Baltimore Orioles a huge early success: Stop the season now!

In a year that has been complete madness, it makes sense that the Baltimore Orioles would find success.

In a year of remarkably depressing matters, here’s one that should gladden the hearts of proper crab cake lovers in the Mid-Atlantic states: If the MLB season were to be suspended indefinitely tomorrow, then canceled entirely Saturday, the Baltimore Orioles 2020 campaign would be called a huge success.

Who had that on their 2020 Total Madness Bingo card?

There’s an objection to the term “huge success” in the back. You can stop yelling, “They’re only 12-10,” sir. This isn’t a Zoom debate on politics.

Let’s put 12-10 in perspective. First, clearly that is a winning record, but even if it were 10-12, that record too would obviously be far better than last season’s 54-108. Orioles fans are definitely forgiven for secretly harboring the thought that maybe a suspension of the season right now isn’t such a horrible idea.

Beyond the seeming turnaround, however, there are other indicators of a new dawn. First, the Orioles have been offensively impressive despite the lack of recognizable big-name hitters.

Everybody on the East coast is saying, “What’s Alberto’s first name again,” and “Rio what,” right? But going into play Aug.18, Baltimore was fifth in MLB OPS (.779), second in doubles (47), and seventh in RBI (112). These stats were chosen at random from team hitting stats on that date. Those three stats, however, are very arguably as important to winning games as any other three offensive figures chosen intentionally.

In 2019, in those three categories, the O’s were 25th, 27th, and 22nd, respectively, with an OPS of .725, 252 doubles, and 698 RBI. That’s 18.7 percent of the total doubles from last season now through 13.6 percent of a full schedule’s games. It’s hard to tell without a lot more sleep-inducing computations whether that figure represents a very good improvement or a glorious one.

No one can argue, however, that fifth, second, and seventh aren’t better than where they were in ’19.

How about a more player-specific, offensive matter? It isn’t a wildly nutty idea to say the Orioles have found a leadoff hitter for the foreseeable future. Hanser Alberto, who has started every game thus far at second base this season, isn’t terribly fast, but he seems to have caught on in management’s thinking about the one-slot.

He has batted first in every Orioles game since Aug. 2 after batting sixth, second, and fifth in the season’s first eight games. Even as the team apparently considers moving him to third base here and there (they haven’t yet), he seems cemented to the top slot in the order.

As the leadoff hitter, again after play Aug. 17, Alberto was hitting .273, which turns out to be somewhat below his overall ’20 average (.313), but that may well be a function of small sample sizes, and there is pressure in the leadoff slot. The second baseman has, however, hit nine of his team-leading 11 doubles in the one-hole.

This rumination could go on now about Jose Iglesias’ .400 batting mark, or Shawn Armstrong’s nice performance in his relief role, but it is early. And, yeah, no O’s starter has made it through seven innings yet.

In order for Baltimore’s summer to be declared a huge success in reality, even in the COVID-19 year, the season would have to stop now, or the team has to get to a slightly better pace. They need to put the free-for-all for the last Wild Cards behind them.

Has any team ever made the playoffs after losing more than 105 games?

No one can say the Baltimore Orioles baseball summer hasn’t been better this year, though – a lot better. Any other year, they would probably be putting a lot more fans in their lately empty seats.