22 games into the Orioles season, the only thing that makes any sense about them is their record. After beating the Red Sox yesterday, they’re 8-14, which puts them on pace to finish the season with a 59-103 record. If you’d been told before the season that John Means would make two starts and then need Tommy John surgery, even 59 wins would have seemed like an optimistic guess.
The twin questions, “Why the heck is the Orioles offense so bad?” and “Why the heck is the Orioles pitching staff so surprisingly non-horrible?” may have similar answers. The people who keep track of these things are already assembling evidence that MLB has once again quietly deadened its baseballs, increasing the drag coefficient.