Trying to evaluate players in a 60-game season

If this were a normal season, players currently slumping would have over 100 games to do something about it. But now those same players have three more games. It's probably not enough time to overcome slumps that have lasted a week or more. Some players' stats are falling big-time and they are going to have to look at them all winter.

Does that create a complicated evaluation process for the Orioles?

They have 60 games of a body of work and not 162 to look at. Some players that were key players in 2019 have struggled badly as the season is drawing to a close. Players like catcher Pedro Severino, third baseman Rio Ruiz and second baseman Hanser Alberto.

I asked manager Brandon Hyde before last night's game if it's tougher to evaluate them during this strange 2020 season. He said he will be sitting down with most of his players this weekend in Buffalo for exit interviews and conversations.

"Yes and no," he said during a Zoom conference call. "Yes in that we saw Rio and Sevy and these guys play last year, too. So I think that we have 200-plus games of them of evaluating. I am looking forward to sitting down with those guys at the end of this in Buffalo and talk about their year and talk about things they want to improve on.

"But we are still - and we talked about this last year a lot - being in an evaluation period where our organization is right now. And we're still in that. Finding out about our guys and that was a challenge this year because of the shortened season. And because of the inconsistency of play of a lot of our players. These last few weeks have been tough.

"Guys' numbers have dropped pretty significantly, a lot of them. So we're going to talk about that and continuing to try and get these guys better. And discuss things they can work on in the offseason."

On the other hand, there are players that Hyde has seen much less in 2020 than he did in 2019. Pitchers David Hess and Branden Kline were two he was asked about yesterday. Hess threw 80 innings last year to seven this season. Kline threw 41 in 2019 and just three in 2020.

"We'll talk about how they threw the ball in Bowie," said Hyde. "We'll talk about their outings here. We'll talk about the upside. There are a lot of roster management decisions that happen in the next couple of months, 40-man decisions. Those are ongoing and I'm fortunate to be included in those, Mike (Elias) includes me and we talk about our roster quite a bit, our 40-man roster. So I think this isn't an ideal evaluation year because it's a two-month season. But we're going to do the best we can."

A few notes on a blowout win: The Orioles' 13-1 romp over the Red Sox last night means they avoided both being swept in a three-game and being even with Boston in the standings. The O's have not clinched avoiding a last-place finish, but they are now 24-33 to Boston's 22-35.

No one is throwing a parade for the possibility of a fourth-place finish, but the club has finished fifth the last three seasons. The Orioles lost 223 games in the last two years, posting a winning percentage of .341 in 2018 and .367 last year. They are at .421 now.

Ruiz did have a nice series in Boston. He went 5-for-13 with four doubles and three RBIs. Austin Hays keeps hitting. He is 12-for-24 in his past six games and 16-for-40 (.400) over the last 11 games since he returned from the injured list.

The bottom three in the order last night - Ruiz, Ramón Urías and Cedric Mullins - went a combined 7-for-13 with five doubles, five runs and six RBIs. You could add to that hitters batting fifth and sixth in Hays and Pat Valaika, who went a combined 6-for-10.

It was a nice change for a Baltimore offense that had been mostly quiet for a while. For the Orioles, it's on to Buffalo for a series to wrap up this 2020 season.