Yes, it’s only May, but so far it’s been a pretty rough season for the Orioles. A team that certainly had playoff ambitions if not World Series hopes coming into the season is currently sitting at 15-19 (second-to-last in the AL East).
There are a variety of reasons the Orioles where they are right now. Injuries have certainly played a big part, as has their pitching (they currently have the ninth-worst team FIP in all of baseball), but the offense has been tough to watch.
While Adley Rutschman has been on fire since coming back from injury, plenty of the Orioles’ stars look like they’re struggling. Gunnar Henderson is hitting .209/.275/.460, Pete Alonso is hitting .214/.322/.421, Coby Mayo is hitting .200/.165/.234, Colton Cowser is hitting .183/.275/.217, you get the picture.
And a lot of these struggles stem from one problem—nobody can hit a breaking ball or a changeup.
The Orioles can hit fastballs, that’s no problem at all. As a team, they own a .266 average, .379 wOBA, and .383 xwOBA against fastballs, numbers that place them comfortably above league average.
Gunnar? He’s got a .281/.370/.480 line against fastballs this year. Cowser? It’s .304/.448/.391. Basallo? .342/.432/.684.
Nearly 50% of the balls the Orioles put in play against fastballs are hard-hit. The team has a 7.29% barrels per plate appearance against the pitches. These are not the numbers of a struggling offense—if a pitcher puts a fastball in the zone, the Orioles can crush it.
But that hasn’t happened, because the book is out, and pitchers have made those opportunities rare.
The Orioles are seeing one of the lowest fastball usage rates in the league, replaced instead by a steady stream of breaking balls and offspeed pitches, which the team just cannot hit.
As a team, the Orioles are hitting just .182 against breaking balls with a .250 wOBA and a .257 xwOBA. Their 35.4% strikeout rate against breakers is among the highest in baseball and well above the league average of around 29%.
Even if the Orioles do make contact against breakers, they’ve got a miserable 2.8% barrels per plate appearance, the worst mark in the entire league.
Take Colton Cowser for instance. So far this year, Cowser has seen 87 breaking balls. He has zero hits, zero walks, and a 64.7% strikeout rate against those breaking balls.
It’s not much better around the rest of the lineup. Mayo owns a .111/.108/.194 line with a 43.2% strikeout rate against breakers so far this year. For Basallo, it’s .138/.194/.276 with a 41.9% strikeout rate. Gunnar at least owns a respectable .256/.304/.535 line against breakers (though with a 41.3% strikeout rate). Even Pete Alonso owns a .171/.244/.341 line against breakers with a 37.8% strikeout rate.
And in case you were wondering, league average so far this year against breaking pitches is a .216/.275/.358 line with a 29.4% strikeout rate. Obviously breaking pitches are hard to hit, that’s the whole point, but the Orioles are especially terrible against these pitches.
Offspeed pitches aren’t much better. Against changeups and similar offerings, the Orioles own a .223 average with a .249 wOBA and a .247 xwOBA, all numbers that sit at the bottom of the league.
And when they do make contact? They own a 29.1% hard-hit rate and a 0.94% barrels per plate appearance, a number that again is the worst in the majors. Sure, they can make contact, but it’s weak contact at best.
Gunnar is among the worst offenders against offspeed pitches, owning a miserable .074/.103/.111 line against the pitches with a 31% strikeout rate.
The rest of the team isn’t much better—Cowser owns a .200/.261/.200 line against offspeed pitches, Mayo is hitting .083/.083/.333, Basallo is hitting .217/.250/.261.
This lineup isn’t being beat by elite fastball or anything, it’s being beat by predictable sequencing—spin early, spin often, never give the Orioles a straight pitch. It’s unsurprising to learn that the Orioles see the second-lowest percentage of fastballs in the league while seeing the seventh-highest percentage of breaking balls and the third-highest percentage of offspeed pitches.
If the Orioles want to have any success this year (and one would assume they do), somebody at some point is going to have to learn how to hit a curveball or a changeup. Adjustments can be made, it’s only May, and even modest gains—fewer chases, slightly better contact on mistake breaking balls—could force pitchers to start throwing more fastballs.
Until then, I don’t know why any opposing pitcher would ever throw a fastball to an Orioles hitter.
Ben Palmer has lived in Maryland his whole life and currently spends his days working as a health care journalist. He also previously wrote for and was a site expert for the FanSided blog The Baltimore Wire and currently works as managing editor at Pitcher List where he writes about fantasy baseball.