With 18 Consistent Losing, Baltimore Orioles Close to Losing Record


Dylan Bundy did his best to deliver a promising vision. This was during spring 2019 practice when the Baltimore Orioles finished the previous season as the worst team in the major leagues. They were bad and they knew it, but teams like this can always hold onto hope.

“I think in a year or two from now we’ll look back and see what we’ve been through this year.” said Bundy, “and it will be a special moment to see what we have become.”

Bundy is now pitching for the Los Angeles Angels and will face the Orioles on Tuesday at Camden Yards in Baltimore. He’ll see firsthand what his old friends have become: the franchise that didn’t win.

The Orioles have their longest streak in the majors since the Kansas City Royals, 18 games in a row. lost 19 matches The Orioles trailed by 102 points during their skating and did not lose a single run against Atlanta until Saturday.

It could get worse. After three games against the Angels – dazzling two-way starShohei Ohtani kicks off Wednesday – The Orioles will host the Tampa Bay Rays, who hold the record for best in the American League.

If they lost all those games, the Orioles would break the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies record of 23 consecutive losses in the modern era. The 1889 Louisville Colonels—mainly led by William Van Winkle Wolf, who passed by Chicken—holds the overall mark with 26.

“We don’t like us being here,” General Manager Mike Elias said over the phone on Monday. “We want to get rid of it. But we don’t believe this is a reflection of the progress towards rebuilding this organization so it can get back into the fight.”

If baseball was boxing, this fight could have been called long ago, perhaps when the Orioles finished May with 14 losses. Or maybe the Orioles wouldn’t even make it to the ring: They had no dreams of competing this season anyway, and they could have been the first team to lose at least 108 games in three uncut consecutive seasons since the Mets expansion in the 1960s. .

There is a more recent parallel for Elias, a former pitcher at Yale: the Houston Astros of the 2010s. Before the 2012 season, Elias was assistant general manager to Jeff Luhnow, who took over the weakest team in the majors and kept it that way for two more years, taking advantage of a system that allowed the worst teams to spend the most money on amateur talent.

The plan worked for the Astros and Chicago Cubs, both of which won championships in the 2010s, and the players union is hoping for rules that will deter so-called tanking as it negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement with Major League Baseball. But when Baltimore hired Elias in November 2018, a long and long restructuring seemed like a logical option.

Under Elias’ predecessor, Dan Duquette, the Orioles led the American League in regular season victories from 2012 to 2016. But the farm system was weak, the team had essentially abandoned international scouting, and competitors had outpaced the Orioles in data usage. Participation was also cracked.

“What do you do?” said Elijah. “For us, the answer was indisputable: we start building from scratch, we renew the organization, we make all this infrastructure stable and up-to-date, and we start pumping young talents from all possible levels into the system. To be able to. We dedicate all our resources and energies to these goals, first and foremost, before we move forward and do anything else.”

And here they are, the premier league’s worst 38-85 record reflecting the outdated payroll. The highest paid shooter of the Orioles, Matt Harvey, earns $1 million, and no one makes more than $4.75 million except Chris Davis, who is retired. Its opening-day payroll — $57 million — ranked 27th in the majors, just ahead of Miami, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, according to Baseball Prospectus.

Neither of these teams are competitors, but Tampa Bay’s salaries are low (about $67 million on opening day) and they find a way to win. The Rays are constantly looking for marginal upgrades, often making bargain deals for veterans who can succeed in their environment – and their shooting is the antithesis of the Orioles’ wand.

Newcomers to Baltimore have a run average of 6.22; No team has been worse in a season since the 2003 Texas Rangers’ 6.24. Promising last summer, Dean Kremer and Keegan Akin teamed up to go 0-15 with a 7.62 ERA. Among shooters with at least 100 requests, Harvey (6.27) and Jorge Lopez (6.30) have the two highest ERAs in the majors.

The Orioles have Baseball America’s mid-season top 10 candidates, both of whom will assist the squad in time: catcher Adley Rutschman (usually #1) and right-back Greyson Rodriguez (#9). But shooting at Camden Yards – especially now – can be a hard sell for freelancers with other options.

“It’s a great ballpark but a comfortable ballpark and you’re in a section where you often come across great rosters, and people are aware of that,” Elias said. “You look historically at some of the Oriole teams that have been more successful since the park opened, and they’ve managed to do well with good but not great rotations and very strong bullfights.

“So we are aware of the fact that we think that our ability to attract free agent shooters will probably depend on having a good team first and foremost and that we will need to import our shooters through trade purchases while we are in the minor leagues or amateurs.”

Bundy’s presence on Tuesday will be a reminder of how difficult this task can be. The Orioles entered the top five each year from 2007 to 2012 and selected four pitchers: Bundy, Kevin Gausman, Matt Hobgood, and Brian Matusz. Only Gausman became an All-Star and had to leave Baltimore to do so.

A native Oriole, left-handed John Means, be a rotation fixture. Three more – Trey Mancini, Ryan Mountcastle and Cedric Mullins – could be part of the roster of the next winning Orioles team.

For now, of course, a winning record seems like a dream. These Orioles would settle for a victory as soon as possible and would be happy to let the Louisville Colonels be alone.



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