The Baltimore Orioles were welcoming a day off this week, yet also anxious to get back to work and fix glitches from the first couple of weeks of the season.
Now they’ll have to wait until Saturday’s game against the visiting Toronto Blue Jays.
The series opener scheduled for Friday night was rained out and rescheduled as part of a day-night doubleheader July 29. That means this weekend’s matchup is reduced to a two-game series.
The Orioles have several areas to address following a 2-4 road trip.
“Fortunately, it’s a long season,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said. “We’ve just got to get going.”
The Blue Jays might welcome the extra time between games. They’re coming off four straight games in Boston, where they went 3-1. But the last two of those went extra innings — 11 and 10 innings, respectively.
The Orioles have been disturbed by a lack of consistency at the plate and on the mound. They’ve yet to win back-to-back games, something that’s further unfamiliar to some of the team’s younger players after Baltimore’s strong starts the past couple of seasons.
“We got a lot of games left,” said Orioles first baseman Ryan Mountcastle. “You always want to go out there and win and that’s what we’re trying to do. The last week has been a little tough.”
Through 14 games, only three Toronto players have hit home runs — and slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is not one of them. That’s not a concern at this point, said manager John Schneider.
“The quality of the at-bats have been so encouraging up and down the lineup,” Schneider said. “We absolutely know the power is going to come from the guys that we expect it to come from.”
Toronto’s offense is lagging behind its pitching, but playing seven games in New York and Boston already has been a factor.
“A lot of it is weather, a lot of it is getting into the flow of the season,” Schneider said.
Schneider was critical of umpiring, particularly with the ball-strike calls, after the final game in Boston. The X account UmpScorecards suggested home-plate umpire Manny Gonzalez called 92 percent of the pitches in Thursday’s 4-3 loss correctly — a slightly below-average showing — but the account also calculated Gonzalez’ misses favored Boston by 2.04 runs. In other words, it could have been a 1-run Toronto win and a four-game sweep.
Schneider didn’t back off from his critique Thursday, though he did offer a deeper assessment.
“I have a lot of respect for every single one of them,” Schneider said of umpires.
The Orioles and Blue Jays split four games to begin the season in Toronto.
Saturday’s pitching assignments weren’t altogether clear following the postponement.
Baltimore right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano (1-1, 2.89 ERA) and Toronto right-hander Bowden Francis (1-1, 3.18) were the slated starters for Friday night, so they could be shifted to Saturday’s game.
If either of them are bumped, it would likely mean left-hander Cade Povich (0-1, 3.48) for the Orioles and/or right-hander Jose Berrios (1-1, 4.58) for the Blue Jays. Povich didn’t throw in the first series against Toronto, while Berrios is 10-2 with a 3.21 ERS over 17 career starts vs. the Orioles.
However, Berrios suffered the loss in the March 27 season opener — surrendering three home runs and six runs overall in a 12-2 loss. Povich went 0-2 against the Blue Jays as a rookie last year.
–Field Level Media
