There's nothing more rare during the Orioles' run back to relevance over the past five years than what J.J. Hardy did Friday night — errors on back-to-back plays for the first time in his career, and two in the same inning for just the second time ever.
That it's such an infrequent occurrence doesn't make Hardy feel any better about it. A day later, he beat himself up over the botches, and said they're symptomatic of the general discomfort in the field that he's been battling since returning from his foot fracture midway through June.
"It sucks," Hardy said. "Obviously, it happens. It's happened to me before plenty of times. But it's a [crummy] feeling. You know that you're letting your team down. You're making the pitchers throw more pitches. They're doing their job. They're getting the ground ball, the double-play ball they're looking for and it just doesn't happen. So it sucks. It makes me feel like [crap]. I think there's not a worse feeling in baseball, for me. I could strike out four times and not feel as bad as I do when I make an error. So two errors in one inning, two errors in a game, it just sucks."
Hardy entered Saturday with four errors this season, with half of that total coming Friday. He has been praised for being a steadying force in the Orioles infield since his return, but acknowledged Saturday that he had some trouble being steady in his first 18 games back, a span that saw him bat .254 with a .588 OPS.
"I wouldn't say pressing," Hardy said. "I feel like I'm still trying to find a little bit of a rhythm out there. It's definitely not good. I've been fighting it for a little while, not feeling really comfortable. I'm just going to continue working. I've been through it before. Hopefully, that's the end of it, but you never know. I've had bad stretches of fielding plenty of times."
Manager Buck Showalter, in defending Hardy's errors, instead praised the fact that the Orioles made so many premium defensive plays with such a slow pace of play in Friday's 9-5 loss to the Los Angeles Angels.