Finding the words to sum up one of the most lopsided and uncompetitive four-game sets in Orioles history isn’t easy.
But a day after saying Baltimore was at “a crucial point” in the young season, first-year manager Craig Albernaz was tasked with answering for a club that lost 12-1 and didn’t lead at any point during the sweep at Yankee Stadium. The Orioles were outscored 39-10, which tied a franchise record for the worst run differential in a four-game series.
Embarrassing.
“I get it from the fans’ perspective for sure. You watch these games, and we’re not leaving anything to be desired, right?” Albernaz told reporters Monday night. “But for us, we just have to turn the page and move on. And for the fans’ sake, I get it. We’re in it right now. We’re definitely in a rough stretch.
“But we’ve shown that we can go out and compete and compete with anyone and win. We’ve got to get back to that. The boys in that room know they need to get back to that.”
Have they really shown that?
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Even good clubs are going to be swept every once in a while and the Yankees are shaping up to be a great team, but it’s the hard truth about the Orioles that was reinforced over the course of this four-game demolition that’s more sobering. Instead of stepping up in weight class to compete, what we watched only reminded how underwhelming that opening month of the season was.
The easiest path to a quality season in any team sport is to beat the teams you’re supposed to beat and hold your own against the toughest competition. But the Orioles have struggled just to hold their own against unimpressive opponents and shown little meaningful ability to beat any team of quality.
While acknowledging the overall mediocrity in the American League, the Orioles’ five series wins have come against teams entering Tuesday with losing records. Only two of their six series losses have been against teams currently over .500 — the Yankees and Pittsburgh— and they were swept in each of those series. The only other against a team sitting at .500 was a series in Cleveland that would have been a four-game sweep if not for a late comeback in the lone win of that set.
A forgiving April schedule was supposed to be the time for the Orioles to start fast to get a handful of games over .500 and put the memory of 2025 behind them. Instead, they were struggling just to hang around .500 before arriving in New York for their biggest test of the season to date.
They failed miserably and left staring a repeat of last season squarely in the face.
“Cal and Eddie” revisited
8Six weeks ago, I wrote that Gunnar Henderson and Pete Alonso needed to be the “Cal and Eddie” for this year’s club, a simple reference to the two Hall of Famers that led the Orioles to their last World Series in 1983.
Just over a fifth of the way through the season, the 24-year-old Henderson is batting .208 with a .272 on-base percentage and a 31% strikeout rate that ranks 14th worst in the majors among qualified hitters. Alonso is hitting .215 with a .735 OPS that only recently moved above the .700 mark.
Over the four-game sweep, Henderson went 2-for-13 with five strikeouts and was given the day off Sunday against Yankees lefty Max Fried. And while Alonso homered twice and went 5-for-14 in what’s hopefully a sign of better things to come, his disappointing April was a notable reason for a 15-16 start.
Henderson is supposed to be the aircraft carrier for this franchise while Alonso was awarded the largest contract to an outside free agent in franchise history last December. They can’t do it alone, of course, but Baltimore isn’t going anywhere if these two aren’t going to play like stars and lead an offense that’s been painfully mediocre.
Westburg shut down
Monday brought what sounded like a sobering step toward a resolution for infielder Jordan Westburg, who hasn’t played this season due to a partial tear in the ulnar collateral ligament of his right elbow.
Albernaz revealed the Orioles have shut down the 27-year-old from throwing because he was again experiencing discomfort. Westburg received a platelet-rich plasma injection in his right elbow in February in hopes of avoiding surgery, but a procedure now feels inevitable even if the organization entertains the possibility of him serving as a designated hitter for the rest of 2026.
The silver lining is the return timetable for Tommy John surgery being shorter for a position player than a pitcher, which means Westburg shouldn’t have much trouble being ready for the start of 2027 if he foregoes the DH-only scenario and has the procedure in the near future. But ruling out the potential return of Westburg would be another tough blow to a club already teetering in early May.
