Orioles: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Preseason Predictions – Pitchers
Sep 18, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter (26) points to the bullpen as he takes out Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Tyler Wilson (63) during the fifth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Every spring here on The Baltimore Wire I do the very crazy thing of making bombastic predictions about what is upcoming for the Orioles that year. And I promise to come back at the end of the season and either brag or hide in shame from what was said. So here I am.
As a site that is on the FanSided Network, I suppose I may be prone, as a fan of the team, to be overly optimistic. Even so, there are more than a few players I’ve been very hard on over the years, to the extent that I hope they themselves never get around to reading what I wrote about them!
So in review this year, let’s go with the three categories of the good, the bad, and the ugly (in terms of prediction accuracy) — looking today at pitchers, tomorrow at position players, and Tuesday at the overall team predictions from early April.
We know that the Orioles starters did not have a stellar season, whereas the bullpen performed relatively well. Here are some quick comparative numbers and rankings in the American League …
| Year | ERA | Runs/Game | Saves | WHIP |
| 2014 | 3.43 – 3rd | 3.66 – 3rd | 53 – 1st (tie) | 1.241 – 6th |
| 2015 | 4.05 – 8th | 4.28 – 9th | 43 – 8th | 1.317 – 10th |
Next: Got it pretty much right on these seven pitchers …