Friday late night Orioles game thread: at Angels, 9:38

The Orioles west coast road trip to date hasn’t felt totally horrible because the O’s haven’t gotten blown out in game after game, but it hasn’t gone great either. They went 1-3 in Oakland. Winning one of four is bad, worse even than recent Orioles teams.

Good luck changing that story against the Angels! These guys have disappointed in recent years. The early days of the 2022 campaign have gone well for them, though. They’re 8-5, leading their division. One of these years they’re bound to stop wasting Mike Trout’s and Shohei Ohtani’s careers. Who knows, maybe this is the year?

It remains deeply weird how well the Orioles pitching staff has done through its first 13 games. Who would have possibly imagined either a 2.87 ERA or being the third-best pitching staff in the American League? It’s beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. And yet the team is still 4-9 because the offense, other than Anthony Santander, totally sucks!

I feel like it is unlikely that both of these things will continue to be true. I’m more concerned about the pitching falling apart than I am confident about the offense eventually rebounding, though. A 4-9 record is already not great for the Orioles and we haven’t even seen the worst possible outcomes yet. Then again, we also haven’t seen the best - which is whatever the team will look like when prospects get here and do their thing.

This is a late start, so perhaps all we can really hope for is that anyone who stays up to watch this game doesn’t regret it when the game is over. I had to recap Monday night’s game and the Orioles could not meet this standard then. Maybe they’ll make me less grumpy tonight, if only because I can sleep in tomorrow.

Orioles lineup

1. Cedric Mullins - CF
2. Trey Mancini - DH
3. Ryan Mountcastle - 1B
4. Anthony Santander - LF
5. Austin Hays - RF
6. Ramón Urías - 2B
7. Robinson Chirinos - C
8. Kelvin Gutiérrez - 3B
9. Jorge Mateo - SS

Baltimore’s own Bruce Zimmermann will be making his first non-Baltimore start of the season for the Orioles in this one. He has yet to allow a run in the 2022 season and it will be fun if that continues through this game - though I won’t be holding my breath.

Chirinos returns to the lineup two days after taking a pitch off the face. Catchers are tough.

Angels lineup

1. Shohei Ohtani - DH
2. Mike Trout - CF
3. Anthony Rendon - 3B
4. Taylor Ward - RF
5. Matt Duffy - 1B
6. Jack Mayfield - 2B
7. Max Stassi - C
8. Jo Adell - LF
9. Andrew Velazquez - SS

The Angels starting pitcher is Reid Detmers.

Trout is back in the lineup for LA for the first time since April 17. Lucky Orioles! The Angels, much in contrast to the Orioles, have been getting good offensive production from most of their players.

Only two of the nine in this lineup (Rendon and former Oriole Velazquez) are below a 100 OPS+. The Orioles have only Santander above a 100 OPS+, which is really sad but does explain a lot of why they’ve only scored 28 runs to date. Detmers, who’s already rolled his way to the big leagues after being drafted less than two years ago, has had a poor first two starts, allowing seven runs in 7.1 innings. If he’s going to lower his ERA against anybody, it’s probably going to be this lineup.