Well the American League East had a terrible showing this #MLBPostseason. Both the Toronto Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays were swept in the #WildCard round, and the Baltimore Orioles followed suit.
It's a disappointing end to a great year for the Orioles, who won an American League-best 101 games. Armed with a young core of Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman, the O's figure to be a problem in the American League for years to come, but that won't take away the sting of this year. They also learned the most valuable lesson of the postseason...you can never have enough pitching.
Dean Kremer was bad on the mound. He was unable to get any pitches past the Rangers’ bats. They were swinging with no fear and seemingly no doubt about what was coming. It’s the sort of performance that is later accompanied by a story in which it’s revealed Kremer was tipping his pitches. You almost have to hope that’s what happened, because the other option is that he was just that poor.
Side note, Nathan Eovaldi again proved he’s a big-game pitcher. While Tuesday’s start wasn’t on the level as his Game 2 performance against the Tampa Bay Rays, Eovaldi had to be crafty using his fastball coupled with a deceptive splitter to limit the Orioles to one earned run on seven hits and no walks in seven innings pitched.
I decided to scroll Orioles twitter on the train into the office this morning, and boy was it a trip. “Why didn’t we go and get a better starter than Kremer?” “Why is the bullpen almost exclusively waiver wire finds?” “Why didn’t we sign a superstar veteran like Seager for the middle of the lineup?” They are a young team, with more help on the way in terms of offensive weapons with Jackson Holliday expected to be up next year. With a lot of the prospect capital that Baltimore has, they will need to off load some of those pieces for some proven major league talent.
I would say no player on the Orioles or fan in the stands is happy with how this series played out, especially after winning 101 games this year. For a team that has had three 100+ loss seasons in the last seven years, this team has final made the turn from rebuilding. Will be interesting to see how they handle this off season and can sustain this kind of success.
