Ryan Romano: Shedding some daylight on O's struggles under the sun

In the nearly 150-year history of organized baseball, night games are fairly new. The first professional contest under the stars occurred in 1930, and it took a while to catch on - Wrigley Field didn't install lights until nearly 60 years later. By now, though, most baseball fans have become accustomed to the different start times, especially in their typical, two-night/one-day arrangement. For the most part, all games are the same, regardless of their time, right?

For the 2016 Orioles, no. This club has excelled when playing at night, with a 29-16 record in such games. During the day, however, their performance has lagged behind, as they've gone just 7-10. It's a pretty stark gap, and an unusual one: According to the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index, since 1967, only six other teams have a larger night/day disparity in their winning percentage. Under the lights, the Orioles have looked like a World Series contender; under the sun, they've looked like a basement dweller.

So what's caused this massive imbalance? A few possible culprits come to mind:

* Randomness: Seventeen day games - or 45 night games, for that matter - don't constitute a large sample. Countless weird things can happen in one-tenth or two-sevenths of a season. On that note, the Orioles aren't the only 2016 team with a kooky start time split. The Padres have gone 23-20 in the evening and 3-18 in the afternoon, and the Marlins own a 26-18 record in the former and a 6-13 record in the latter. Once the Orioles play their remaining 100 games, this might dissipate.

* Management: On the other hand, the Orioles are no strangers to early struggles. From 2013 to 2015, they paired a 78-88 daytime record with a 184-136 nighttime record. Most notably, they went 25-30 during the day in 2014, compared to 71-36 at night. This could fall on Buck Showalter's shoulders: He may give bench players time in final games of series, which usually happen in the afternoon. As a representative example, Caleb Joseph has received 61 of his 192 career starts in day games, where Matt Wieters has started just 177 day games out of 764 contests overall. Joseph and his ilk can't live up to the standards that the starting position players set, and the club has suffered as a result.

Pitching. This season, though, the Baltimore offense has done just as well during the day as it has at night: In both situations, it's scored an average of 4.82 runs per game. The pitching staff, on the other hand, has melted down with the sun out, when its ERA has ballooned from 3.49 to 5.90. During the day, the Orioles' strikeout rate has shrunk from 20.6 to 17.0 percent; their walk rate has risen from 8.1 to 9.8 percent; their home run rate has jumped from 2.5 to 3.5 percent; and their BABIP has skyrocketed from .293 to .340. It doesn't look like a fluke - the Orioles just seem to pitch worse in earlier games.

Which of these three explanations wins out? In the end, the answer likely incorporates all three of them. The Orioles have almost certainly had some luck, both good and bad, to get here - they're neither a 100-win team, as they've looked at night, nor a 90-loss team, as they've looked during the day. Nevertheless, their performance does seem to have changed by the time. That may have something to do with their lineup construction, since Joseph and Ryan Flaherty (among others) have each seen a lot of their time in afternoon contests. More likely, it's the fault of their pitchers, a couple of whom have always fared worse during the day. Chris Tillman has a lifetime night ERA of 3.92, along with a day ERA of 4.58; Ubaldo Jimenez has career ERAs of 3.91 in day and 4.60 at night. With those two veterans at half power in the daytime, the Orioles have understandably floundered.

Most of the time, night and day games will blend together. Players generally don't differ based on the lights above them, and neither do teams. With that said, the Orioles may be an exception to this rule, as they've shown a clear preference for the nighttime. This quirk won't doom or save Baltimore; it's simply another oddity in a season full of them.

Note: All statistics as of Monday, June 13

Ryan Romano blogs about the Orioles for Camden Depot. Follow the blog on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.