Yankees, 4-3
- Record: 11-17
- The biggest play: Ryan O’Hearn hits three-run homer to put Orioles up 4-0 (+15%)
- The biggest hero: Tomoyuki Sugano (.212 WPA)
O’Hearn’s big home run was a real, if regrettably temporary, cathartic kind of moment. Since the Orioles were already leading, it’s not as dramatic of a boost as it would have been if this had broken a 0-0 tie or especially if it swung the O’s from trailing into leading. Among hitters, Ramón Laureano actually ended up as a bigger positive than O’Hearn (.147) since his RBI double in the second inning is what opened up the scoring in the game.
Here is a Japanese word to describe Sugano’s five shutout innings where he struck out eight batters: Sugoi! It means, roughly, awesome. I didn’t think he had it in him after some earlier outings where, while keeping an acceptable ERA, he wasn’t striking out much of anybody. Sugano had also been homer-prone. We saw the next day that these Yankees were primed to tee off on an old guy in the Orioles rotation, making Sugano carving them up even more impressive in retrospect.
Game 29
- Result: Yankees beat Orioles, 15-3
- Record: 11-18
- The biggest play: Trent Grisham leads off the game with a home run off Kyle Gibson (-10%), also Aaron Judge goes back-to-back with Grisham (-10%)
- The biggest goat: Gibson (-.427)
Gibson did not turn out to be the cure to what ails the Orioles rotation, a rough shock for anyone who, out of misguided optimism or desperation, had convinced themselves that a guy who had been an innings eater with mediocre results on a previous good O’s team would be able to come back and do that again.
He was so bad and so early on in the game that no Orioles batter ever took any moderately leveraged at-bat. The O’s batters stunk, certainly – three hits and three walks all game – but when you’re losing 5-0 after half of an inning, that doesn’t matter in the game’s outcome.
Game 30
- Result: Orioles beat Yankees, 5-4
- Record: 12-18
- The biggest play: Ryan Mountcastle hits two-run home run to tie the game in the second inning (+18%)
- The biggest hero: Félix Bautista (.154 WPA)
Five Orioles players, including Bautista, had at least 0.1 WPA in the course of this victory. It was a positive team effort in a way that many games have not been this year. Bryan Baker gets points for a scoreless eighth inning, and among the batters, Mountcastle, Adley Rutschman, and Ramón Urías joined this club. When a game is close, getting on base or getting the big hit or both really makes a difference.
This was not a particularly good game for starting pitcher Cade Povich, who surrendered two home runs while giving up three earned runs in only 4.2 innings of action. Povich (-.086) was nonetheless much better than Yankees starting pitcher Carlos Carrasco (-.332). Carrasco entered the game with an ERA over 5 and fortunately the O’s hitters made him look like that’s the kind of pitcher he is. Carrasco is right-handed. The Orioles are far more likely to be bad against lefties.
The best Orioles so far
This time last week, the best hitter by WPA was Cedric Mullins (0.83) and the best pitcher was Seranthony Domínguez (0.51). The numbers through this week:
- WPA (hitters): Ryan O’Hearn (0.88), Mullins (0.81), Ramón Urías (0.32)
- WPA (pitchers): Félix Bautista (0.78), Bryan Baker (0.43), Domínguez (0.42)
- fWAR: Mullins (1.4), O’Hearn (0.7), Urías (0.5)
In bWAR, the leaders are Mullins (1.2) for hitters and Tomoyuki Sugano (0.9) for pitchers.
The worst Orioles so far
In last week’s update, the worst hitter by WPA was Jordan Westburg (-0.49) and the worst pitcher was Charlie Morton (-1.38). Currently:
- WPA (hitters): Heston Kjerstad (-0.97), Tyler O’Neill (-0.47), Ramón Laureano (-0.43)
- WPA (pitchers): Morton (-1.62), Dean Kremer (-0.80), Cade Povich (-0.47)
- fWAR: Four Orioles tied at -0.4 – Morton, Kyle Gibson, Jorge Mateo, Gary Sánchez
In bWAR, the worst Orioles are Morton (-1.1) and Mateo (-0.5).