Luke Jones and Nestor discuss the chill of the Orioles bats and the necessary offensive productivity for a depleted pitching corps that can’t lose games like Monday night in New York. The Birds are going to need to score more than three runs to win.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
talked, runs, game, point, play, team, pitch, bullpen, pitching, weeks, good, bad, baseball, offense, santander, burns, yankees, fans, feel, year
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Luke Jones
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T, Towson, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. We are positively into a baseball week. They’re all baseball weeks, which is the beauty of being independent race. It’s also the bad news when you you wake up after another loss and a bullpen loss. We’re going to be on Friday at fadelies, hoping things go better against the cheatstros, the Gold Rush sevens, doublers, I’m getting rid of these, the Raven scratch offs, I haven’t seen them yet, but we do have a commercial running for them. And I did have John Martin and Seth Elkin and a whole bunch of other great, great guests last week. Had a really enjoyable time. Hard to believe I go to Ocean City and sit in a convention hall 39th Street and have a good time. But I did, and you will hear the remnants of that here at am 15 seven. You can find it all out of Baltimore positive. In the meantime, the Ravens get ready for more fake football in Green Bay and cuts next week, we get ready for Labor Day holiday around here, there’s a democratic convention going on, all sorts of things going on, but the Orioles are playing baseball up at Citi Field. The owner had a really good seat. I’m writing a letter to David Rubenstein and others in the coming weeks. And you know, I mean, it’s a winnable game there, Luke, and I don’t know what else to say. Late they put themselves. We want more out of Rogers. We want more out of this. And that certainly the early going wasn’t great, but a winnable game, and a game that I feel like the good Orioles, the ones pre All Star break, won these kinds of games. They
Luke Jones 01:30
got to score more than three runs. I mean, we can talk about Trevor Rogers. He wasn’t great, but he was competitive. Was better than some of his previous starts. I get it, he’s their fifth best starter right now. I mean, that’s where it is if Grayson Rodriguez comes back in the way that the Orioles expect him to and all this. I mean, we could see Trevor Rogers go back to the miners. He’s he has options, or we could see him in the bullpen. I mean, it’s that simple. But Nestor, if you tell me before, before to Monday night’s game that Trevor Rogers, Colin Selby, Keegan Aiken and Sir Anthony Dominguez are going to combine to give up four runs. I will probably take that in all honesty with the assumption that hey, my offense, that hey and between the two of us, I’m the one that sticks up for the offense a little bit more here of late, but that was absolutely a game where you got to do more. I get it. David Peterson’s good. He pitched, well, I understand that. But
Nestor Aparicio 02:30
until he did this, until he didn’t, right, they let him into you talk about beating our manager. Update. You know to me, 10 too many for him. Well, sure,
Luke Jones 02:40
sure, well, and certainly a bulk and then giving up a home run to Ramona Reus, absolutely. But, I mean, it’s just as simple. This current state of the pitching staff is a fraction of what it once was, or what we thought it could be, with a healthy Kyle Bradish and John means, and go down the list, and obviously guys in the bullpen too, Danny cool and Jacob
Nestor Aparicio 03:02
Webb offensively, to throw him in there.
Luke Jones 03:04
Oh no, I’m not, I’m not going to throw Batista in there, because we’ve known since it’s gone last October. All right, you know. All right, I got you. It’s a challenge. But Mike Elias knew that, right? I mean, that’s, that’s one thing that’s a little bit of a pet peeve of mine. When I hear people kind of talk about the pitching and they say, well, well, the Orioles haven’t had Felix, but they knew that last October, you have to treat it as though Felix Bautista left or retired in terms of roster building.
Nestor Aparicio 03:28
Well, they knew in January, Bradish might not be around, which is what they what burns, right, right, right.
Luke Jones 03:33
And that’s a fair point, too. Anyway, that’s just a little tiny aside. Your points, well taken. And point is, other than Jordan westburg, they’re healthy on the offensive side, and Jorge Mateo, if you want to throw him in there. But you know, Jorge Mateo is certainly not a guy that leads the way with the bat. We know that, but they’ve got to score more than three runs. Three runs is not going to cut it. We’ve talked about this, that the state, the current state, of this pitching staff, other than nights where Corbin burns last Friday night aside, and, I guess recent, recently the month of August. But other than that, Corbin burns and Zach Eflin, maybe Albert, Suarez. And I want to, I’m saying that as a compliment to Suarez, you score three runs. It’s probably not going to win you many ball to lose data, lose, right? Yeah, they’re, you know, they’re not the 1995 Braves. They’re not, they’re not built to win two to one or three to two right now. I mean, they’re just not so. So it really is that simple. You’ve got to score more runs. And I get it. It’s disappointing that, sir, Anthony Dominguez gets up, gives up a home run in the ninth inning and and if he now goes through a rut where he’s given up runs and is looking like the other bullpen guys then, oh boy, give me the selfie
Nestor Aparicio 04:44
guy. I want the guy with the biggest beard. Let him close. You know,
Luke Jones 04:47
you know what though. I mean, he pitched, well, I was kind of surprised by that, you know, kind of threw that back up slider. He impressed Palmer. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, look, am I going to sit here and say, oh so. The Selby is going to be their eighth inning guy come the late September and October. No, but if he can give you a lift, if he can help you out in the time of need. I mean, how about Keegan Aiken? He struck out five guys in two innings. Keegan Aiken, I let me be clear about this. I am not at all hitting 200 off him, dude, he’s what I’m saying, he quietly, and let’s be clear, he hasn’t been asked to pitch a whole lot in high leverage situations, and there have been some times over the course of the year where he has been in that spot, gone well, but he quietly, has had a solid season for them. I mean, look, the numbers are, what they are. He’s got a three and a half era. He does miss some bats? Do I trust him to pitch in the eighth or ninth inning of one run game most nights? No, of course not, but the bar is really low right now for their bullpen Nestor. We know that, so he quietly has done a decent job for them. And I mean, he gave them a chance, and again, your offense needs to score more than three runs on a night when Trevor Rogers is starting and on a night when Selby and Aiken are guys that are pitching meaningful innings for you in a tight game, and Sir Anthony Dominguez is your only quote. Top guy that pitches out of the pen three runs isn’t going to cut it. I mean, it’s just that simple. So I don’t mean to be flippant about it, but, and I get it, you know, Peterson, he’s a good pitcher. He’s got a three era, you know, I’m not saying that they went up against the scrub, but, you know, we talked about this over the weekend. I mean, look at Saturday night. I mean, they got such an impressive start from kadepovich, and they scored one run. Even Sunday, where they win, they had three hits in that game. You know, now, two of them were home runs, but they had three hits. So their offense has to pick it up. I mean, it just has to,
Nestor Aparicio 06:46
well, that’s it. That’s a snapshot there. They won a game with three. It’s two of more home runs. And that’s what they do. They hit home runs. And, I mean, we had a team 10 years ago to hit a lot of home runs around here too, and but, but getting on base, walking, extending at bats, hitting your pitch, hitting a pitch, making contact, all of that, what, what? Don’t you like about it right now and on a night to night basis, back when it was bring Norby up, or bring holiday up, or bring Mayo up, or let’s get rid of pick your guy, Hayes, Mullins, Santander at one point and mount castle at various points. Mateo, several points. Right? So, man, we’re, we’re five and a half weeks out on the moment of truth, right? You know where they’re going to be, where they are and have to play the way they’re gonna have to play, whether, you know, will they get a buy or not? And it’s really weird. We keep waking up after another bad offensive night. Closer blew a game piss. Starter did okay. Middle the bullpen. They got some good news in there. But you wake up in first place. Hey, you know, and it’s like they’re, they’re, they’re falling sideways, not even backward, not forward. But it does feel like the wild card thing’s catching up to the whole pack a little bit because of the losing.
Luke Jones 08:10
Yeah. I mean, you know, they fall a half game behind the Yankees because the Yankees were idle on Monday night. But you look at the standings and, I mean, we just saw a team that’s right, they’re vying for a wild card spot in the Boston Red Sox. I mean, that’s what you’re looking at Seattle, who has been so mediocre for quite a long period of time. Now, you know, Kansas City has on the flip side. They’ve really come on. I mean, don’t look now, but Kansas City’s in that last wild card spot. They’re tied with the Minnesota Twins, and they have a plus 111 run differential. I mean, that’s that’s a legit profile right there. The Royals are absolutely an ascending team. They kind of feel a little bit like last year’s Orioles, not in the sense that I think they’re going to be the number one seed, let’s be clear, but just in the sense of They’ve really grown up quickly, and obviously wits leading the way for them. I mean, MVP caliber talent right there. But you know, they’ve got other good young players. And, you know they, they pitch pretty well. I mean, they, I think they’re just a shade under 500 runs allowed. The Orioles are like 544 the twins are 540 you know when I’m just looking at the wild card standings right now. So you know those, I mean, we’re not talking about teams that are juggernauts here. We’re talking about teams that are going to be in the realm of maybe 90 wins, somewhere like that. You know, 92 wins, you know if they play, well, I’m wondering
Nestor Aparicio 09:29
what kind of ball they’re going to play. You know what I mean, like this next five or six weeks. If this is a real stumble there, they could get themselves, not just get themselves into trouble having to play this thing out. They’re going to have to play this thing play this thing out either way, but getting themselves into trouble of playing this thing out, not from that capper position of, we’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine. There comes a point where, when the team start to catch up, and that, you know, that brought me to the Mets because, you know, it’s not like I pay attention to the National League. I mean, I’m watching also. Things going baseball, but I’m like the Mets, like they think they can make the playoffs, and when you’re playing these teams this time of year that think they can, or sometimes think they can’t. No, they can’t. There can be spoiler. And we’re going to have a little bit of that around Labor Day two, where you’re playing like the worst teams in the league. You look down, you say, well, there’s six games there are they going to get five of them, four of them, six of them, you know, like, and how that math starts to add up. Because the math is this has gotten crunchy at a time where we were on cruise control most of the year, just like, we’re in, we’re in, we’re in, we’re in, we’re in, I don’t know. Man, get swept by Houston this weekend and start, and it’s a mess, you know, you like quickly. And we weren’t saying that when they were getting swept by the Cardinals. It was just, it’s June, you know, all of a sudden, everything gets a little tighter for these young players, for the fans, for sure, who’ve already dude, I should have snapshot. How many players they want benched, how many times Brandon Hyde should be fired, which is insane. I mean, just insanity stuff that I’m glad I’m not Rex Barney taking the phone calls anymore because, like, the fans are out on the ledge with every Sir Anthony blown save on a night when, like, we thought he was going to be, the closer we’re moving to that role, and now, all of a sudden, he moves to the well, didn’t do it on Monday night. It’s so day to day for all of this. But this team’s good enough, and this would be a terrible potential thing if they get into the playoffs and get bounced right away again, like and fight all this way that. I mean, I’m trying to figure out ways they can succeed in October. And to your point, it’s the bats, and I don’t know individually I’m going to go after rutschman, or after any of these guys, and say more and more and more. Henderson, all of them, just more and more and
Luke Jones 11:53
more. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I mean, it’s one thing for you or me to look at what’s going to happen over the next five weeks and which series, you know, quality of the opponent, all that. I mean, they really have to get back to compartmentalizing and not worrying about that and just playing that night’s game. I mean, it’s that simple when you’re struggling. I mean, that’s what you have to do. I mean, and that sounds cliche, that sounds a little manager speak, but it but it’s the truth. I mean, I think if they, if they’re thinking the same way that, like, what, how we’ve talked, that’s part of the problem, right? I mean, that’s part of it, where you jump out to be in 20 or 24 you know, their, their high water mark was 24 games over 500 and you just, you know, you’re not consciously saying it, but if you’re thinking deep down that, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re in great shape, you know, we can kind of not cruise, but we’ve got some cushion here, and they do, and that’s not, that’s not untrue, right? I mean, we’ve been talking about that for that’s been the story for close to two months now, but at some point in time, you got to make your move. And again, it starts with wanting to win the division, because of the format, because of the wild card round being the best of three, where you literally have a bad 27 hours and you’re done whether you’re playing at home or on the road. I mean, how easily does that happen in baseball? You know, even if you’re the best team going up against the worst team, that happens quite frequently, so you want to try to avoid that. But they’re so banged up on the pitching side, and they’re just not very good on the pitching side. And that’s been the case for quite a while now. Yeah, you need Corbin burns to pick it up. There’s no question about that. Yeah, you need Dean Kramer to do to pitch better than he has for the bulk of the season. Because, you know, he’s been at least a league average pitcher, starter over the last couple years, has not been that this year for the most part, and has dealt with, obviously, some physical concerns. But, you know, and the bullpen, I mean, I don’t know who I’m expecting in the bullpen to beyond the obvious, Craig Kimbrel and Gregory Soto, who do have track records of being way better than they’ve been, but you’re also in the spot of when do you pitch them to try to get them on track? You know, you have Selby, who you know, actually pitched in a you know, wasn’t high leverage on Monday night, of course, oh, especially when you’re trailing. But you know that that wasn’t mop up duty either, and he did a nice job keeping them in the game. So, but, but you’re trying to figure this out. You have, you think you’re high leverage guys and Sir Anthony Dominguez, and look, I mean, he gave up a solo home run in a tie game, right? I mean, at some point in time, someone’s going to score. That’s why you need your offense to do more than three runs, you know. And one of those runs came on a bulk, by the way. So again, it’s not even that that they were mounting many threats. But, you know, they just, they’ve got to get back to play in cleaner baseball. And we didn’t even mention it tough play down the right field line for Anthony Santander in the corner there. That’s not an easy play. I want to be very clear about that, but it hit his glove. I mean, it actually, actually hit his bare hand, as he’s kind of bracing to hit the wall. You know, that’s a. Play that he absolutely could have made at the very least, and that saves you a run. I mean, how many times have we talked about that? I think the defense overall has gotten has tightened up over the last couple weeks. I do think that’s been something that’s been better compared to where it was, say, a month ago, and we’ve talked about it too much the last two months, far more than we have for a year and a half. Yeah. So again, when we’re talking about what the major problem is, which is obviously on the pitching side, with the injuries they’ve had and the guys that they’re having to rely on right now. I mean, it is a far from full strength starting rotation and a far from full strength full pen. And yes, I’ll even throw in Felix Batista in that one. You know, I just don’t want people to dwell on that from a roster building standpoint, because they’ve known that all along that he wasn’t going to but point is, their margin for error with their pitching is so small at this point in time. So yeah, I am going to ask the offense that is much healthier and much more complete on paper anyway, to do the heavier lifting, I am going to ask the defense that, let’s face it, has been really mediocre and and even the defensive metrics, like defensive unsaved and some of those, you know, some of the stat cast metrics suggest their defense has been mediocre. They’ve got to pick it up, because there’s a situation right there. Again, not it wasn’t a routine pop up that Santander just dropped. That’s a tough play right by the wall, especially a place where you don’t play a ton of games, right? A national league ballpark. But, I mean, he absolutely could have caught that and saves you a run in that spot. A run was really important in that game, obviously. So, you know, it’s, it’s the little things, right? So, yeah, you need your offense to score more runs, and to be more productive, they’ve really had a tough run against left handed starting pitching. You know, they, you know, we’ve talked about rushman, but Ryan mountcastle has to pick it up. You know, quietly here of late, Santander, now he’s, he’s continued to hit some home runs, but his overall profile the last few weeks, you know, he’s fallen off a little bit. You know that they, they’ve got guys in their lineup that they just, they need more from. They absolutely need more from. I mean, Ramon Arias has been one of their best hitters the last few weeks, which great for Ramon, especially, another one of those guys that you just mentioned a few minutes ago that was in that group that people wanted to jettison and get rid of.
Nestor Aparicio 17:18
He’s the 27th guy on the roster, right? Yeah, but, but him is, if you take his numbers and where westburg was and put him in minus the mayo, you know, nothingness, yeah, that the productivity in that spot hasn’t dropped off as dramatically. And you know, when cows are took that pitch the other night, I’m like, oh, man, you know, that’s smelled like marcas to me and like, so I got the yips about all of that with these guys and getting stupid fights and, you know, like, there’s been bad blood with Yankees and this and that, like, this next month, this is about the tightness of the ravens and Kansas City on the fifth man, We’re gonna have a day by day roller coaster around here in a much bigger way than last year, where there was no expectation on the baseball team, and it was just they were winning, and it was fun, it was party. And how much of the playoff tickets? Oh, my God, we’ve we went through that. By the way, you can go find that out of Baltimore. Positive about the Birdland memberships and stuff, but just the fans in general and what the expectation is, what the promise and the hope was, when they they had better pitching, um, you know, when this is all over with, and they don’t win the World Series, but look back, and we’ll say, Dude, look what happened. They’re pitching the same way two, two years ago, that the last time Harbaugh talked to me at the cocktail parties like, you know, we had a lot of injuries last year, and you know, it’s hard to win with that. Your number two star, your three star, a couple guys in the bullpen, you take a bad break with an all star third baseman. And some of that’s worked out okay. But to your point, they’re going to win the world series based on Henderson, ruchman, maybe westburg, certainly Santander, at this point would be he can win the Home Run Derby. So, you know, these are, these are the Burns is gonna have to pitch big in October, like that’s, that’s the reality of all of this. And if that doesn’t happen, they don’t have to worry about Craig Campbell blowing a game for them, right? I mean, it won’t be about that, yeah,
Luke Jones 19:22
well, I mean, think about last year. I mean, there was so much on the bullpen. You know, it was right around this time. We’re coming up on a year from the time that Felix Bautista walked off the mound with his elbow injured, and we talked about that all through last year. And keep in mind, I mean, they were in a tight race all last year. I mean, the rate, they were right there with the rays. I mean, they were holding off the rays, but it was a game lead, a two game. But from
Nestor Aparicio 19:46
the fans perspective, was just fun to make the playoffs. I understand, but
Luke Jones 19:50
I’m trying to focus, you know, the fans know how they want to feel like, you know, but I’m talking about the players themselves. You know, they were in this position where their bullpen was very much a. Now their bullpen did an admirable job. Their bullpen statistically held up really well. And you know, you had guys that were kind of pitching over their heads, for lack of a better term, maybe not canoe as much, because he was better in the first half last year than he was down the stretch. But certainly Danny coulomb and CNL Perez and Jacob Webb and go down the list, you know, Tyler wells came into the picture the last 10 days of the regular season. And, you know, even closed out a game or two for them. But you, you just said it for all the focus on the bullpen. You know, the bullpen didn’t even, didn’t factor all that much in that Texas series. I mean, a little bit in game one, but, you know, they they just got blasted, and it was over, right? I mean, there were no high leverage situations late in those games. So, yeah, I mean, the bullpen is a big part of it, but they just, they have to be better across the board. And when I look at where they are across the board, their offense is much healthier, their position player, the state of their position player group is better than the state of their pitching. You know, it’s a very simple thing. And I just put this out on social media in the aftermath of Monday night’s game, where I just said that you need more than three runs. It’s this simple. The formula for Monday night is not my below average pitching staff pitch better than that. The formula for Monday night was my above average offense needs to play at an above average level. And they didn’t do that there. The pitching was fine in the in the collective right, you know, in the aggregate, it was fun. You know, four runs
Nestor Aparicio 21:42
on the road against the mats on, you know, take that. I’ll stop. Yeah, I’m not doing cartwheels over it, but I’ll take it. And if I get that in game three, the ALCS, I’m good with it, sure,
Luke Jones 21:52
yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess it depends who you’re facing at Game three, but, but yeah. I mean, any night that’s not started right now by Corbin burns, Zach Eflin or Albert Suarez. I’ll probably say Yeah, three or four runs allowed. I’ll take that with the the assumption that I need my offense to be better. I need my offense to do what it’s capable of doing. And they just, they have too many guys in that lineup who, frankly, have just not been all that good of late. I mean, we’ve talked about
Nestor Aparicio 22:24
rallies, dude, right? You know what? I mean? Like, they got three hits in a game. You get, you know, they don’t. They don’t draw a walk, get a single steal, a base hit, a double it’s three run, home run. We got three. We got to cook a number. Let’s, you know, let’s send Grayson back out there or whatever. Like not now, but I they don’t have these long, extended innings and bat around and do all of that, um, because I they don’t walk a lot, and they swing a lot, and that’s Elias likes that profile. I mean, they didn’t like rutschman Taking pictures last year. I mean, it’s a and I see these talking points where they bring in the analytics people. I don’t know what they preach there, but I do feel like maybe the way they’re approaching things. And you mentioned, and I wanted to bring you down on this too, because you said, I don’t care what the fans think of players. I’m like, hold on. I speak as a fan, and I’ve been around it enough, and it’s been a little while. I didn’t mean it, but the play No, but the players feel that pressure too, that last year was just fun and fun and fun and fun, and we’re in and we’re in and we’re in. And it was that way in April and May, getting back to that fun part of baseball, where baseball is fun, and we do walk offs and we all celebrate, and we all pie the you know, Melanie after the game, and like, there have been a whole lot of that around here, and that’s part of the joy of all of it. When the thing you you said a couple weeks ago and they were losing their pressing now, we thought, that’s kind of like a that’s a cliche thing. What does that mean? I think if I were to get down to the head of what that means is, I sat around the hotel all day, and we lost last night, and we’re in New York. It’s big city, and I’d like to go out and I got a game, and, man, we won a couple days, and it might be my turn in the ball pen tonight, or it might be, hey, I’m starting tonight, or whatever. Like where you are and how you feel all day, and then, and then you see the standings. But one thing that feels good as a fan and as a player is when you wake up, you’re not five days behind. You know what I mean? Like, because of all of this anarchy and bad things, every error, every bad start, every injury, you still got a very, very clear path to a one seed if you hit the ball. Yeah,
Luke Jones 24:35
yeah. And again, just to when I was talking about the fans, it was, I’m not really. My job isn’t to interpret how fans feel. My job is to look at what the club’s doing and how the club might feel about things. And that’s what I meant about that. I mean every things about the fan base. Every market in baseball that has a team that’s relevant right now has that right? You overreact everything. I mean, a lot of it is we. Uh, football is our top sport in this country, and fan mentalities have really kind of, you know that that mentality is kind of that’s been bleeding in a bartender
Nestor Aparicio 25:09
for this city for 33 years, like I and I, it fatigued me. The drunk 2am talk of fire and the manager is just not something we do around here ever. I told Whistler that I’ll tell Mr. Rubenstein, it’s not who we are, it’s not what we do. But, but there is a point for these players in this group. They know this thing’s teetering. Kimbrels in there, you know, to your point, there’s a responsibility. When guys are booting balls and Santander’s in the outfield feel like I should have caught that ball like all and then they lose, and it starts to stack up. And I I know how heavy that gets, and I feel the tightness as a fan every day saying this thing’s getting a little tighter than I thought it was going to be. I think it’s that way for the whole organization. And I also think Elias knows he can’t get much help here. You and I consider and talk about, where’s the help coming from. But much like all of us, I know you’re a spiritual guy, it’s coming from within.
Luke Jones 26:07
Oh, more so, yes, but also you’re, you’re waiting on some guys to get healthy. I mean, that’s, that’s what it is you can’t speed up the process there. I mean, Danny columbs Throwing, Jacob Webb’s throwing, Grayson Rodriguez just played catch. You know, Jordan westburg is improving. I mean, he still has a splint. I mean, it’s a bone that has to heal, right? I mean, I think all those guys have a really good chance of being back. You know, now you get to this point in the season, any little setback could be the difference of being ready and not being ready. You know, for the last, you know, at least by the last week of September, let’s say where you know, you’d want to get all these guys at least some regular season action, but, but, yeah, they’ve got, they’ve got to step it up. They’ve got to tighten it up. I mean, the thing I will say, you know, and especially when you use the term teetering, let’s also understand, this hasn’t been a collapse, right? I mean, they haven’t gone through a stretch where it’s been so bad, where you know that they’ve had a an eight and 20 month, right? It they’ve never had a period that bad. It’s been and look again, since the that we kind of use the Yankee series in the Bronx back in late June as the high water mark, there are four games under 500 since then right now. That’s bad, but that’s not disastrous. That’s not going from, you know, and I always there aren’t many teams that I can draw from, as far as the Orioles of my lifetime that were good in the middle of a season and then really bad. I think back to the 2005 Orioles. They were up to 14 games above 500 and then they were 14 below 500 before you knew it, later that summer, right? I mean, that’s, that’s an extreme collapse in which their manager got fired, Rafael Palmeiro gets popped for steroids. And, I mean, the cart completely, you know, just derailed. He
Nestor Aparicio 27:58
never took
Luke Jones 28:01
right? But, but the point is, I mean that that is truly an epic collapse. This team hasn’t done that. And I’m not saying that to defend this team. I’m just saying you still have to, as a fan, as media, as as players, looking at this, that’s where you do have to balance the oh, well, we’re not playing as well, but, yeah, we’re
Nestor Aparicio 28:20
still okay, right? I
Luke Jones 28:21
mean, because you don’t want to, you don’t want to press, you don’t want to, there’s a balance between feeling urgency and doing things that, where you’re just going up there trying to hit a five run homer with the bases empty, right? I mean, and we’ve seen that, you know, we’ve seen that from this team, and I mean that just in a general sense, you you certainly see that, not just from this team, but any team that’s going through some struggles. I mean, that’s just part of the game. Failure is such a big part of what’s baked into baseball compared to other sports, and there’s waiting around dealing with that failure. It’s not like basketball, where you go down the floor and you miss a shot or you blow a layup, and you can get the ball the next time, the next possession, you’ve got to wait your turn in the lineup. Or, if you’re a starting pitcher, you got to wait your turn in the rotation. So there’s a lot of time to think, right? I mean, baseball is a we’ve heard it, it’s a thinking man’s game, right? It’s a conversational game. It’s a lot of time to think and talk in between those moments of action for the individual. And you know that that’s part of what this team just they’re I’m not going to sit here and play psychologists. I’m just saying in the general sense, any baseball player, any baseball team, is going to go through some of that and you know, but a lot of this is also, and I don’t say this to be defeatist about it, because they do have some guys that are going to come back. But I also just think we’re now roughly about a fifth of a season, or not a fifth, a third of a season where they’ve been a 500 ish kind of team, right? So you are, which are you? At this. You look at the state of the pitching, I’m not sure how much better you can expect it to be on paper. Yes. Craig Kimbrel, yes. Gregory Soto, sure. Dean Kramer being a little bit better than he’s been. Sure. Corbin burns being better than he’s been in August. Yeah, absolutely better. They’re going to need that, right? I mean that that, that’s that to me, I’m still treating more as outlier than disturbing trend, but, but you just kind of look at it and you say, yeah, it back in March. You know when we when you and I went to Sarasota and we’re taking in some spring training, if you’re telling me, come late August that Bradish is out for the year, and John means is out for the year, and Tyler Wells is out for the year, and Grayson Rodriguez is Mitch missed time, and Dean Kramer missed, what, five weeks at one point. And you know, they’re missing Westbrook, who blossomed into an all star, but he’s missing time down the stretch. And you tell me all that, and the state of the bullpen, I’m going to tell you, I don’t know if they’re 73 and 53 through their first 126, so you kind of look at through, look at it through that lens, and say, you know, they’ve, yeah, they’ve been treading water for a long time at best. You know, that’s, that’s kind of the best way that you could describe it, the most positive way if you can describe it. But they still have managed to avoid going in the tank completely, right? And I’m not saying that to compliment them, I’m saying that to describe just what the state of affairs is. So, you know, you keep waiting. You’re trying to get these guys back healthy, waiting, waiting, waiting for those guys. And, yeah, you got to win games. You know, you can’t just point to that and say, oh, woe is me. We’re not going to win games. That’s why I said Monday night. That’s why, to me, it’s the offense. You know, I can live with your pitching staff, with it being those guys that that took the mound on Monday night, giving up four runs. You got to score more than three. I mean, you just, you have to, you know, this, this team is not built for that. You know, maybe they once were, you know, Kyle Bradish was pitching Monday night that sure three runs might have, might have done it, because Kyle Bradish is that great when he’s especially with that, but he’s not up, yeah, but he’s not out there. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to pick it up. You’ve got to find a way. And again, for this team, for these players, it, it truly is, got to focus on that night’s game. And I’m not saying that they’re not doing that, right. I mean, sometimes you just struggle. Sometimes, again, it’s a matter of looking at the makeup of the pitching staff, and you just say, maybe they’re not much better than what they’ve been over the last two months because of just all the attrition and some of the guys that have struggled, right? So again, we’re going to see, you know, we’re going to find out, right? They’re going to play every night for good or bad for bad, and we’re going to see if they can get themselves in a role. I mean, they’re still, mathematically speaking, they are still in excellent shape, if you look at them in terms of playoff odds. You know, the division is one thing, because the the right there with the Yankees, who have their own woes, their own issues that they’ve been dealing with, and they they’ve been very mediocre since early June.
Nestor Aparicio 32:58
Fire the manager since May, too, right,
Luke Jones 33:00
right, right. So, so, you know, always not lost by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, yeah, you’ve got to pick it up. You’ve got to find a way to get yourself on a roll here. And if you can do that, and then start getting some of these guys back by, let’s say mid September, then you’ve got that intriguing upside to then say, Hmm, okay, they might not be the favorite. They might not be the team that you expect to go to the World Series in the way that last year, they were the number one seed and and had the best record and all that. But they might be in a position where, if these guys come back and look like themselves, which is a big if, you know, we don’t, especially on the pitching side. But if they do that, and they get Jordan westburg back, and get those guys a chance to at least get acclimated a little bit, then game on and see what happens in October, right? You roll the dice then. I mean it really. I’ve said this to you over and over and over, and that’s going to become even truer this year, when there’s no dominant team in the Al, I mean, there truly is not. If you think there is, I mean, I mean, the Orioles are right there with the Yankees, right? So, and I think we all agree, neither of those teams have been dominant for a long time, but it’s a crapshoot. It really is. So it really is a matter for me, of they’ve got to do enough. They’ve got to take care of their business over these next, you know, this next month plus, and you hope to get those guys back, and you’ll see where it stands right now. You know, I’ve heard a lot of chatter, as far as you know, Craig Kimbrell whether he’s going to be on the postseason roster. Well, if the postseason started today, you’d say no. Five weeks from now, I have no idea, Craig Kimbrell could be back on track by then. And I, you know, that’s why you have to continue to try to pick your spot, same with Soto so. I mean, it’s, you know, I’m hoping Corbin Burns is way better than he’s been his last couple times out. I mean, my goodness, I mean, there’s a non starter for you if he’s not going to be Corbin burns. But you know, it really is just a matter of. Of, kind of see how this plays out. I mean, that sounds dismissive, you know, that sounds like I’m sitting on the fence. You know, I’ve talked about this. I have major concerns about their pitching, their offense needs to be better. I think it can be on paper. It absolutely should be, but you’ve got to go out and do it. So, you know, Monday was a great example of that, I get it David Peterson’s good pitcher. You know, he pitched, well, I’m not saying I expected them to score 10 runs. Let’s be clear about that. There’s a middle ground here. But, well, he also ball in the
Nestor Aparicio 35:30
center field. He didn’t need to throw which pitcher Palmer off and then it cost him run, then he gave up a bomb. So like, so they got a couple, it’s kind of a Sidney ponson seventh inning is, as far as I could tell.
Luke Jones 35:41
I mean, they got a couple gifts mixed in there, right? So, I mean, even with that, even when you’re you get a couple moments of good faith, which is better than his number. Yeah, yeah. So and again, that’s going to happen and and let me be clear, I’m not saying the offense must score five plus every single night it’s baseball. You’re going to have some of that so, but I think if you look at it from an, you know, just an observation standpoint, there have been too many examples of that over the last month, you know, but maybe go back to, like, the All Star break, right? I mean, I mean, since then, you know, their offense overall still hasn’t been bad statistically. And I’ll continue to say that, because I’m the numbers guy, but it has been choppier. And again, this Boston series we talked about, I mean, the one night where they scored a bunch of runs, cordon Burns has the worst start of his career. So sometimes you just look at it and say, Man, they’re just, they’re just not, they can’t get themselves going. Every time it feels like they’re starting to get on a roll, they take another step back. And that’s, it’s really been the story since late June,
Nestor Aparicio 36:42
again, being in a rut and being in first place. Well, that’s,
Luke Jones 36:47
that’s the power, yeah, half game out, right? But right there. I mean, for lack of, I mean, they’re right there with the Yankees. So, I mean, it’s, it’s amazing how
Nestor Aparicio 36:56
many times they have lost and woken up the next day in first place, though, yeah, you know, like, when you’re like, they’re in freefall and but the the other part of Kansas City, these other teams coming, we’ll see. We’ll see the Mets the next couple days as well. Luke’s going to see the Astros and the Chester’s all weekend. The ravens are going to get to see just how lovely green bay is in August. They’re going to be there scrimmaging and then playing. This week, I’m actually doing some Milwaukee radio. They still think I’m a media member in Milwaukee, I’ll have to tell Doug Russell I’m not a real media member. I’ll tell him where my podcast is. Luke can be found at Baltimore Luke and he can also be found in Camden Yards and in Owings Mills as well as it faintlys On Friday, we’re going to have the Maryland lottery, gold rush, sevens, doublers. Got a stack of these? Come down and grab them on Friday. Grab yourself crab cakes and shrimp salad before salad before the game, we have some good guests, Matt kosters coming down from the Baltimore firefighters. Good talks, firefighters issues and unions. And one of my neighbors were firefighters in Dundalk, several of them in City firefighters as well. So I’ll honor them this week, and we get a lot of great conversations, two senators, three congressmen, three county executives and a opioid czar sitting in a pear tree. Emily Keller deserves better than that. Former Mayor of Hagerstown joined us. The mayor of Frederick is with us. This week, we’ve had cybersecurity conversations this week, lots of good stuff. Luke and I’ve been talking football, baseball. We got some great guests coming up as well. Ian O’Connor came on to talk about his book on Aaron Rodgers, which I wasn’t I’m still not interested in Aaron Rodgers, even though I might be wearing packers colors here right now, Mel guapo shirt, but he did make a fascinating conversation. So make sure you’re checking that out. He’s Luke, I’m Nestor. We’re wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, we never stop talking Baltimore positive.
