When the Orioles optioned right-hander Grayson Rodriguez to Triple-A Norfolk after the mixed results of his first 10 major league appearances, Baltimore thought it had solved a problem — both for the highly touted 23-year-old and the club.
Rodriguez shone in five outings; he scuffled in five others, with the nine runs against him last week by the Texas Rangers his nadir. Baltimore sent him down, hoping a mental reset in a less pressurized environment would help Rodriguez get back to his best.
“A big part of the calculus of sending him down is, even in his better outings, he tended to run out of pitches after the fifth inning,” executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said, “and we have a taxed bullpen right now, so that leaned into it as well.”
In making that call, though, the Orioles created a new problem in Wednesday’s 12-8 series-ending loss to the Cleveland Guardians.
If the bullpen was taxed with Rodriguez supplying five innings, it’s absolutely ragged now.
“We were trying to figure out a way we could finish the game,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “Unfortunate, because we swung the bat so well early. To do what we did against [Shane] Bieber, who’s arguably one of the best pitchers in the game, I was really happy with our offense. Just that second through the fifth inning, just had a tough time getting outs.”
There’s a day off Thursday ahead of a road trip to San Francisco that will help with recovery, but instead of Rodriguez starting Wednesday and supplying at least 3 1/3 innings — his shortest outing this year — Hyde pieced together a bullpen game that spiraled out of control quickly.
It left the Orioles (35-21) with a second straight series loss at home, a letdown after how well the club played during a 5-1 road trip against American League East opposition. Dropping a series to the Rangers wasn’t a surprise, given their offensive firepower, but Cleveland entered with the worst offense in the majors when measured by team on-base-plus-slugging percentage.
With the ambush against the Orioles’ bullpen in the finale, the Guardians scored 22 runs in 27 innings.
By the fifth inning, Hyde already had called in right-hander Mike Baumann, the last remaining reliever who didn’t pitch in Tuesday’s victory. Almost nothing to that point had gone according to plan, with left-hander Keegan Akin opening with two hits and a run against him in his lone inning and bulk reliever Austin Voth providing 2 1/3 innings with three runs.
“Just a lot of pitches,” Hyde said. “We were hoping to get three or four out of him, but he’s just not built up to do that — to throw more than 65 pitches. And he was pitching with traffic the whole time he was out there.”
In an ideal world, Akin would’ve provided an extra frame and Voth might’ve finished his inning. Instead, it led to cataclysmic outings from Cionel Pérez and Mychal Givens, a pair of relievers who recorded just two outs yet allowed five runs between them.
First baseman Josh Naylor did the most damage of any Guardians hitter, driving in six runs with a two-run homer, a bases-clearing double and a sharp single. Naylor’s fifth-inning homer came against Pérez, who then allowed a solo homer to Josh Bell in the next at-bat.
For Pérez, it was part of a swift turn of fortune this series. He entered this week with one earned run against him in his previous 9 1/3 innings, and then he allowed four runs (two earned) Monday to the Guardians and another two Wednesday afternoon. Pérez said he doesn’t think his mechanics are to blame; he fixed those earlier in May.
But the two long balls hurt nonetheless, and with 11 earned runs against him in 24 appearances, he’s allowed more than he did during all of 2022.
“Unfortunately today, just two really good swings out there that did the most damage out there,” Pérez said through team interpreter Brandon Quinones. “Naylor, threw him a fastball low and in, and he found a way to put the bat on it and took it out. And then against Bell, just a breaking ball that stayed up in the zone. Unfortunately, that’s what’s been going on, but overall I feel pretty good with the way things have been going lately. Just those two swings hurt me today.”
That pushed Baltimore out of reach, even though its offense scored eight runs for the second consecutive game. The bottom of the lineup used a two-out rally to spark four runs in the second, and before outfielder Aaron Hicks left with cramps in his left calf, he reached base all three times in his Orioles debut and scored two runs. Catcher Adley Rutschman recorded a four-hit game.
Baumann, right-hander Bryan Baker and left-hander Danny Coulombe covered the final five innings for the Orioles. They used six pitchers, allowed 12 runs and will thoroughly need Thursday’s day off.
“I thought we threw some pretty good pitches overall, but they have bats too,” Pérez said. “This is the big leagues; it’s not Cuba. So these guys, they’re professionals, obviously, and if you miss by two centimeters that can change the outcome of a pitch. They can put the barrel on the ball and drive it out of here.”
There was merit to sending Rodriguez to Triple-A. Elias said, often when a starting pitcher goes “back down, you get your confidence back, fix some things that you’re working on, you come back up and you’re a different player, a better player.” That is part of the long-term plan.
But, without a solid plan to replace Rodriguez in the interim, this is what happened — the unraveling of a bullpen right at the end of a 2-4 homestand and ahead of a road trip across the country.
