Very Orioles Sequence Starts With Highlight Catch And Ends With Injury And Failure

Image for article titled Very Orioles Sequence Starts With Highlight Catch And Ends With Injury And Failure

This was a very valiant effort from Orioles outfielder Dwight Smith Jr. The ball was driven pretty good to left by Rougned Odor; Asdrúbal Cabrera, on first base with two outs, is running on contact. By tracking this ball down, Smith might’ve kept a run off the board. But he also plowed into the wall at something like full speed, and was in a lot of pain. That’s frankly an awful lot to sacrifice for one lousy fourth-inning run in an early-June Orioles game.

Smith would eventually come out of the game, but not right away—first he had to stick around long enough to ground into a double play in the next inning. It’s just perfect Orioles baseball: a guy crashes into the wall and hurts himself on a lousy fourth-inning fly ball; his manager removes him from the game, but only after he’s killed a rally with a double-play grounder in his next plate appearance. That, my friends, is the kind of dedication it takes to compile the second-worst record and worst run differential in baseball. The Orioles would go on to lose the game by a run.