The Offense Has To Be More Than This
The Baltimore Orioles lost on Sunday by a score of 5-3 to the Boston Red Sox (11-17), giving the Bean Towners a series win. Boston displayed no issues following Saturday’s managerial and coaching staff house cleaning. If the post-game chaos shocked the roster they certainly didn’t show it.
Boston, who scored all their runs by the sixth inning, did the majority that scoring against Orioles starter Kyle Bradish (1-3). Tagged by a Willson Contreras two-run homerun in the fifth inning, Bradish allowed 3 runs on 4 hits with 4 walks, 3 punch-outs and a wild pitch thrown over 5.0 innings. He threw 88 pitches (52 K’s) to 21 batters and now has a 4.20 ERA to go along with a 0.0 bWAR.
Relieving Bradish was Grant Wolfram, who did not retire a batter; he faced 3 batters and allowed 2 runs on 3 hits. A quartet of relievers (Yennier Cano, Anthony Nunez, Rico Garcia, Andrew Kittredge) held Boston hitless over the final 4.0 innings. Cano was able to work out of a runner on second and third, no out situation by inducing a groundout and then fielding an Andruw Monasterio hit to the mound and tagging out Marcelo Mayer trying to score from third on the play. The inning ended when Monasterio was thrown out on a steal attempt of second.
Baltimore’s offense consisted mainly of Gunnar Henderson and Samuel Basallo. Basallo went 2 for 4 with a solo homerun, his fifth, in the fifth inning. Henderson went 2 for 4 with two RBI and a solo homerun in the sixth. It was Henderson’s team-leading 9th homerun of the season. In the eighth inning Colton Cowser scored on Henderson’s RBI single.
Three RBI by two hitters will not get the job done on most days.
Adley Rutschman has now recorded a hit in each of his three games since returning from the Injured List and is batting .462 with 3 homeruns and 8 RBI in that short sample size but it is a good sign for the moment.
Manager Craig Albernaz and the coaching staff need to get the starting pitching as well as the offense going for this season to be a success. One step forward and two steps back will not cut it.
2026 Record: 13-15
Next Game: Tues. 4/28 @ 6:35 pm vs. Houston Astros