11 October 2023
Amid a constant stream of noise from the sold-out crowd at Globe Life Field on Tuesday, chants of “overrated” briefly leaked out. Regardless of whether the jeers were directed at rookie Gunnar Henderson, who stood in the batter’s box at the time, or the Orioles at large, who spent 2023 largely as the opposite, they were misguided.
The Texas Rangers’ American League Division Series sweep didn’t prove the Orioles were overrated. It simply showed them to be overmatched.
“They outplayed us,” backup catcher James McCann said. “It’s just that simple. I don’t think you can really point to experience in this case. They just outplayed us, and you’ve got to tip your cap to them.”
Across the three games against Texas, Baltimore led for about 10 minutes, spending much of the rest of the series facing insurmountable deficits. All 16 of manager Brandon Hyde’s pitching changes came with the Orioles losing. They were the AL East champions, won 101 games and had not been swept in 91 straight series, all to have their season collapse in three games.
“We were trying to play catch-up,” center fielder Cedric Mullins.
Those regular-season successes did not come expectedly. Most sportsbooks and public projection systems forecast regression after Baltimore, likewise out of nowhere, won 83 games a year ago. Before the Orioles clinched the division, Hyde said he and his players took note of that perception. They embraced their status as an underdog.
They sure looked like one in the ALDS. The Rangers tumbled into the playoffs, unable to hold their lead in the AL West. They finished with 11 fewer wins than Baltimore but a higher run differential. This series pitted the AL’s top record against its top offense and the circuit’s second-lowest payroll against its second-highest. The Rangers, the latter in both cases, came out comfortably on top.
When the “overrated” chant broke out in Tuesday’s third inning, the Orioles were down 6-0, the top seed in the AL seven innings from eventual elimination. They entered the divisional round as the least likely of the eight teams standing to win the World Series at 5.7%, according to FanGraphs. It turned out to be an appropriate estimation.
If fans’ ire instead was toward Henderson, that, too, was faulty. When Texas third baseman Josh Jung suffered a broken thumb in August, he was in contention to be AL Rookie of the Year. Henderson’s late surge in Jung’s absence all but ensured he’ll become Baltimore’s first honoree since 1989.
Henderson ended that third-inning at-bat with a single and followed with two others, supplying half of the Orioles’ hits as the 22-year-old wrapped up his first postseason by going 6-for-12 in the series.
Jorge Mateo, who went 4-for-4 in Game 2 and came off the bench in the opener and finale, was Baltimore’s only other batter with more than three hits in the sweep. Many of Baltimore’s primary contributors in the regular season offered little in October, with Mullins, Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle each ending the series with more strikeouts than hits.
Despite similar hit totals between the teams, Baltimore pitchers did themselves no favors by issuing 18 walks, twice as many as Texas’ did. Eleven of those free passes came in the series’ second game, making the Orioles the 10th team to allow that many in a playoff game. Nine of them went to superstar shortstop Corey Seager, setting a division series record.
Seager represents half of Texas’ $500 million middle infield. He and Marcus Semien signed there as free agents two years ago to propel the Rangers to the position they’re in now. The pair accounts for two of eight players Texas paid at least $10 million in 2023; the Orioles had one such player in veteran pitcher Kyle Gibson, who entered in relief with Tuesday’s game already out of hand.
The Orioles put their trust in three young starters and weren’t rewarded for that belief. Kyle Bradish struck out nine as Baltimore’s Game 1 starter but didn’t complete the fifth, allowing two runs and eight base runners. Neither Grayson Rodriguez, the Game 2 starter, nor Dean Kremer made it out of the second inning, combining to surrender 11 runs.
“It’s tough to win when a starter goes an inning-plus,” Hyde said.
The circumstances forced Hyde to go to his bullpen often, operating with the same platoon-based decisions that led to many of Baltimore’s 101 wins. Texas manager Bruce Bochy, a three-time World Series champion with the San Francisco Giants, used a different formula, though the Rangers’ large leads afforded him the chance not to seek marginal advantages.
Hyde noted that the Orioles’ pitchers made too many two-strike mistakes while he didn’t believe their hitters “rolled in with a ton of momentum.” Both aspects showed across the three defeats.
They didn’t hit well in Game 1. They didn’t pitch well in Game 2. They did neither in Game 3.
“They battled and they fought,” Hyde said. “We just came out short.”
Baltimore Sun reporter Jacob Calvin Meyer contributed to this article.
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