The Orioles’ season has reached the point where every bat in the middle of the order feels magnified, and Pete Alonso has become the clearest swing factor of all.
For about a month, Alonso looked like the kind of hitter who can drag a lineup forward on his own. Maybe Yordan Alvarez.
Maybe Pete Crow-Armstrong. The point is, he belonged in that tier for a solid 30 games, and he was doing more than enough to keep Baltimore afloat while the club tried to claw out of another deep hole.
That run is over, at least for now. Over his last 15 games, Alonso has fallen off hard, and the Orioles have gone from an 8-2 stretch with him leading the way to a 3-7 skid in their last 10 heading into a key game in Toronto today.
There are reasons to believe this isn’t quite as simple as a clean downturn. The source of the problem may be more complicated than the “a calf cramp” explanation offered by overmatched rookie puppet manager Criag Albernaz, and it would not be a surprise if more comes out about that when the season ends.
There’s also a lineup wrinkle here. Alonso has been spending more time at first base lately, and the Orioles may want to rethink that.
Coby Mayo has been scorching there, and rookie catcher Samuel Basallo is more than capable too. Alonso, meanwhile, has been much better as a DH this season, posting a .974 OPS in 19 games in that role and slugging .583, which is 100 points higher than he has at first base.
Even with the offense wobbling, the Orioles’ slide hasn’t been all about Alonso. They are 7-8 in their last 15, and part of that has been the expected regression from a starting staff that logged more innings than ever before. The bullpen picture hasn’t helped either, with no obvious answer to handle the ninth inning regularly after the Tyler Wells trade.
Still, Alonso’s drop-off matters. He went from looking like Babe Ruth to, gulp, Jim Traber, and that’s a brutal turn for a team paying him the way Baltimore is and slotting him where he will hit second or third regardless of how rough things get.
The contrast is stark:
AVG: .170 OBP: .318 SLG: .281 OPS: .601
HR: 2 XBH: 2 RBI: 6 TB: 15
AVG: .317 OBP: .430 SLG: .698 OPS: 1128
HR: 11 XBH: 16 RBI: 25 TB: 81
Nobody is expecting Alonso to stay anywhere near that 30-game heater. But if he can settle somewhere between those two versions of himself, that would go a long way.
Baltimore still has Dylan Beavers and Mayo locked into spots in the top four, and Gunnar Henderson shouldn’t be batting higher than fifth. If Alonso can get rolling again, the Orioles might at least stay in the race for the final Wild Card spot long enough to make the final homestand matter, after they come back from Toronto and then face the Mets - Alonso’s former team - at his former home park, where he’ll surely be fired up as he chases career home run No. 300.
In Other News...
Orioles Front Office Shake-Up Raises A Bigger Question About Team Direction
Matt Bloods departure from the Orioles removes one of the most familiar faces in a front office that helped shape the clubs recent rise. As vice president of player and staff development, Blood had been a key part of the organization since 2019, with responsibilities that stretched across player development, amateur scouting and the draft.
His exit comes at a time when Baltimore is already navigating new ownership and management changes, which makes the timing harder to ignore. For a team that has built much of its identity around a strong development pipeline, the bigger question now is how much the Orioles baseball operations are about to change, and who will be steering that next phase. [Read more 🡒]
Orioles MVO Debate Comes Down To One Tough Question
Voting for the Most Valuable Oriole award is winding down, and the final homestand will bring the announcement of a race that has been shaped by a seasons worth of arguments about value, not just production. The award is voted on by writers and broadcasters who cover the Orioles, with each ballot allowing three names and a 5-3-1 point system, which means the conversation has been broad enough to include several players who made their case in different ways.
Pete Alonso has emerged as the clear favorite after pacing the club in multiple offensive categories, but the ballot still has room for more than one line of thought. Rico Garcia, Blaze Alexander, Brandon Young, Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish have all remained in the mix, and next weeks finish should say plenty about how this group of voters weighed impact across a long season. [Read more 🡒]
Orioles Got The Win But This Felt Like The Same Old Problem
The Orioles grabbed a 7-4 win over the Blue Jays in the series opener, and the second inning did most of the heavy lifting. Baltimore hung five runs on Max Scherzer, a burst that gave the game its shape early and helped the club get enough separation to survive a few shaky moments later on. Chris Bassitt worked five innings for Toronto, allowing two runs on six hits and three walks, but the bigger story was Baltimores offense jumping on an established veteran before the night could settle into a more familiar, tense script.
Even with the lead, the game had the feel of something Orioles fans have seen before, with Toronto chipping away and forcing Baltimore to keep answering. The bullpen did enough to close it out, but not without giving the Blue Jays a late opening that brought the tying run to the plate and made the final stretch far more stressful than the first few innings suggested. [Read more 🡒]