In a foolish and uncharacteristic burst of optimism, I started this weekly series last week with the idea that, through the year, I’d be chronicling a variety of fun individual Orioles moments from exciting wins. One week later, it seems more like I may have saddled myself with the curse of having to write about a bunch of disappointing stuff week after week. That’s the magic of Orioles baseball.
This series looks at each Orioles game, the most crucial play that happened in it and who was involved, and the Oriole who contributed the most positive to a win or negative to a loss. These determinations are made using the Win Probability Added stat, which you can find in game logs on Baseball Reference or FanGraphs.
Here’s how things went over the second week of the Orioles season:
Game 7
- Result: Orioles lose to Red Sox, 8-4
- Orioles record: 3-4
- The biggest play: Alex Bregman hits two-run home run off Charlie Morton in first inning (-18% to Orioles chance of winning)
- The biggest goat: Morton (-.321 WPA)
There are a lot of ways to manage to lose a baseball game. One of the simpler ones is if your starting pitcher stinks on a given night. As the time-honored Earl Weaver wisdom says, “Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher.”
This also works for negative momentum. If a guy comes out and is bad, the team is in a hole that it’s tough to dig out of. Morton putting the Orioles in a 2-0 hole before even recording an out was a big one. Things didn’t improve from there. He took a big negative overall and deserved no better.
Game 8
- Result: Orioles lose to Royals, 8-2
- Record: 3-5
- The biggest play: Maikel Garcia hits go-ahead two-run single off Dean Kremer in fourth inning (-15%)
- The biggest goat: Adley Rutschman (-.140 WPA)
One of the runs on this crucial play had been scored as unearned due to an earlier fielding error by Gunnar Henderson. (WPA only credits the pitcher or batter and does not wade into whether fielders “deserve” penalties or bonuses.) Kremer was not able to pitch out of the jam. Classic Orioles-era Jake Arrieta kind of stuff.
Rutschman takes the biggest goat despite having a 1-4 night because in his most crucial at-bat of the game, when he batted with a man on, one out, and the Orioles trailing by only a run in the eighth inning, he grounded into a double play. The GIDP continues to be a struggle for the 2025 Orioles.
Game 9
- Result: Orioles beat Royals, 8-1
- Record: 4-5
- The biggest play: Gary Sánchez hits two-run, two-out single with 1-2 count to give Orioles 2-0 second inning lead (+17%)
- The biggest hero: Tomoyuki Sugano (.237 WPA)
Bad starting pitching hurts and good starting pitching helps. If a team is staked to an early lead and the starting pitcher holds the lead for a number of innings, he will get the most credit in the game. In this case, Sugano pitched 5.1 innings and the only run he allowed was a solo home run in the sixth, by which time the Orioles led, 6-1.
Sugano comes out as the biggest hero because he gradually and successfully deprived the Royals of opportunities to mount a comeback. After his initial shaky and cramp-shortened start against the Blue Jays, this was an encouraging second outing for the Japanese pitcher.
Game 10
- Result: Royals beat Orioles, 4-1
- Record: 4-6
- The biggest play: Michael Massey hits two-run double off Cade Povich to extend Royals first inning lead to 3-0 (-16%)
- The biggest goat: Povich (-.216 WPA)
Measures like Fielding Independent Pitching, which try to take out defensive quality or struggle that are outside of a pitcher’s control, really like Povich through his first two starts: a 1.32 FIP and 3.17 xFIP.
In this outing, Povich gave up 12 hits over a six-inning start and I think it’s ultimately fair to say Povich got rocked and my opinion is that he was lucky to not get rocked harder than he did. One more bit of good fortune for Povich: MLB changed the scoring on that “Jorge Mateo doesn’t catch the routine fly ball” play that was scored a triple so that it’s now an error on Mateo. This lowers Povich’s ERA from 6.10 to 3.48 because now some of the runs are unearned.
Game 11
- Result: Orioles beat Diamondbacks, 5-1
- Record: 5-6
- The biggest play: Josh Naylor puts two men on with none out in fourth inning with single off Zach Eflin (-14%)
- The biggest hero: Eflin (.189 WPA)
Despite being on the wrong end of the biggest play, which was made worse by Cedric Mullins committing an error that put Naylor into scoring position as the tying run, Eflin is the biggest hero for the game because he didn’t break. Arizona only scored one run in that fourth inning and Eflin got out of it with a 2-1 Orioles lead intact.
Eflin pitched six good innings and that makes him the hero. It sucks that he came out of the start with what was first called shoulder fatigue and is now diagnosed as a grade 1 lat strain. The Orioles rotation without him looks pretty bad.
Ryan Mountcastle had the best single positive play for the Orioles, driving in two runs with a single that put the O’s ahead by the final 5-1 margin. This was +13% on its own.
Game 12
- Result: Diamondbacks beat Orioles, 4-3
- Record: 5-7
- The biggest play: Naylor breaks 2-2 tie by hitting two-run double off Morton in the fifth inning (-23%)
- The biggest goat: Heston Kjerstad (-.312 WPA)
It’s bad if your starting pitcher is bad, and Morton was bad in the first inning and bad in the fifth and that’s why he takes a big negative WPA again (-.255). His season total, as we’ll see below, is also bad.
However, Kjerstad takes the cake because, in addition to hitting into the game-ending double play (-17%), he also failed to positively contribute when batting with two on and none out in a two-run game in the seventh inning, hitting into a lineout (-9%). He was 0-4 overall, with those two crucial negatives dragging him way down.
This game featured the chaotic “Tyler O’Neill is doubled off second base because the umpires never actually signaled that a catch was made” play. That one goes as a -.14 to Jackson Holliday, the batter. That’s another case of WPA kind of being unfair. WPA is not about fair. It’s about the cold rationality of win expectancy tables.
Game 13
- Result: Orioles lose to Diamondbacks, 9-0
- Record: 5-8
- The biggest play: Pavin Smith hits two-run home run off Dean Kremer in the fifth inning, turning 2-0 deficit to 4-0 (-11%)
- The biggest (hero/goat): Kremer (-.181)
A common theme in this week’s edition, that I fear may continue to be common, is that when the starting pitcher is bad, the Orioles lose and it’s mostly because the starting pitcher is bad. In this case, it’s also because the O’s offense put up goose eggs in the runs column every inning even though Diamondbacks starting pitcher Brandon Pfaadt (it’s pronounced fought) has historically not been very good. Everybody is lost right now, or at least that’s what it feels like.
The best Orioles so far
After the first week, the best WPA by an Orioles batter was Ramón Urías (0.35) and the best by a pitcher was Yennier Cano (0.15). The Oriole with the best fWAR was Jordan Westburg (0.6).
- WPA (hitters): Urías (0.34), Ryan O’Hearn (0.33), Cedric Mullins (0.21)
- WPA (pitchers): Zach Eflin (0.26), Seranthony Domínguez (0.23), Tomoyuki Sugano (0.21)
- fWAR: Mullins (0.6), Cade Povich (0.5), Westburg (0.4)
By bWAR, the top Orioles are Eflin and Mullins, both at 0.6.
The worst Orioles so far
After the first week, the worst WPA by an Orioles batter was Jorge Mateo (-0.33) and the worst by a pitcher was Cionel Pérez (-0.22). The worst fWAR belonged to Mateo (-0.3).
- WPA (hitters): Heston Kjerstad (-0.46), Jackson Holliday (-0.38), Jordan Westburg (-0.28)
- WPA (pitchers): Charlie Morton (-0.76), Dean Kremer (-0.58), Pérez (-0.25)
- fWAR: Mateo (-0.4), four players tied at -0.2
By bWAR, it’s a three-way tie at -0.4 between Morton, Kremer, and Pérez.
