Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Orioles fans and fans across the country.
After spending months slowly grinding their way back to a .500 record, there was a short time there where you could almost believe that the Orioles might be a decent baseball team that might be able to go somewhere good over the month of September. They have spent the days since that point demonstrating that they might not actually be a decent baseball team, failing in a variety of different aspects while losing the last three games and counting.
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Earlier this week, we ran a poll asking Orioles fans which area of the team – offense, defense, rotation, and bullpen – was going to be the biggest problem for the team making it into a wild card spot in the American League. Here’s how the results came in:
I have a sneaking suspicion that if I had put an “all of the above” option, that might have come across as the actual winner. That wouldn’t have been very interesting. As it is, that’s a clear result, with fully half of fans worried most about the offense while a respectable 34% puts the bullpen in second place.
It’s hard to argue with either of those choices after the games that the Orioles have played over the course of this week. They scored just nine runs in 29 innings in Coors Field, and even the one game they won in Colorado, they only scored two runs and were saved by Colton Cowser’s game-ending home run robbery.
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Relievers have taken the loss in each game of the current three-game losing streak. Mike Elias did not assemble a good set of options on the roster for Craig Albernaz to use and Albernaz has not proven adept at navigating the ebbs and flows of reliever performance as the season goes along.
Of course, the defense has also contributed to those bullpen failures, putting extra men on base before crucial problems, and with much of the starting rotation approaching or already past career innings highs, there’s no guarantee that group will maintain its current approximation of quality either.
The Orioles have 21 games left to play and they probably need to go 14-7. Every one of these areas will need to be better than it’s been to make that happen. It’s not over til it’s over, but it could be pretty darn close to over if they don’t play well against the Red Sox this holiday weekend.
This week’s survey is sponsored by FanDuel.
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