Baltimore Orioles
Benchwarmer
Charlie Morton sets Orioles old guy strikeout record, O’s lose 8-4 anyway
Source: https://www.camdenchat.com/2025/4/3/24400627/mlb-scores-orioles-red-sox-game-recap-charlie-morton
Mitch Stringer-Imagn Images
The part where Morton struck out ten batters was fun. Every other part of his outing was not fun.
One week into the 2025 Orioles season, a clear pattern is starting to emerge. When they score a bunch of runs, they win. If they do anything other than score a bunch of runs, they lose. Thursday afternoon, they played another “don’t score a bunch of runs” game against the Red Sox and the result was that they lost, 8-4, falling below a .500 record for the first time since April 9, 2023.
It is still just seven games into the season. Panic overreaction is not going to solve any problems. The first seven games have, nonetheless, reinforced anyone’s feeling who was anxious about the starting rotation. No one other than Zach Eflin has pitched a good game yet.
On Thursday, Charlie Morton got his second chance of the season to show something good. In a way, he did show something good. Morton struck out ten batters in five innings. This is, according to stats queen Sarah Langs, an Orioles franchise record for a 41-year-old, and one of just eight times this feat has happened for 41+ year old pitchers in the last 20 years.
Unfortunately for Morton, there was everything else to talk about with his start. His first inning started heading south with a one-out walk to Rafael Devers. None of the called balls were anywhere particularly close to the strike zone. He could not command the fastball. The next batter, Alex Bregman, ambushed the first pitch he saw, a middle-middle hanger that was blasted out into the left field seats. The Orioles trailed, 2-0. They trailed the rest of the game.
In the bottom of the first, Cedric Mullins, batting leadoff for the first time since the end of the 2023 season, started things off awesomely, hitting his third homer of the year. Adley Rutschman followed with a single. Hey, a rally! That could be fun. Except, it wasn’t. Jordan Westburg grounded into a double play and immediately erased Rutschman.
This, too, is part of the early 2025 Orioles story. A year ago, they set an MLB record with the fewest double plays that any team has ever grounded into, just 71 over a 162 game season. They added two more to their tally today to give them seven in seven games for 2025. The luck is not holding.
The bad version of Morton showed up again for the second inning. That inning’s leadoff hitter, Wilyer Abreu, drew a walk, then recently-enriched second baseman Kristian Campbell smoked a curveball that caught too much plate and launched it into the territory that would not have been a home run in 2024 but now is again a home run in 2025.
That’s yet another early 2025 thing. One series in, Walltimore 2.0 has not helped any Orioles batter. The Red Sox hit three “not in 2024” home runs in as many games. There is budding potential for grim comedy in this bit.
Morton ultimately made it through five innings. The Sox scored a fifth run off of him by loading the bases with three singles and cashing in with a sacrifice fly. Added to Morton’s ten strikeouts over five innings: Six hits, two walks, five runs (all earned). There are days where a pitcher can allow seven runners in five innings and have a good game. Morton did not. The only good thing to be said about him is he lowered his ERA from 10.80 to 9.72.
The Orioles offense was not asleep entirely. They added a run in the third inning as Mullins started a two-out rally with a walk and eventually scored with Westburg driving him home. Heston Kjerstad and Ramón Urías combined to get another run across in the fourth. At this point, the O’s trailed, 5-3. You’d rather be ahead than behind by that margin, but still, you are in the game. What’s more, the O’s chased Sox starter Tanner Houck after just four innings. They’d have their chances against the bullpen.
Regrettably for the Orioles, they didn’t do anything with that chance. Three straight Boston relievers pitched a scoreless inning. The O’s bullpen did not match the zeroes. Keegan Akin, summoned for a lefty stretch of lineup in the seventh, gave up a double to Bregman and then a home run to Triston Casas. This was the second “wouldn’t have been a homer in 2025” dinger hit by the Sox in the game. Sheesh.
Overall, the Orioles offense had eight hits and three walks. That’s not the best, but there are plenty of games where a team with those numbers can win. They are just games with better pitching or with better luck clustering the offense. The O’s aren’t getting the pitching and they aren’t getting the luck so far in 2025. It remains to be seen whether they will ever get those things and what the team will look like if they don’t.
Gunnar Henderson is expected to make his return tomorrow as the Orioles open a series in Kansas City. That should be a good step towards having some more fun games on offense, If the pitching staff does not start fixing itself in April, that will not be so fun.
Dean Kremer will get a chance to make a better second 2025 impression than first as he starts against the Royals at 7:40pm Eastern on Friday. Seth Lugo, the 2024 runner-up for AL Cy Young, makes the start for KC. Lugo’s first start of the year was not very good, with him allowing three runs in five innings. Shoot, only three runs? We’d take that in a heartbeat. The Royals offense has a .625 OPS so far this season. Kremer needs to be the first to take advantage.
Source: https://www.camdenchat.com/2025/4/3/24400627/mlb-scores-orioles-red-sox-game-recap-charlie-morton
