"The Bird's Nest" on where the O's can find consistency

Through the Orioles’ first 30 games of the season, there have been plenty of “moments.”

14 games into the year, it felt as if an Adley Rutschman bat flip after a huge home run and a Cedric Mullins RBI triple could be a turning point. The energy had returned to Camden Yards, and the Birds were seemingly back on track. 

The next day, the O’s allowed three runs in the eighth inning against the Blue Jays and fell in extras. 

One week later, a Ramón Laureano two-home run game helped propel Baltimore to a 9-run outburst, with five runs coming against one of the best young arms in the game, Hunter Greene. 

The next day, the Orioles fell 24-2.

And on Monday, the Birds came away with an emotional win over the division-leading Yankees behind a great start from Tomoyuki Sugano. 

The next day, it was a 15-3 loss. 

Consistency, both in the O’s play and energy, has been hard to come by this season. On this week’s edition of “The Bird’s Nest,” Annie Klaff and I discussed where Baltimore could find it. 

For more in-depth analysis on this topic, be sure to listen to the podcast here: https://masn.me/knfey9cl. And be sure to tune in every Wednesday live at 11 a.m. on our MASN Orioles’ Facebook and YouTube channels. We’d be honored if you spent your early lunch break with us. 

The most obvious place to look for more consistency is the pitching staff, and more specifically, the starting rotation. 

The Orioles have found consistency in Tomoyuki Sugano and Cade Povich, who have delivered everything the O’s have needed over their past few starts. 

Sugano punched out eight Bronx Bombers in Monday’s victory, riding the momentum of completing seven innings in back-to-back starts. 

Povich delivered perhaps his best outing of the season in D.C. last week, and followed it up with a solid outing against the Yankees last night. 4 ⅔ innings with three earned runs isn’t the best performance, but it kept the Orioles firmly in the ballgame long enough to win. 

That has been a struggle for Baltimore to begin the year. 

Entering last night’s contest against the Yankees, the Orioles had allowed eight or more runs in a game over 27.5 percent of the time. For context, they allowed eight or more runs in about 13.5 percent of contests. 

Needless to say, the rest of the starting rotation needs to bounce back.

That’s expected from Dean Kremer, who has been notorious for having slow starts to the season, with a 6.24 ERA in his career in March and April. That figure drops by more than two earned runs once the calendar flips to May. And would you look at that calendar? 

Yes, Kyle Gibson had a rough first start of the year. It was his first start of the year. The book on Gibson’s 2025 season is far from written. 

As for the final spot in the rotation, as it appears that Charlie Morton has transitioned to the bullpen, Brandon Young showed some solid strides in his second outing of the year. And if all goes well, that spot will belong to Zach Eflin sooner rather than later. 

Finding some consistency in the rotation is more than necessary, as all facets of the game work together. When the Orioles get down early, it’s hard for the offense to find a rhythm. 

Entering last night’s game, Baltimore was averaging just over two runs per game in losses and seven runs per game in wins. Again, expert analysis in finding that they score more runs in games they win, I know. But that margin should not be that drastic. 

It is that drastic, perhaps, because the offense has been down early and often in games. And as human beings, it is understandably hard to be as locked in in those kinds of contests. They do, however, still need to find it somewhere in the tank. 

Rough pitching has led to rough offense, which has led to rough defense. 

When the Orioles have won, they’ve looked like the team we’ve watched for the last few seasons of dominant regular season baseball. And in games that they’ve lost, they’ve looked like a completely different team. 

If the starting pitching pendulum can swing just a little bit in the right direction, we’ll see a lot more competitive games. It’s a snowball effect, and the Orioles need it to start rolling in the right direction.