Shane Baz turned in an outstanding start tonight for the Baltimore Orioles. A quality start at that. The Orioles simply couldn’t get any run support behind him. Baz’s line: 7.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 4 BB, 6 K.
I’m not sure how many times I’ve said this, but if you command the strike zone you can win games. Baz did that tonight, and he put the O’s in a spot to win the ballgame. The bats just couldn’t capitalize.
Gunnar Henderson led the game off with a double, which was good to see from his perspective. He would advance to third on a flyout, and score on Adley Rutschman’s sac fly-RBI.
The lead didn’t last past the third as Gonzalez’s RBI-double would tie it at one. Another one of those ball which went all the way to the wall, splitting the outfielders. Is it possible that the Orioles’ outfield was ill-positioned to allow for any nuance?
Chicago would take the lead later in the inning when Teel hit a ball off the mound to Gunnar Henderson at short. However the ball grazing the mound seemed to throw Gunnar off a bit, and he couldn’t make the throw. That allowed a run to score, and the O’s trailed 2-1.
Adley Rutschman would tie the game back up at two in the bottom of the inning with another sac fly-RBI. You have to figure that it’s incriminating on some level that the team which was supposed to live by the home run ball scored only two sacrifice flies tonight.
However they were picked up by Shane Baz. Even on that Teel RBI I mentioned above; after Henderson ate the ball, it was Baz who threw it home to get the final out at home plate on the trail runner. He pitched well enough to win. But the bats didn’t do much to help.
Baz departed however after seven innings. Grant Wolfram immediately hit a batter, who later scored on Montgomery’s RBI-double. Wolfram had Montgomery in a two-strike count, but couldn’t put him out. On top of that Grichuk’s RBI-single extended the Chicago lead to 4-2.
On paper that’s the story. But there’s more to it. For starters, Grichuk challenged two strike calls in the at-bat that were overturned to balls. When he did hit the ball, the runner (Montgomery) appeared to be out at home plate ending the inning. The home plate umpire actually called him out at first.
However the ball was dislodged from Adley Rutschman’s glove at the last second, and Montgomery was safe. It wasn’t a play that appeared destined to score a runner from first. But Chicago was aggressive and it worked out for them.
Things like that add up. One inning later, Chicago put two runners in scoring position after Gunnar Henderson couldn’t snag a ball hit to him at short. It was ruled an extra-base hit, but it’s a play Henderson should have made. The ball kind of dove right before it got to Henderson; Gonzalez’s subsequent two-RBI single extended the lead to 6-2.
On top of that, Teel sent a bouncer to Blaze Alexander at third, and it took a short hop in front of him and went into left field. That was a two-run error, and Chicago went home 8-3 winners. Like so many things this season, this game took a huge number of strange hops on the Orioles.
The Orioles have an over-reliance on analytics or Sabre metrics. Where it comes from or on whose orders it’s implemented is irrelevant. But it’s well known that they rely heavily on numbers and analytics over anything else.
But you have to temper that with feel for the game. It’s almost as if the Orioles assume that the game is played and thus over before it starts. The computer tells you the probability of success based on what you input. It infernally CANNOT play the game for you. As many games in baseball are won or lost on the fringes, that’s dangerous.
Look back to yesterday; Coby Mayo’s throw short-hopped Samuel Basallo. You can talk until you’re blue in the face that the numbers say this or that, but the numbers don’t play the game. Quirky things happen in games that computers can’t predict or understand. In fact, the computer may well explode knowing that its probability was off.
Probability isn’t a guarantee. The game is still played by human beings. And part of the story of human beings is that they’re flawed. Also unpredictable. So when your game plan is. Asked on a computer or AI, you’re backing yourself into a modus operandi in ink. Neither baseball, nor the world, is played or managed in ink. It’s done in pencil.
You have to adapt and change. Managing by analytics only doesn’t allow much leeway, and thus doesn’t allow you to adapt and change. If you’re so rigid that a dropped ball at home plate, a short-hopped throw, or splitting the defense on ill-positioned outfielders beats you every time, you aren’t putting yourself in a spot to win. All of those things combined? You’re really in trouble.
Instead you have a Chicago team which doesn’t have the skill of the Orioles and other teams. Yet they’re outperforming all of them. Why? Because they take the game as it comes. This as opposed to having the computer manage the game before it’s even played.
The series continues tomorrow night at Camden Yards. Trey Gibson gets the start for the O’s, and he’ll be opposed by Chicago’s Erick Fedde. Game time is set for just after 6:30 PM.
Birdland Crush 