Orioles pitchers tossed four wild pitches Tuesday night in Kansas City, which somehow doesn’t even feel that surprising for this operation.

 They, of course, also gave away outs on the basepaths again and a night after an extra-innings win, they lost on the last of those wild pitches, when their prized free-agent closer, Ryan Helsley, couldn’t be bothered to cover home plate as the winning run scored in the ninth, this after said closer walked two batters to open the inning and then moving them over with his first wild pitch.

The Baltimore Orioles, 6-5 losers, have been an embarrassing baseball operation for years now, fundamentally broken in terms of basic defensive and base running principles, and situational-hitting principles, and with overmatched-and-meddling general manager Mike Elias wielding more power than ever, it’s fair to suspect the worst is still to come.

This 6-5 loss to the Royals, who had been the biggest losers in the majors, was a perfect encapsulation of all Elias’s hallmarks – utterly unsound baseball, players out of position, a naïve rookie skipper who was hired in large part because of how malleable he would be and Elias’s big offseason starting pitching addition, Shane Baz, also throwing two critical wild pitches and now sporting a hefty 5.08 ERA.

Ain’t the beer, warm?

A rookie mistake?

Baz looked pretty pumped, and probably a little spent, when he left the mound with a yell following successive strikeouts to escape another jam in what was then a 3-3 game. But with their bullpen thin after a 12-inning game Monday, said novice skipper Craig Albernaz sent him back out. A few minutes later, when Albernaz, and not the pitching coach, approached the mound after a leadoff double and Baz uncorking his second wild pitch of the game and then issuing a walk after that, it seemed a call to the pen was coming.

“He definitely told me he wanted the ball,” said Albernaz of the meeting with Baz, despite noting how much Baz’s fastball command had been suffering. 

“I appreciate him letting me stay in,” Baz said.

It did not work out.

Only after Bobby Witt, Jr.’s sac fly, and Baz’s 98th pitch, did Albernaz summon his bullpen. It was all pretty strange, but that’s The Elias Way.

Since this front office is so numbers obsessed, they should start charting The Elias Factor. It’s simple math: Low IQ Baseball Plays vs. clutch hits. It was a negative factor again Tuesday.And oh is it painful to chronicle.

A night after their best player got picked off twice, yet another Oriole, Weston Wilson, got picked off Tuesday. And closer Ryan Helsey – who has been wild all season but getting away with it – was intent on matching Baz in the wild-pitch department and didn’t need a full inning to do it (all of this with Elias’s first pick, first-overall in 2019 Adley Rutschman, back behind the plate).

“He just didn’t have a feel for pretty much anything today,” Albernaz said of his closer, which extended of course to fielding his position, because the Orioles don’t do much of that and especially not their pitchers. But, hey, at least he caught the ball when it was thrown back to him. 

It’s bad ball far too much the time and the O’s have gotten away with it a decent amount facing a weak schedule thus far. But it portends a potentially loooong summer.

As for the plus side of that Elias Equation, well, Coby Mayo became the latest young hitter in this lineup to perk up, hitting an early three-run homer a night after rookies Sam Basello and Dylan Beavers had late RBI hits to fuel that win. Rutschman continued to look resurgent after two years in the abyss, smashing a go-ahead two-run homer in the 8th,  , typical feast or famine stuff.

But Rico Garcia gave up his first runs of the season on Michael Massey’s solo homer and it only got more bizarre from there.

“It was tough to watch,” Albernaz said of the way this one ended. They might want to start printing that on t-shirts.

Bird Seed

Baz, as usual, had arguably more good moments than bad, but he remains wobbly and erratic enough to not be able to escape trouble as much as required from a true frontline starter. With their injuries and other starters struggling, they’ll likely need Baz to be more than an inning eater, but that’s what he’s been to this point in his career … Former first-overall pick Jackson Holiday, who has had repeated setbacks trying to come back from a broken hand, left a rehab game in Norfolk early and will undergo an MRI in Baltimore, Albernaz said.

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