Tune-ups are in the rear-view mirror. The next time the Orioles play baseball, the result will count. 

On a dreary morning that turned into a sunny afternoon in the nation’s capital, Baltimore’s starting pitchers looked to be in mid-season form, while the offense was largely stuck in the rain. 

The quality of the O’s arms won out, and the Orioles came away with a 2-0 victory to end spring training on a high note. 

“I think it was a great spring,” Albernaz said after the win. “The work, the attention to detail, the intensity, the competitiveness, there was fun, the boys were loose. It’s tough to kind of blend that all together, and they did it. It just speaks to the players in that clubhouse.”

Shane Baz and Chris Bassitt got their final innings of work before the regular season, where they are scheduled to be the third and fourth pitchers in Baltimore’s rotation, respectively. Baz cruised through the first on just six pitches, a sign of things to come. 

In the second, his velocity worked all the way up over 99.0 mph. The former Ray is more than capable of lighting up the gun, highlighted by a 2025 season in which he reached at least 100 mph 10 times.

Catcher Samuel Basallo took a foul ball off the lower quad/upper knee area in that frame and was checked on by Craig Albernaz and Triple-A Norfolk athletic trainer Alan Rail, but remained in the game.

 

Baz continued to find the velocity where he needed it, striking out James Wood with 99 at the knees to end the third inning. He won’t sit there with regularity during the regular season, but the righty certainly has it in the tank. 

Traffic hit the bases for the first time one inning later. 

Two batters after Jeremiah Jackson came up inches short of a diving catch in right, resulting in a Nasim Nuñez single, Daylen Lile pushed the speedster to third with a single of his own. The outfielder’s steal of second put Baz in a jam with one away. But after a Keibert Ruiz dribbler, Baz got Luis García Jr. to fly out to center, ending the threat. 

It was a sharp day for Baz overall, whose afternoon concluded after five innings and 73 pitches of work. The righty didn’t surrender a run or a walk and allowed just three hits to go along with five strikeouts. Highlighted by the goose egg in the walk column, Baz’s command of the zone was improved, tossing 61 percent of his pitches for strikes compared to a 44 percent rate in his two previous spring training outings. 

“Baz looked great,” his skipper noted. “Everything looked sharp, crisp … He has a lot of elite weapons.”

On the other side, the Orioles’ bats largely struggled against an inning-by-inning rotation of Nationals bullpen arms. Through six frames, Baltimore hitters faced six different pitchers, all expected to break camp with Washington’s ‘pen. The Birds mustered just two hits, two walks and one runner in scoring position, with hard contact almost exclusively coming off the bats of Alonso and Gunnar Henderson. 

The first time that the O’s faced a bullpen arm that wasn’t featured in FanGraphs’ regular season roster projection for Washington, Baltimore put up runs. Leody Taveras mashed his first home run of spring training to the opposing bullpen in right, and the Orioles found themselves up 2-0 in the seventh inning. 

Bassitt picked up right where Baz left off. A 1-2-3 sixth was followed by a 1-2-3 seventh, and just one ball in play was hard hit. Last season, the veteran was 80th percentile in baseball in hard-hit rate at 36.6 percent. 

Yennier Cano took over in the eighth and delivered eight strikes on 10 pitches. Entering play, Cano had a zone rate over 50 percent, according to FanGraphs, a significant jump from his past two regular seasons, and one that comes close to matching his mark during a 2023 All-Star campaign. 

“It’s strikes, but it’s all of his pitches in the strike zone,” Albernaz said. “He did that today. It was cool to see him land the split in zone, using the slider early and then for chase, same thing with the split and mixing in the two- and the four-seam … He’s rounding his arsenal out where he can defend himself and compete against left-handed hitters, and he’s always tough against righties.”

Dietrich Enns, another likely Opening Day arm, closed things out in the ninth.

The final outing of spring training was a fitting one for Baltimore. Today’s four arms surrendered just three hits, didn’t walk a batter, and struck out nine. The starting rotation, which showcased a talented duo in Baz and Bassitt this afternoon, should be the story, featuring a No. 5 starter that started on Opening Day in 2025. Two arms, Rogers and Bradish, have finished in the top-10 in Cy Young voting over the past few seasons, and Baz shares similar upside. Bassitt and Eflin are established veterans and high-quality floor raisers. 

The offense will surely have more firepower than the 2025 season, in which three players tied for the team lead with 17 home runs. Most key pieces have put up solid numbers in spring training, and bats like Coby Mayo, Blaze Alexander and Jeremiah Jackson seem capable of filling in the gaps left by Jordan Westburg and Jackson Holliday. 

There’s new leadership in the clubhouse, too, led, in part, by the veteran Bassitt.

“The talent in the room is there, now it’s just how much belief, so to speak, does the team actually have in themselves. And we’ll find out,” the starter said. “Really, really good teams are great on paper, and then, all of a sudden, they get punched in the mouth and they freak out. How much can belief can we have in each other? To me, it’s not so much win that game, win that game, freaking out about winning one game. It’s more so about taking pride of what we stand for as a team, what we do every single day, how we play the game. I want us to fall in love with how we play the game. I want us to enjoy the process of how we play each game. Wins and losses are just a result of that.”

In a few short days, speculation comes to an end. Regular-season baseball is up next.

Breadcrumbs from the Skipper

It’s a broken thumb for Luis Vázquez, who exited yesterday’s game after being hit by a pitch. The shortstop was in the hunt for an Opening Day roster spot, but will now start the season on the injured list.

There aren’t any updates, at this point, on Keegan Akin, Dylan Beavers or Heston Kjerstad.