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.