Noting the injuries: Where the O's stand in player games missed

As the phrase goes the Orioles have been “getting the band back together” getting some of their injured list players back recently as Jacob Webb, Danny Coulombe, Ryan Mountcastle, Ramón Urías, Jordan Westburg and Heston Kjerstad have all made it back to the active roster.

It is a big boost to a team that recently had 12 players on the injured list.

And while the O’s pitching staff took a big injury hit even before the All-Star break, some MLB stats indicate that the Orioles have not been hurt as badly on the injury front as other clubs. At least when looking at player games missed.

This is total games that players on the injured list have missed this year for each club and each missed game counts the same whether it is an All-Star that is out or the last guy on the roster. So we need to keep that in mind.

But here are the top clubs in most player games missed to this point, according to Stats Perform:

1,808 – Los Angeles Dodgers
1,614 – Boston
1,570 – Houston
1,543 – Texas
1,520 – Oakland

The Orioles rank 21^st here with 1,047 player games missed in 2024. The MLB average is 1,221. The Yankees have the ninth-most at 1,477.

That one surprised me.

The Orioles are finally getting position players back but several missed big chunks of time. On the pitching side, Tyler Wells pitched just 15 1/3 innings this year, John Means was at 20 2/3, Kyle Bradish 39 1/3 and Grayson Rodriguez 116 2/3 innings. And Rodriguez, we know as of yesterday, will join those others in not making it back this year.

Stats Perform reports that Pittsburgh, with 36 total IL assignments, has the most in the majors. Three teams, Boston, San Francisco and the Los Angeles Dodgers have 34 each. The Orioles have 22, one more than last year.

During the 2023 season, the O’s had a real healthy year for the most part and had the fifth-fewest player games missed with 793. Cleveland had the fewest at 621 and the MLB average was 1,300 for last season.

O's win again in the Bronx: The Yankees made it close late, but the Orioles had opened a seven-run lead after the first four and a half innings Wednesday night and they beat New York 9-7.

The Orioles improved to 88-70 and with four games to play they are four back for the AL East lead and four ahead for the top AL Wild Card berth. They can sweep the Yankees tonight.  

After going through a 12-game span where they scored just 24 runs, the O's have scored 33 the last six games, batting .278 with an .801 team OPS.

They are 8-4 this year against the Yankees and 4-1 at Yankee Stadium scoring 40 runs.

The O's have done so well versus the Yankees, you might like their chances in a playoff series. But by beating the Yankees, the O's may have made that harder to happen - at least in the American League Division Series.

Should the Orioles get the No. 4 AL seed as top Wild Card and then win a Wild-Card playoff round, they would advance to face the AL No. 1 seed. That No. 1 is currently the Yankees (92-66) but by just a 1/2 game over Cleveland (92-67). Cleveland is off tonight and hosts Houston over the weekend while New York hosts Pittsburgh. The Yankees do hold the tiebreaker over Cleveland, going 4-2 in the season series. But the O's have kept them from clinching the division two straight nights and now have made their hold for the top seed more shaky too.

A few other notes from last night's win:

* Right-hander Zach Eflin, who led MLB with 1.06 walks per nine innings, walked a career-high five. He walked four of the first eight Yankees.

* The Orioles have scored 14 runs in going 2-0 this series versus a Yankees team that entered the series going 12-4 its previous 16 games with a 1.96 team ERA.

* The Orioles began last night's game with six straight singles - that is a first in Orioles club history.

* The Orioles ended a five-series losing streak.

* There were 35 balls hit 95 mph or more in this game, 18 by the Orioles. But the top seven exit velocities were all produced by the Yankees. Giancarlo Stanton's single in the fifth inning produced the top exit velo in the game at 115.5 mph.

* The Orioles went 10-for-19 at-bat versus Yankee starter Marcus Stroman. Through the fifth inning, the Orioles were 13-for-27 at-bat and 6-for-11 with runners in scoring position. They had 17 hits for the game going 8-for-16 with RISP.

* The top four in the Baltimore order - Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, Anthony Santander and Colton Cowser - went a combined 9-for-19 with two doubles, five runs and seven RBIs. Cedric Mullins and James McCann combined for five hits giving the Orioles six players with multi-hit games.