What a depressing weekend of Orioles baseball. These jokers just got twelve hits and eight runs combined across a three-game set against the stadium-surfing Athletics, who entered this weekend with the 28th-ranked pitching staff by ERA in all of MLB: 4.95 for the season. Depressingly, going into Sunday, #27 was the Orioles at 4.88. You wouldn’t have known it about that sorta-Sacramento pitching unit by watching the O’s bats at work this weekend.

Sunday’s series finale flipped from a win to a loss thanks to Keegan Akin bombing the ninth inning, also heavily featuring a terrible Gunnar Henderson relay throw and catcher Alex Jackson being unable to corral the wide throw in a way that a competent catcher probably should. But it’s the offense that sure deserves a share of the blame, notching five hits and only scoring two runs despite getting eight walks in the game.

It’s a problem that every game right now features a 7-9 of players who probably shouldn’t be in the majors at all, and that’s certainly part of it. An outfield regularly cycling through Greg Allen, Dylan Carlson, and Jordyn Adams, with infielders Jeremiah Jackson and Ryan Noda also playing out there at times, is just a disaster. Yet, even worse is what’s going on with the players who you might call the real Orioles, the guys we care about and whose performance next year is going to determine whether the team sucks again or whether they do better.

Here are some August batting splits, not counting anything that happened yesterday:

Jordan Westburg: .233/.281/.333 (homered in 5 AB, good for him)Coby Mayo: .154/.214/.269Jackson Holliday: .129/.182/.129

Colton Cowser was not good before he got hurt again. Tyler O’Neill is hurt again. And all of these problems are happening while you’ve got Carlson on an 0-35 that stretches back beyond the start of August, Alex Jackson doing nothing when he’s not getting extra-base hits (there are worse problems, to be sure), and Jeremiah Jackson looking like we’ll never think of him again once the regular season ends.

What’s the answer to all of it? I don’t know. My conclusion, which I think is supported by available evidence, is that appearing to do nothing different isn’t getting the job done. Players who are good need to get hitting again. All sorts of players need to do better at executing assorted fundamentals, with different failures manifesting at different key times. There’ll need to be better pitchers, of course. Akin probably was the best choice for a closer-ish pitcher and he’s wilted with his early chances. I really don’t know how enough of these things will be fixed between now and about six months from now, when pitchers and catchers will report to begin another spring training.

The Orioles are on the kind of stretch where it feels like a relief that they have the day off today. There’s no obligation of any kind to pay attention to them, and no bad game event to reach your awareness even if you were trying to blow them off. They next face a better team, the Mariners. The Orioles did manage to sweep Seattle on the road earlier in the year, so who knows.

Orioles stuff you might have missed

Mike Elias explains why the Orioles haven’t called up Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers (The Baltimore Banner)
The Banner’s Danielle Allentuck tried to pin down Elias on when we’re going to see Basallo and Beavers and why we haven’t seen them yet. On the whole, it’s a lot of equivocating (in a way that The Wire’s Bubbles expanded on by simile), though the point that there were some callups last year that maybe could have used more Triple-A time is well taken. Still, though… it’s Greg Allen, Jordyn Adams, and Dylan Carlson out there in the meantime. Come on.

Not much in the way of news yesterday. There was a small update about Albert Suárez from MASN’s Roch Kubatko. Suárez is going to start a rehab assignment on Tuesday or Wednesday. Elsewhere on the rehab assignment front, Tyler Wells pitched four scoreless innings for the Tides yesterday, allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out five. The pitching staff should (hopefully) get less depressing once these two guys and Kyle Bradish are back on board.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

The most recent Orioles victory on this day came in 2020. The Orioles played a bonkers game against the Phillies, blowing a 5-3 lead in the eighth, taking an 8-6 lead in the ninth, blowing that, and ultimately winning in ten innings. The Orioles used eight pitchers and their offense combined for 16 hits as they improved to 9-7 early in the strange pandemic season. No player who appeared for the team in this game is still in the organization.

There are a few former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2018 early retiree Colby Rasmus, 1990 pitcher John Mitchell, and 1990 pitcher Dorn Taylor. Today is Taylor’s 67th birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: historian Alex Haley (1921), FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith (1944), actress Viola Davis (1965), and actor Chris Hemsworth (1983).

On this day in history…

In 3114 BC, the Long Count calendar, most memorably used by the Mayan civilization, began.

In 1929 AD, Babe Ruth hit the 500th home run of his career, the first player to ever reach that milestone. At the time, #2 had 237. Ruth’s homer came in a 6-5 loss to the then-Indians.

In 1972, the final American ground combat forces departed from South Vietnam.

In 1991, the cartoons Doug, Rugrats, and Ren & Stimpy debuted on Nickelodeon.

And that’s the way it is in Birdland on August 11. Have a safe Monday.