It is April, yes. And it is early, yes. And I know all of the usual baseball disclaimers, all the little can-of-corn lullabies we sing to ourselves when the schedule is still young and the standings look like a set of single-digit typos.
But a sweep in Pittsburgh is a sweep in Pittsburgh.
The Orioles went in there and lost 5-4 on Friday, 3-2 on Saturday on a Nick Yorke walk-off, and then got thumped 8-2 on Easter Sunday, with Albernaz getting ejected in the third inning while the whole thing was already starting to smell like Groundhog Day on Easter and last year’s bad dreams come back to life on the third day at The Confluence.
Stink. Stank. Stunk. And suddenly the Baltimore Orioles are 3-6 and headed on a familiar course down, and quickly.
That’s the part fans in Baltimore know and feel in the DNA of their bones. It’s not merely losing early. Baseball teams lose. Good teams lose. October teams lose 65 times and still throw champagne. This is about the way they’re losing. It’s the way bad habits show up before the flowers are even blooming. It’s the way fundamentals betray you when everyone all winter swore the fundamentals were going to be the whole point of emphasis and basis for improvement.
Because, for Alby, that was the selling point, wasn’t it?
Back in December, Craig Albernaz said the Orioles were going to “attack the fundamentals,” the little details, the cleaner brand of baseball that this franchise clearly did not play in a 75-87, last-place 2025 dirge. Mike Elias backed that emphasis, too. And Elias was the one who survived to make all of the offseason calls and checks and cash that would employ the right leader for a talented club that was supposed to rebound, not repeat the rot.
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Well, what exactly did Birdland just watch in Pittsburgh?
On Saturday alone, Baltimore gave away the kind of outs and bases that make Little League dads grab the fence and scream to their creator. Shane Baz booted a play. Anthony Nunez sped up and misplayed another in the eighth. Coby Mayo had his own bobble. Albernaz himself admitted the pitchers’ fielding practice piece “could be better.” That’s not nitpicking. That’s the manager telling you the foundation leaked in plain sight before he melted down in the dugout and got heaved while he cursed.
We saw the Alby fire, his demeanor got him tossed on Easter Sunday with a series of F bombs that went past frustration, even if his boys were getting quick pitched. Here’s an idea: get in the freaking box and be ready to hit the baseball without striking out into double digits two or three times a week.
And let’s be honest: that “foundation” language hits a little harder when it’s your own slogan coming back at you.
This is where I say the quiet part out loud: Brandon Hyde didn’t get fired so Baltimore could watch Hyde-ing in plain sight with a new voice card and a fresh media guide. Alby might be a different man, and he deserves time, but the baseball looked awfully familiar this weekend – sloppy defense, losing on the thin margins, bad sequencing, and a dugout that felt more aggravated than authoritative.
And then there’s the pitching, which has been lousy enough to become contagious. By Saturday, the Orioles had already gone seven games with the starter failing to complete five innings in four of them, and without Trevor Rogers the rotation ERA sat at 6.14. We’re already talking about a bullpen taxed by short starts and injuries to Andrew Kittredge and Keegan Akin. That is how a season gets crooked early: the starters don’t go deep, the bullpen gets overexposed, and every mistake starts costing double. Even a pitcher challenge from Ryan Helsley went awry and spiraled.
Then Easter arrived and didn’t exactly come with resurrection.
8Braxton Ashcraft shoved for Pittsburgh, striking out eight over six innings of one-run ball. Chris Bassitt was a disaster even before the long drive stung him and his post-game series of one-word answers after filling notebooks all spring was simply bizarre but a grand example of the whole organization not having answers to questions, even when the ones asking them were MASN employees and Orioles co-workers.
The upstart Bucs finished off the sweep, and one of the few useful developments for the Birds was Cade Povich getting recalled pregame and soaking up 5 2/3 innings while allowing only two runs out of the bullpen. Helpful? Yes. Encouraging? Somewhat. Ideal? Of course not. “Emergency length guy up from Norfolk will be your bright spot on Easter” is not the spring postcard anybody was mailing from Sarasota.
And now Albert Suarez will apparently attempt to wedge a bullpen game into the first frigid night at Comiskey with everything about the club on the skids.
Offensively, this has been a bad watch, too. The Orioles had 40 strikeouts and 98 whiffs through the first four games. That was supposed to be the early warning siren, not the permanent soundtrack. Saturday, the anemic offense went 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position and left nine men on base. Sunday, Samuel Basallo got rung up in a key spot and looked, for the moment, like a talented kid tasting the full bitterness of big-league pitching. He looks overmatched after looking like a monster in Sarasota.
As the Orioles will find when the cold winds of the South Side blow frosty the next two nights, spring weather and the optimism it brings feels like a long time ago.
Now, to be fair – and I always try to be fair, even when I’m grumpy and reaching for the Louisville Slugger of truth when I’m not digging the warning signals – there are a couple of useful signs of life in this mess.
Pete Alonso has been fine, and the front office didn’t bring him here on a five-year, $155 million deal to be the problem. He doubled in another run on Sunday. Jeremiah Jackson drove in a run Sunday, too, and every time that kid hits the ball it feels like something is happening on purpose. Cade Povich giving real innings matters. Those are not fake positives. Those are real ones. At least Taylor Ward is hitting the ball, even if it’s a mess out there with the mitt.
8But Ryan O’Hearn – yes, that Ryan O’Hearn – already reached safely in each of Pittsburgh’s first eight games and homered Sunday against Baltimore. When the ex you stopped calling is suddenly thriving right in front of you, that’s not always baseball irony. But we all saw Kyle Stowers last spring and then Trevor Rogers came along the balance the score.
It’s baseball; you’d like to think it will all even out in the end but it’s been 43 years here and 47 or 56 for those of us who got more black and gold, Roberto Clemente and the ghosts of 1979 than we really wanted over the weekend and just 90 days removed from the Tyler Loop right hook across the parking lot with the Yinzers that exited the Harbaugh-Tomlin gridiron community wars of the past.
And while we’re discussing the “actual product,” let me add the part nobody in the sales department wants printed out and slid under the office door: nothing about this feels like it’s selling tickets. Nothing about it feels like it’s filling suites. Nothing about the television presentation or the on-field sharpness says, “Come spend your money with us this summer.” It feels flat. The broadcasts feel flat. The baseball feels flatter. The whole thing right now has the energy of a team asking for patience while accidentally insulting your intelligence every night with potential that isn’t emerging or even showing signs of life.
Birdland knows the difference between early and empty. Fans can smell whether a team is just cold or whether it is careless. These Orioles look careless.
So here are the April demands and necessities before this gets uglier on the South Side or anywhere else:
Better starts. Better bats. Better gloves. Better bullpen usage. Better daily baseball.
Not prettier messaging. Not more soothing quotes. Not “we like our guys” with a softer lighting package in a wicked New England accent.
8You told everyone the little things would matter. Fine. Then show it.
Because if the fundamentals are already costing you in the first week of April, the problem isn’t the weather or the sample size.
The problem is that the hard truths and obvious deficiencies of your team are showing up even before the ticket buyers or the orange faith peddlers do.
It’s getting late early for the good start we all expected around here.
