Zach Wilt: What's happened to the Orioles?

It's been a tough stretch for the Orioles. They have lost 10 of their last 13 games and gone from a team that had a half-game lead in the American League East on May 14 to being 2 1/2 games back of the Yankees today. The way they have lost these games has been difficult to stomach. Seven of their last 10 losses have been by one run and they have seen some significant leads vanish throughout this span. They had a 5-0 lead against the Royals on May 14 and lost 9-8. The O's were up 5-0 and then 6-2 against the Twins on May 22 and lost 14-7. Who could forget the 9-1 lead they had in New York on April 28 that resulted in the Yankees winning 14-11 in 10 innings? That one really hurt.

Despite that loss, I go back to May 10 against the Nationals as the date that the swoon began. The O's walked off against the Nats in Baltimore the night before with a 5-4 victory, then were bested by D.C. when Matt Wieters drove a single to right field off Brad Brach that scored Bryce Harper and secured a 6-5 win for the Nationals. The Orioles haven't been the same team since.

On May 9, the Birds were 12 games over .500 and had the best winning percentage in baseball (.688). Today, they are five games over and sit at .556. What happened after May 9? How has this team changed over the last 13 games?

Between opening day and May 10, the Orioles hit .253 as a team (14th in the majors) and were worth a collective 94 wRC+ (16th in the majors). Between May 10 and today, they Birds offense has hit .260 as a team (11th in the majors) and posted a 109 wRC+ (11th). Their bread and butter, the longball, has started to fly, too. The Birds hit 43 home runs in their first 33 games (0.76 per game) and have hit 24 in their last 12 games. The offense has actually been better during the swoon than it was prior. So let's take a look at the pitching.

Orioles starting pitchers posted a collective 4.63 FIP between opening day and May 10 and a 5.09 FIP between May 10 and now. Opponents hit .242 against the O's rotation prior to May 10 and .321 after that date. No starting staff has posted a higher batting average against during that time period. The rotation was the biggest question mark for the Birds entering the 2017 season, but they managed to put together some solid starts in the first month and a half of the season. Now, the starters are regressing back to the mean a bit more over the last two weeks.

Perhaps the most glaring difference between the Orioles' numbers pre-May 10 and post-May 10 are found in the bullpen. The pre-May 10 'pen posted a 4.07 FIP, while post-May 10 that number has climbed to 5.07. The relievers have also had a difficult time with hard contact during the post-May 10 swoon: 40.7 percent of their balls in play have been valued as hard contact, according to FanGraphs.com. Before May 10, that number was just 25.6 percent. In high-leverage situations, the Orioles bullpen has recorded a 7.11 FIP since May 10. They posted a 4.09 FIP between opening day and May 10.

Since 2012, the Orioles have been a club built around a powerful offense that relied heavily on the home run. Their bats carried a starting rotation that ranked in the middle to lower third of the league and were able to pick up wins with the help of a strong bullpen that seemingly shortened games for their opponents. If the O's had a lead in the sixth inning, fans felt pretty confident that they would be victorious. Removing one piece of that puzzle - in this case, the bullpen - has thrown the entire foundation off. If the Orioles are able to patch it back together, there's not reason that they can't climb back to the top of their division.

Zach Wilt blogs about the Orioles at Baltimore Sports Report. Follow him on Twitter: @zach_wilt. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. 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.