The Orioles finished up the first half of the season losing to the Los Angeles Angels, 6-0, on Sunday afternoon. They are now 45-40, and now trail the New York Yankees by seven full games in the division hunt.
As we all know, it has not been good for the Orioles this month, and they lost their second straight game yesterday as Wei-Yin Chen only lasted four innings, and gave up five runs – all earned, plus off of three homers (from Erik Aybar, Albert Pujols and Mike Trout). Obviously, Chen took the loss in a performance that was pretty sloppy, and he was pretty much unable to get his pitches over to be effective.
Luis Ayala would serve up another homer to Mark Trumbo in the fifth inning.
For the Orioles, they only mustered five hits and made Angels’ starter, Brad Mills look like an ace. He went five shutout innings before their bullpen took over.
The Baltimore offense struggled again, and maybe a break will do them some good. They just look awful, are taking poor at-bats, seemingly have no plan and made a soft-tosser like Mills look simply amazing.
The bottom line is that the Orioles need to hit, because after the All-Star break, they have the Tigers – who have been surging, the Rays, Athletics and Yankees on the docket.
The Orioles have gotten decent pitching performances this week – even with three-fifths of their starting rotation on Opening Day demoted; however, if they can not hit, get men on base, and score runs, it will not matter what they do on the mound.
They have surprised during the first half, but it seems like they are fading quite a bit.
Let’s hope the Orioles can get back on track with four days off.
