Harm in Charm City: Mariners (65-88) at Orioles (49-104)

Riding a wave from the sweep in Pittsburgh against a team scuffling on and off the field, the Mariners head to the home of one of baseball’s very worst teams. How bad you may ask? Well, you may recall back in June when the Mariners went 3-1 against the Orioles when they came to Seattle. At the end of that series, the Orioles has just lost their 56th game. Between then and today, September 20, the Orioles lost 48 (forty. eight.) more games while winning only 27 more games (Quick maths!). The O’s casually hit the 100 losses mark a few games back and just keep on strollin’. Godspeed, Birdland.

The Orioles are currently 3.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers for the first overall pick in the 2020 draft. I never thought I’d be so mad that the Mariners had to play the Pirates and Orioles back-to-back, but here we are. Your mileage may vary on having anxiety about winning too many games at the end of a lost season and then missing out on an elite MLB talent. Yes, it happened to the Mariners at the end of the 2008 season and they lost the top pick to the Nationals, who chose Stephen Strasburg, and the Mariners chose Dustin Ackley, and well, here we are. BUT! Does a player picked 6th versus a player picked 7th or 8th automatically do better in their professional career? (doubles over from maniacal laughter) Oh hey, you’re still here. Uh, the answer is no. There are no guarantees with prospects, but in general, yes, you want the opportunity to pick while the highest number of good talent is still on the board, so yes, #TeamTank and all that.

As we saw with the Pirates series, featuring players who literally could not be arsed to give 2 shits about those 3 games and are already trying to figure out where they’ll be living in 10 days and what they’ll be doing with the rest of their lives, the Orioles are pretty much in the same boat. The Mariners, while still quite bad on the whole, are full of players actively trying to perform well, especially the fresh batch of September call-ups. It feels like a counter-productive combination (rebuilding/playing for draft picks with new, young, and pretty good players) when the Mariners play teams far worse than them, but thankfully (I can’t believe I’m saying this), they play the Athletics and Astros to close out the season next week and we can all take a wild guess what will happen there.

Much like the previous series in June, once you get beyond Trey Mancini and Jonathan Villar in this lineup, shit gets grim fast. I look at this and I honestly wonder how they score runs ever? They say you “Gotta keep the devil way down in the hole,” but I don’t think that means having a clean-up hitter clocking in with a .246 average and a sub-100 wRC+. Also, hey Mark Trumbo is back!

Probable Pitchers

Photo by Mike Carlson/Getty Images

Brooks is the listed starter, but it looks like that might not happen:

Bullpen days can be challenging in September because, almost like in a Spring Training game, hitters don’t get to get multiple looks at a particular pitcher. That being said, the Orioles bullpen has the worst FIP in baseball, at 5.47, making them one of the few bullpen groups worse than the Mariners.

A-Woj bounced around with three different organizations in 2019 before winding up with the pitching-starved Orioles. The 30-year-old has been objectively bad by every measure, and had his last start skipped due to fatigue.

What is a John Means? Well, he was the Orioles’ lone All-Star representative and represents their best chance at a win in this series. Means, an 11th-round pick in 2014, never had a ton of prospect pedigree, making one appearance on Baltimore’s top-30 list in 2017 at #29 as a gap-filler in a poorly-rated Orioles system. Now he’s the de facto ace of an admittedly weak Orioles rotation, but that doesn’t stop him from being a bright spot for the suffering fans in orange. Means’ success comes from a fastball with high spin and a putaway changeup, and so far he’s evinced the most important trait for a successful AL East starter: an ability to keep the ball in the ballpark, with a HR/FB rate under 10%. Combine that with his ability to control the zone and Means looks to be a solid backend piece of the O’s rotation for some time to come.

In case you missed it, the Mariners were the first AL West team eliminated from post-season contention, way back on September 4. The Angels were bounced September 11, and Texas on September 13. Tonight’s games have major playoff implications: the Braves can clinch the NL East with a win or a Nationals loss, the Giants are eliminated if they lose or the Nationals and Brewers win, the Astros can clinch the AL West with a win and an A’s loss, the Red Sox will be eliminated if they lose or Cleveland wins.

The sweep of the Pirates tied them with the Mariners for the sixth draft pick, and the Mariners should slide into seventh given a likely series win (if not sweep) against one of baseball’s most dreadful teams. The Pirates, meanwhile, have to face down the Cubs and Brewers, so it’s looking more and more like the Mariners might be selecting towards the back half of the top 10.

Luckily, it’s a stacked draft this year; unluckily, that doesn’t take away the bad baseball we watched in May, and the constant use of the Mariners as easily-accessible punching bags by national writers. Sigh. At least a strong finish will help us head into the off-season feeling confident about the direction of the team.