Orioles given a boost when the bullpen provides real relief

On nights when the Orioles win, the bullpen has done its job. Luke Jones and Nestor discuss the recent outstanding performance of a relief corps that has been under duress with substandard starting pitching for much of the so-far-last-place campaign. Can it continue?

Luke Jones and Nestor Aparicio discussed the Orioles’ recent performance, highlighting the team’s bullpen excellence and key players like Ramon Laureano, who is batting .269 with 20 home runs. They noted the bullpen’s second-best ERA since May 24, with standouts like Felix Bautista, Gregory Soto, and Brian Baker. The conversation also touched on the Orioles’ offensive inconsistency, the importance of winning games to stay relevant, and the potential impact of upcoming games against the Rays and Yankees. They emphasized the need for the team to improve in various aspects, including hitting left-handed pitching and running the bases aggressively.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Orioles bullpen, Ramon Laureano, Dean Kramer, Felix Batista, Gregory Soto, Brian Baker, Keegan Aiken, Kittredge, Orioles offense, trade deadline, wild card race, young players, pitching injuries, Mike Elias, Brandon Hyde.

SPEAKERS

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Luke Jones, Speaker 1, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W, N, S T am 1570 task of Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive, positively, getting us through the summertime. Here we have mini camp going on with the Ravens out in Owings Mills. The baseball team is playing in minor league stadium, playing all the Yankee stadiums, playing at Steinbrenner, playing a Yankee. Maybe get a Babe Ruth field in before it’s all over with. And we’re also doing the Maryland crab cake tour. It’s all presented by the Maryland lottery. I had the Back to the Future scratch offs. I’m still like rehydrating myself from over dressing at a pool. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I went into a pool with clothing on, and I came out soaking wet five hours later, but we spent a beautiful afternoon at the Y on Tuesday in Randallstown at the community center. There. We had John Hoey on Tawanda Ford and Eli Dao from the Y were just fantastic. I had clean cuisine. Stopped by my man, Jerry Schlichting, who may or may not be involved in the 27 best things I like to eat in town, but did drop me off the final bite of my little special chocolate banana protein thingy here with my Zeke’s coffee. And we haven’t had enough mornings after Luke where they win. So when they win, we’re going to celebrate a Oriole victory. It’s just a big week for the Orioles on the road. I mean, in a lot of ways, you and I’ve talked at length. If anybody’s listened to the radio station this week, we’ve done a lot of baseball this week, a lot of sort of theoretical this, and pitching that, and where they are. They buy and they selling optimism, pessimism, like a stock market. You know, as we’re bombing Iran, we’re talking about baseball, but, you know, they won and and on nights when they win, you and I get together and find some optimism about these young players in that if the ball paint can hold it together and the pitching can show up a little bit, they can win five to one against teams that are above 500 and going to be in the playoffs, they

Luke Jones  02:04

can, and it was a good performance on Tuesday night. I mean, they get the big, you know, they get the big night from Ramon Laureano. I mean, it’s funny, we’ve, we’ve focused so much on the free agency signings that didn’t work, and certainly, Tyler O’Neill’s at the top of that list, and we know how that’s worked, and he’s shut down again. Who knows when he’s going to play again? All of that the other outfielder they signed, however, Ramon Laureano, having a really good year. I mean, you look at this guy, he’s batting 269 he’s slugging just over 500 he had another outfield assist on Tuesday night. I mean, he has been everything you could possibly want and hope to have for what, you know, what made $4 million I mean, you’re not talking about a major signing there. And he’s been really, really good. And he’s been, think about the how combustible, how much trouble they’ve had with their outfield in terms of keeping guys healthy. I mean, you lose cows or the first weekend of the series, Mullins here recently was banged up. I mean, Laureano has been really a godsend for them understanding that, yeah, they’re in last place and they’re 10 games under 500 I’m not trying to make too much of it, but he’s been really good for them. So they get, they get a big night from him. Dean Kramer wasn’t dominant, but did what he needed to do to pitch out of some jams, got through five innings, one run you’ll take that. You know, we know what Dean Kramer is at this point in time. He’s a back half of the rotation guy, and at his at his best, that’s kind of what you expect him to be. So he does well enough. And you know, you mentioned something about the bullpen holding it together when you look back to May 24 which is when the Orioles began this recent run of playing much better baseball overall. They had the second best bullpen, RBI, or RBI, the second best bullpen era in the majors, their bullpen has been excellent for going on three and a half weeks now, where you know, of course, Batista is going to get the headlines being the former All Star coming back from Tommy John, but Gregory Soto has been much better. Sir Anthony Dominguez didn’t pitch Tuesday night, but he’s been much better. We’ve talked about Brian Baker all year. Keegan Aiken still has those outings here and there where you kind of say that didn’t look good, but he’s got a two, eight era. I mean, the numbers still say that he’s done a nice job for them. Kittredge, coming back has obviously been big, and was obviously envisioned to be someone you know that they signed that they thought was going to be a high leverage guy for them. So if you recall, back in the winter, I talked a lot about the bullpen. I talked a lot at one point in time about David Robertson. That was when Kittredge went down with the knee injury. But I said prior to that, that one thing I did like about the Orioles bullpen on pay. Cooper was more upside, and obviously that began with a healthy Batista, but also looking at Dominguez, looking at Soto, looking at just the ability to miss more bats, which you know, you look at their strikeout rate in the pen, and obviously Batista is a big part of that, but they have some other guys that are missing bats as well. Their bullpen has been really, really good after it was almost as bad as the starting rotation through the first eight weeks of the season. It’s a big reason why they’ve won games, because we’ve talked about it. I mean, their offense has had its moments, but it’s not as though the offense has been great even over the last three and a half weeks, they’ve had some great performances. But overall, I wouldn’t say it’s been great over the last three and a half weeks. The bullpen has been great over the last three and a half weeks, and it’s a big reason why they have played better baseball. And

Nestor Aparicio  05:49

it always goes in ways with bullpens. Oh, no question. And you know, it’s, they’re, they’re really but the fact that it can go well is something we didn’t think much about the rotation. We’re really not expecting the rotation to go well,

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Luke Jones  06:02

yeah, no question. And that was something that we talked about. It as far as if you were laying out the formula, if you’re Mike Elias, regardless of how anyone feels about what he did in the off season, but if you’re trying to get inside his head, envisioning the path for the Orioles to contend, it was obviously their offense leading the way, which hasn’t happened. But the other piece to that was having a bullpen that had a healthy Felix Batista, where you added an Andrew Kittredge, where you had a full off season and a full spring with Sir Anthony Dominguez and Gregory Soto, who say what you want about their lack of consistency. I don’t think anyone has watched them pitch and say they don’t have good stuff, right? I mean, it’s been questions about command and giving up the long ball, and Dominguez, his case, and all that. But you look at their bullpen, and you know, Brian Baker has been a really pleasant surprise in terms of looking more and more like a high leverage reliever in the back end of games. I mean, that that’s not something he was able to do his first couple years, many at his moments, but was much more inconsistent. So to your point, I’m not saying that’s going to be what it is the rest of the way, because bullpens are like stock markets, where stocks are up and then suddenly guys are not the same. And that’s, yeah, that’s the volatility of bullpens in general. I mean, you’ll see some teams lead the league in bullpen era, and then the next year they’re in the bottom 10. I mean, that’s just how it kind of works. But as it as it pertains to where the Orioles are right now, their bullpen has been excellent. And, you know, they toss four shutout innings backing up Kramer on Tuesday night, and they’re the offense added on runs late to make it a little more, a little more relaxing and a little less pressure for Batista in the ninth inning. And they win a ball game and they even up the series. One One. Were you with

Nestor Aparicio  07:51

this Yankee thing? Yankees sort of sputtering a little bit. I don’t want to get ahead of my skis, because we’re so 24 hours away from that at this point. You know, going up there. But you know, this is a week to make. Hey, I think any Oriole fan knows that, and trying to step up what they are, right? Are you still an ascending team that next year would be something, or in the second half, could somehow get some skis together to play 626, 40 ball for a period of time to get yourself in. Saw stat the other day. They’re only six games off of the Wild. You know some, you know something, it seemed very brass ringy for a team that’s been in last place for two and a half months and been a real last place below 400 kind of last place team for a long, long time, to think that we could talk nice about them and their young players. We just talked nice about the bullpen. The starting pitching has not been a dumpster fire by and large. I mean, there’s two nights a week they can’t win. There’s two nights a week they got seven up, and they’re losing seven to one the other five nights. If they win four of them, they’re fine. But I think they feel like there’s a cavalry. I think they feel like they could still be a buyer at the trading deadline. I think they feel like they could be a creative buyer at the trading deadline. And I could even take you further into the Colton cowser thing, and take you down the Ramon Laureano and saying, Yeah, Laureano is having a really good year. Yeah, he’s all pasted 20 home runs and hit 269, we paid him $4 million yeah, kind of, sort of sort of what you want out of Colton cowser. So, you know, for for like, so middling outfielders who could hit 270 and hit 18 home runs, I feel like those guys, are they growing trees in the same way that they felt like Anthony Santander, guys that were gonna hit 35 home runs, it’d be 30 something. We don’t want to pay that guy anymore. So there’s all of that. What kind of player you want and what this team would need, based on the Baltimore banner reporting on Brandon Hyde about them being soft, maybe they need a leader, maybe they need a veteran guy, maybe, maybe they need an ass kicker in a trade that that would be that maybe. Maybe they need a Rick Sutcliffe kind of pitcher. Maybe they, I don’t know what they need, but they need to play better. And between now and July, whatever 20th, when you start to decide what you are, what you aren’t, these next four or five weeks are going to, like, really move the trajectory of the team into we think we’re a contender now we were going to stand pat. We’re going to sell off, we’re going to rebuild money bags. Is going to fire Mike Elias, because the mancellino thing doesn’t go well if they start really getting rid of veteran players the way we were talking before this little spate of 15 and 516, and five, you know, whatever this has been the last couple of weeks where they’ve been good, that the sell off would be a lot different, and it would change what the off season would look like. Quite frankly, who’s running the team. I mean, mancellino has done a decent enough job here to, sort of, you know, keep a job around here, while certainly keeping Mike Elias around, who’s managed to keep his job, who everybody was calling for his head. But I am so much is at stake for the people involved in all of this. They’ve already gotten Brandon high, thrown off the boat. Who’s going to survive this and who isn’t is in the balance of these games right now, even though they’re still a last place team,

Luke Jones  11:23

yeah, and, I mean, I think for me, you can look at the trade deadline, but about the all star break, right? I mean, the All Star breaks a couple weeks before the trade deadline, because at some point you do have to kind of say, okay, what are we, right? I mean, what are we? We could keep talking about the fact that we’ve played better. You know, they, they’ve gone 15 and seven over their last 22 games. I mean, they, they played better baseball. I think even the most pessimistic Orioles fan who still says there’s no shot, why are you guys even talking in terms of hypotheticals for the playoffs? Any of that which I’m not going to sit here and argue with someone. I mean, they’re 10 games under 500 they’re still in last place. They said I

Nestor Aparicio  11:59

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would do that if they had Jerry Hairston on their team and a banged up Jeff Conine and Sydney ponson or their ace and they had no players and Cal ripkens 100 years old, like, I’ve seen all of that. That’s not what this group of players is, right? So I, you know, I’m not ready to quit on Adley rushman or gunner Anderson or Colton cow, and I’m not quitting on Colton cows or I’m just saying like, I don’t think he’s going to be a superstar player, and I don’t think he’s untouchable, and I think if somebody else loves him more, because he was the Rookie of the Year and he in Ramon Laureano, can replace that, that productivity, I mean, expendable, the way Austin Hayes was, or the way that Mancini was, or the way that Santander was, this is Moving chairs. There are no Boog pals and Mark belongers and Rick Dempsey’s hanging out here for 15 years. They’re just not and I so I don’t talk about it in that way, and that’s why, when this Devers thing happens, and you wonder how and why, and the Red Sox fans are pissed off, I’m like, they had a guy they thought was a jerk that they had $200 million into. They just hit the eject button and didn’t really care who thinks what you because it’s $200 million and the Orioles haven’t made that mistake yet, you know, from Rubenstein’s perspective, but they’re gonna have to go into that business, you know, and this is the time of the year to figure out who’s making the decisions, who are the keepers, who are the goers. But this organization is ripe with all this young talent that’s got to get out on the field and play and do it or not

Luke Jones  13:26

do it. Yeah, and I mean, as I said to you a month ago, you know, when we were talking about Brandon Hyde being dismissed and wondering what they were going to get out of Tony mancellino, wondering if they were going to hire another manager before the season was over, you know, in the way that they did with Buck Showalter 15 years ago. But I said all along. Look, this is for me, this is not even about getting back in the wild card race, making the playoffs. What are you going to do at the trade up? For me, it’s about at this point in time, getting the young players pointed in the right direction again. And we’ve talked about Jackson holiday, who, by the way, has cooled off here over the last couple weeks, but overall, the body of work looks so much better in 25 than it did last year when he was 20 years old, you know. And I think that was a reminder that, yeah, young players do take some time to figure things. I

Nestor Aparicio  14:13

try to figure that out with him being 21 years old. And think, how many 21 year old players have ever worn an or a uniform, have ever been in the lineup every night and like, and I’m, you know, I’m getting up on 50 Years of Oriole baseball plus. And I’m thinking like, you know, ripke came up for a minute. Machado was here kind of early. I mean, I always think of like, Robin, you the couple of people that came up in 1819, and never went back. And it’s really hard to do man like, you know, it’s hardly for Adley rutschman right now. And he was a godsend, and, you know, chosen like all that. And Bobby Whitney was hitting foul balls to his old man. I don’t know crazier things have happened, but the Jackson holiday thing is still he’s 21 years old. This isn’t Robbie Alomar coming here. After six All Star years in Toronto, where he’s on his way to the Hall of Fame, this is Robbie Alomar, scuffling around as a 21 year old trying to figure out how to switch it in the big leagues and how to speak the language and like the all of that. And I think in this case, I see Alomar elements in him. I see Joe Morgan, you know, I see what everybody would see in a second baseman. I think somebody might see a shortstop in him, though, I don’t know.

Luke Jones  15:24

I mean, maybe, maybe. I mean, I think it’s a reminder, especially for young players. But this applies to everyone. It’s a very difficult game. It really is. And you’ll even find Hall of Fame level players who, even at age 28 or age 30, or, you know, veteran, veteran s players who have had really good careers, they’ll sometimes have a year where you look at it and say, What the heck was that? Well,

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Nestor Aparicio  15:49

Palmer made it look easy, but when he’s on the broadcast, and sometimes you get but, you know, there is a point where, like Buck Showalter would say, I couldn’t do this. Earl Weaver would say, I never could do this. You know, only a couple guys ever manage, like Joe Torrey, that were ever any really good at it, you know. So it’s, it is, you know. And I think that, I think the people who couldn’t do it, like mancellino and people that didn’t have 15 year careers, when they sit down with the BJ sir offs of the world and say, How did you do that? It is, um, it’s hard to do. And when you’re 21 years old, and all of these guys have various levels of scuffle and injuries and contracts and families just there’s a lot that goes into game 78 of a season in the middle of the year at a minor league ballpark on a 90 degree night and all of that. But this is a big week for them. I mean, I and I don’t mean that that if they they go four and three, three and four, that’s fine, but this is where they can make hay, and if the Yankees are scuffling, and if they’re going well, and this is a week where you can get back in it a little bit, and have you and I talking differently about them at the All Star break, because you only really get a chance to beat these teams a handful of times now, where it used to be a lot more head to head in the division,

Luke Jones  17:00

right? You used to have 18 or 19, and now you have 12. I mean, that’s just kind of where it is at this point in time. But, yeah, I mean, I wrote about it at Baltimore, positive.com at the start of the week. I mean, this is the kind of week that, look, I’m not expecting or demanding that you go six and one and they lost the first game of this seven game road trip, right? So, so right off the bat. You’re it’s a reminder that, hey, the rays are really good. The rays have been the best, arguably the best team in the American League over the last month. I mean, when you look at the statistics and what they’ve done hitting wise even, I mean, let alone the talking about picture

Nestor Aparicio  17:32

on Monday, that was better than anything we have. So, right, yeah, so, so, so you just

Luke Jones  17:36

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look at it through that lens. But yeah, this is an opportunity for them. I mean, mancilino, I will give him credit. And as much as you know, some of the positivity, especially the first week or two, was almost like rot your teeth, sugary, too sweet. But he’s remained positive, and he’s talked in these terms. As far as you know, he kind of started off with, let’s forget all the talk about the wild card and all that. Right now, you know. And he started off by saying, let’s get the get it back to single digits under 500 and you know, when they got to 10 games under 500 he said, All right, let’s get the five games under 500 because you get to that point when you look at the landscape of the American League and the wild card race and everything, that’s when you start to say, all right, mathematically, it’s still not great, but it’s much more plausible. And he said,

Nestor Aparicio  18:26

which is why they changed the wild card, you know, which is why it’s not 1962 anymore, right? Like it just gives everybody much more of chance. And

Luke Jones  18:33

that’s where it’s made the it’s made the trade deadline so much more complicated, because you used to have a very distinct diff, you know, very sharp difference between the buyers and the sellers, and now you have this middle class. I mean, think about how we’re talking about the Orioles right now, not that either one of us is saying that we expect them, or we think it’s likely that they’re going to really seriously be in the race. At the same time they are six games out of the final wild card spot. But then you take another step back, and you remind yourself, well, they still have the third worst record in the American League. And yes, there’s six games behind the mariners, but in between them and Seattle is Cleveland, Boston, Minnesota, Texas, the angels, the Royals. So, you know, you just kind of look at that. And by the way, the Royal struggling like, you know, as much as everyone was kind of high on them, you know, they’re three games under 500 now. But it’s just a reminder that you get beyond what you have at the top of the American League right now, which is Detroit. And we thought the Yankees, the Yankees are really scuffling at the moment, and we’ll see if the Orioles can keep them in that in that mode come this weekend. But you look at the rest of these teams, I mean, even Tampa Bay, who’s played their butts off for the last three, four weeks, they’re seven games over 500 it’s not like they’re running away with the top wild card spots. So when you have a chance to back them up right now. No, no question So, and that’s the thing you just mentioned it because you’re playing teams in the division, but really, with the Orioles, it goes beyond that, because you do have the wild cards where you just say, just win, right? I mean, you could keep looking at the standings and keep saying, oh, there’s all these teams in between, and that’s true. That’s absolutely the truth. But you’re just in a mo in a frame of mind right now, where you just need to win games. And if you do that, and you know, 10 games under 500 becomes five games under 500 and for me, you know, because I made mention of the all star break, you know, can you get to the All Star break and you’re within striking distance of 500 that doesn’t mean they’re at 500 but let’s say you get to the All Star break and you’re two games under 500 meaning you’re a you’re a great series away from being at or above 500 you know, for me, that’s where I kind of look at this thing. If you really want me to change my perspective on what the trade deadline looks like, and let’s be clear. Mike Elias, I think after seeing as many trade deadlines as we have at this point in time, even if the Orioles play their butts off for the next three weeks, and they get to the trade deadline, and let’s say they’re a couple games over 500 I mean, they’d really have to be go on a crazy run. I don’t think that means Mike Elias is pushing every single chip he has into the, you know, into the middle of the table, and going all in, so to speak. I don’t think the Orioles are doing that, but it certainly changes how you’re going to view the trade deadline in terms of who are you selling off, what are you going to try to buy? Right? I mean, certainly you’re going to be in much more of a buyer mode. And also,

Nestor Aparicio  21:38

who’s going well, is Mullins healthy at that time. Where’s mount castle? Where’s, you know, where, where are all of these other Where’s O’Hearn at that point? Are they hitting left handers by then? Because if they’re back in the pennant race, guess what? They better hit left handers. You know, I mean, they did. They’re not going on this terror you’re talking about if they’re going to be one in 12 against left handers the next

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Luke Jones  22:01

two months on. And that’s why I said, I mean, as much as the angels series was, well, it’s the angels they beat back to back, you know, back to back wins against left handed starters, which before that, they had four all year. I mean, that’s what you’re talking about. So, you know, Gunner Henderson had another hit against the lefty on Tuesday night. I mean, that’s seven straight games, games where he’s faced the lefty, seven straight games he’s had a hit. I mean, when you and that’s, that’s, that’s kind of an arbitrary, cherry picking kind of stat, I understand that. But when you consider how bad he had been against lefties the first two months, that’s encouraging, because it’s not as though we haven’t seen gunner Henderson be able to hit some left handed pitching in the past. I mean, you know, his numbers weren’t phenomenal against lefties last year, but they weren’t horrendous, like they were in April and May against lefties. So it’s good to see that, right? Guys tag the other night too. Yeah, so on the backside defense. Oh, absolutely. I mean that Laureano throw. I mean the throw, it was a good throw in the sense that he got the ball in very, very quickly, but the tag is what made the play, right? I mean, just kind of a, you know, a spin and a swipe tag, and he got the got the guy going into seconds. That’s baseball instincts here. Loops. Really good play, really good play by both your right fielder and your shortstop there. So, but those are the things they have to do. I mean, whether we’re talking about hitting left handed pitching, whether we’re talking about being better with runners in scoring position, whether we’re talking about their defense being better, how about the fact, how about the way they ran the bases on Tuesday night? I mean very aggressive. I mean the part that you and I haven’t spoken about a whole lot, but I’ve heard some people talk about with man Selena moving from the third base coaching box to the dugout as the interim manager Buck Britain’s now the third base coach. He’s been aggressive, and for the most part, it’s been aggressiveness that’s really worked out for them. And you look at their lineup, for as much as we’ve talked about these, this young core of position players, most of them run well. I mean, even Kobe Mayo runs really well. I mean, for a guy his size, and you think about, oh, he’s going to be a first baseman, or a D, H, you would think he’s kind of slow footed. He’s not he, I mean, he’s an athlete. It looking at him run the bases makes me question once again, why isn’t this a guy you’ve looked at to maybe make a right fielder? And I don’t mean right now. I mean, that would have been something to maybe explore two years ago, something like that, because he’s a good athlete, but, you know, they’ve when they played better of the over the last three and a half weeks, it’s been more complete, right? I mean, it’s been a more complete effort. It’s been a more representative effort from the pitching. Again, the offense still isn’t as consistent as you’d like it to be, relative to what we thought this offense was going to be going into the season, relative to what Mike Elias expected it to be with the way he tried to build this roster, right or wrong. But you know, it’s being able to do the little things better, and when they’ve done that, they’re winning games. More consistently, and you’re seeing them, you know, you saw the difference Monday night. I mean, you know, Eflin got knocked around. I mean, he got rocked so they didn’t have much of a chance. And to your point, I mean, that they faced a pitcher who was just better than anything they have. But Tuesday night, no, they they got an or, you know, got some, a couple runs early on and then added on late. And, you know, they got a start that’s good enough. You know, wasn’t Dean Kramer’s best effort, but it was certainly a rock solid five innings one run, and their bullpen did their thing,

Nestor Aparicio  25:34

which give me five innings in one run from Dean Kramer,

25:39

right? I mean, I I’m not having any false pretenses here,

Nestor Aparicio  25:41

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as far as, I don’t think he’s a number one or a number I think he’s a guy, if I can get five innings in one run. I mean, that’s a I’ll take that all day long. I’ll pay a lot of money for

Luke Jones  25:50

that. I’ll take that from most pitchers in this day and age, right? I mean, yeah, I’d love to have a healthy Corbin burns. But even if you resigned Corbin burns, he had Tommy John surgery, right? I mean that that’s the nature of the beast and and by the way, a little bit of a mia culpa here, because I talked about this guy a lot in the off season. As far as someone, I would have liked to have seen them sign Walker Bueller’s been terrible for the Red Sox. So it speaks to, and I don’t say this to apologize for michaelias. Let me be very clear about that, because he has earned Much of the criticism that he’s gotten. Well, they’re in last place. Yeah, sure, but it also speaks to figuring out pitching is way more easy, way easier said than done, because even when you think you have it and think back to where the Orioles were two years ago, second half of 23 Kyle Bradish looked every bit the part of an ace, and Grayson Rodriguez was very much trending to, if not an ace, at least a very legitimate number two or number three. And we see what’s happened since

Nestor Aparicio  26:51

then. Well, Elias pulled an ace out of his rectum with the with the Ortiz trade, you know, like so like this time last year. Let’s talk about this time last year, where Bradish was coming back, means was coming back. Rodriguez was coming on. Burns was here. Kramer was trying to figure out how to be a fourth or fifth starter and get the ball. They weren’t dreaming of Charlie Morton. They had Suarez if they needed him, this time last year, the whole different Oh, and by the way, they were going to trade and get another jack Flaherty, right? They were going to get another Haas, another guy that they thought was going to come in and blah, blah, blah, you know, and like, this is, that’s why they’re in last place, because none of that materialized, none of that bore fruit. And instead, Charlie Morton’s their ace.

Luke Jones  27:36

Well, I mean, Charlie Morton’s not the race. Sugano, sure, sure. I mean, Sagano has been their best pitcher and but again, it speaks to how difficult it is because even guys like me who and look, I’m not a baseball executive, I’m not pretending that I’m I know as much as Mike Elias or Dave Dombrowski or go take your pick of what general manager you like around baseball. I’m not that, but I, but I looked at Walker Bueller and said, there’s a guy who has some upside. He’s go look at what his era is for the Red Sox, right? Now, lots of people wanted the Orioles to go sign Blake Snell. Blake Snell has made two starts for the Dodgers all year, right? Hasn’t been healthy. I mean, you go down the list, Corbin burns. Everyone wanted to resign. Corbin burns Tommy John surgery in June, right? I mean, it’s just that’s why you don’t listen to the fans. Elias, well, it’s not even so much that. It’s just it speaks to how volatile and how difficult it is to try to navigate it, and it speaks to why, what I will continue to say is they need to make more of an effort internally as far as trying to develop more pitching. And that doesn’t mean you have to draft a pitcher in the first round every year. Let’s be clear, because I also I will subscribe to what they’ve done to an extent, meaning draft hitters in the first round, because it’s a safer play. It’s a better long term investment. You have way less health volatility. But that doesn’t mean you just punt, punt, punt, punt, until you get to the eighth round and you start drafting pitching, then you have to still put forth effort, and you still have to take some risks, and sometimes it’s not going to work out, but that’s why you also need numbers. I mean, the Dodgers, you know, we talked about Otani the other day. I mean, yes, Ohtani is this unbelievable unicorn, and they’re building him up. And, you know, he pitched one inning, he’ll probably pitch two innings his next time out. You know they’re going to do this gradual ramp up, because, unlike other pitchers, you can’t send him to the minors for a rehab assignment, right? He’s still still your leadoff hitter. He’s still hitting, leading the league in home runs, all that. But let’s, let’s not,

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Nestor Aparicio  29:36

let’s not have any that’s funny, by the way. I just got to take a moment pause that right? Because I gotta think to myself like he has, he has no leeway to go to Fresno and pitch for a week. This is why

Luke Jones  29:47

I said to you, like I’m in all like I watched it the other night, and then it’s like he has a 26 pitch, first inning. 28 pitch, first inning, whatever it was. And he didn’t even walk into the dugout to sit down and have a cup of water, because he had to get his. Adding gloves on and his elbow guard on because he was leading off the bottom of the first but, but, no, I but with so much of that, with the Dodgers they’re pitching, look at, look at how injured they are, and they’re the team that spends more than anyone, right? I mean, they, they defer a lot of it, and I’m you know, but look how many pitchers they’ve rolled through to the point where Clayton Kershaw, at this stage of his career, might be more important to them now than he’s been at any point in the last, say, three or four years, because of how injured and banged up their pitching staff is. So it just speaks to even if you spend a lot of money on it, you still might have the problems the Orioles have had, right? So, you know, I don’t say that again. It sounds like I’m being an apologist for Mike Elias. I’m not. You know, there’s certainly things that he’s hasn’t done as well as he’s needed to do and needs to do better moving forward if he’s going to continue to be the guy I

Nestor Aparicio  30:54

didn’t like. The accountability of firing a manager like at that point for me, no, it doesn’t work for me. Firing a manager Saturday and hiding for three days doesn’t work for

Luke Jones  31:02

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me. Fair enough. For me. Fair enough. Fair enough. I’m not look. I said it at the time. It was very poor leadership in my mind. But, but the pitching thing, time for poor leadership. I hear you. I’m trying to see that every day in my life, yeah.

Speaker 1  31:16

But, but the pitching part of of this equation, it’s not easy. I mean, look at the rays right now. They look like, you know, hey, top wild card, best team in baseball, or best team in the American League of the last three or four weeks. What were we talking about last year and the year before? With with the rays, other all their pitchers were breaking right? I mean, a big reason why the Orioles were able to overtake them and then hold them off for the division title two years ago. Go look at the injury, the pitching injuries they had over the course of 23 as that season continued. I mean, they lost McClanahan and some some of their other guys that they were counting on. I mean, it’s it’s tough, and look the Orioles. I’m not saying that to cry the blues for for the Orioles. Everyone deals with it at different times. That’s why, for me, as much as anything, it’s a reminder that, man, they needed to take more, better advantage of this in 23 you know, the trade deadline that year, they needed a a shutdown bullpen arm, and they got Fuji. They, you know, they, they could have gone out and acquired a really serious, legitimate top half of the rotation guy, at the very least, they got Jack Flaherty, who was so bad that he wasn’t even in the rotation in September. So, you know, I mean that that’s where these five year plans and and talking about these windows, you know, that’s it looks good on paper, and sometimes it does work out, but a lot of times you can’t account for things going wrong, and there’s sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I mean, we’ve so much of what we talked about now for going on three months, is how baffled I’ve been that it was so bad, right? Not, not that they struggled. I wasn’t surprised by that. When you look at what happened, and you looked at the off season and everything, but that it fell apart to the point where they were 18 games under 500 I mean, if you told me, like three months ago, looking at what’s kind of happened in terms of the pitcher injuries and everything, and you told me right now, I would have said, Oh, they’re probably three or four, maybe five games under 500 because I would have assumed that so many of the guys who underperformed wouldn’t have underperformed to that degree. So there’s still things that happen in baseball that just make you shake your head. But here we are. They’re playing better. They still have a really, really long way to go, and they still have to play really good baseball for a long stretch of time to to really, truly give themselves a great chance to get back into this thing. But it’s the bed you made for yourself, so you have to sleep in it, and you have to try to make the best of it. And to the point that we mentioned, yeah, this is a big week, you know, you you try to win these next two games against the rays at a minimum, get a split and then you go to Yankee Stadium and try to take care of a Yankees team that’s winning right now, at least. You keep your season alive if you tread a little bit, but if you tread, and you tread, and it’s the all star break and you tread, and now at the trading deadline, you’re 810, under, you’re dead. Yeah, right. So that’s where this this is where the burying, the unburying, has to happen. All right. He’s Luke Jones. He has been out in Owings Mills doing Ravens. We’re going to do plenty of ravens here. This week, I’ve been at the pool, at the Y doing the Maryland crab cake tour. I had my pal, Jerry Schlichting from clean cuisine come over. Delicious crab cake, by the way, sent me home with a delicious plate of the squash lasagna that I may or may not be talking about as my 27 favorite things to eat during the month of August. We’re celebrating 27 years of madness around here and a lot of really bad baseball and trying to change things around here. Luke’s out trying to change good football things. Lamar Jackson on the podium defending all things. Mark Andrews. Haven’t seen Mark Andrews defend Mark. Jetta, I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, doing a lot of sports around here, but doing a lot of community as well with our friends at the Y stay with us. You.