This time a week ago, it felt like the Orioles were treading water and that as long as they could continue doing that, they might avoid a disastrous outcome to the season. It’s harder now to feel like the Orioles are staying afloat after what we’ve watched over the first three games of this series against the Yankees. Problems that feel like they don’t have immediate solutions have been exposed and the team is going to have to contend with those or it will once again sink.
In this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m thinking about a number of the assumptions that Mike Elias made in assembling the roster this way and how they have or mostly haven’t worked out so far this season. Some things aren’t fair to blame on Elias, like Zach Eflin needing Tommy John surgery after one start. That’s just plain bad luck. Other things are the direct result of decisions that he has made where there were alternatives available to him.
There are seven big areas that are looking like bad bets right now, starting with “A top of the rotation of Trevor Rogers, Kyle Bradish, and Shane Baz will be competitive” and going down through, “The defense will be fine enough when considering the offense that comes with it.” The team is not yet in the same kind of free fall that they went into a year ago, but if you’re feeling like they’re right at the start of one, that’s probably because it’s hard to picture short-term solutions to some of these problems. It’s rough.
Check out the episode here:
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How are you feeling about the way things are going so far? Answers could make it into the mailbag section of the next episode of the podcast.
