Baltimore Orioles: The Team We Expect to See Winning Games

The Baltimore Orioles improved to 4-0 on the young season with a 6-1 win over the Rays, doing so in the style expected of them by hitting four home runs.

Tampa Bay starter Chris Archer threw 212 innings last year with a 3.23 ERA, giving up a total of 19 home runs. He gave up four solo shots on Friday night: a second inning blast by Chris Davis, and fifth inning homers to Jonathan Schoop, Nolan Reimold and Manny Machado.

On the other hand, Orioles starter Chris Tillman was not as stellar as his abbreviated two-inning start on Opening Day, but he was still sufficiently good. He gave up just one run on four hits and two walks, the run being an Evan Longoria no-doubter in the first inning.  Again the O’s bullpen was great, giving up only one hit in the final four innings.

Tillman struggled some in the first three innings before having good fourth and fifth frames.

Here are two issues I see with Tillman that get him into trouble.

First, he often has a rough start in his games before settling down. The on-base percentage against him in both the first and second innings of pitching over his career is a not-so-great .348 in each. After that it settles down to much lower numbers. Tillman actually improves as games go along, which is backwards relative to most starters. Here is the career average of batters against him in the first, second, third and fourth times through the lineup: first = .269, second = .244, third = .240, and fourth = .208 (only a total of 52 plate appearances, but still impressive).

Secondly, Tillman pitches much better with the bases empty and from the wind-up. In those situations he has an average against of .247 versus .258 with runners on base. That is not dramatically different and is probably true of most pitchers.

But making it worse than it first appears is that Tillman too often (compared to most top starters) allows first batters of games and first batters in an inning on base. With game leadoff batters, his BAA/OBP is .287/.353, and with leadoff hitters in an inning it is .255/.323.  That .255 is the exact batting average of all hitters in the American League in 2015, and the OBP against Tilly is higher than the AL average of .318.

But Chris Tillman pitched out of whatever jams he was in on Friday night, and his ball movement is clearly much better than in 2015, as is the velocity. This looks pretty good and bodes well for the future and for this season.

So, I usually don’t look at standings for at least several weeks of the season, but I looked to see if anyone else was still unbeaten in the AL, and yes, Detroit is 3-0. But they beat the Yankees, so that’s a good thing.

And we can’t go getting too excited too quickly (just like we couldn’t get too depressed because it took 13 attempts to win a spring training game). The 2011 Baltimore Orioles started the season 5-0 and won eight of the first nine. But then they went 61-92 the rest of the way.

Tracking and Prorating Home Runs and Strikeouts

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As written in the preseason, throughout the 2016 season here on The Baltimore Wire we will keep track of the pace of the Orioles relative to both home runs and strikeouts. For example, if the Orioles have over 500 strikeouts in the first 54 games (exactly one-third of a season), we will know that are on their way to challenging the all-time strikeout record of 1553.

With only four games played, the current stats don’t mean much, but to get the graph started on the season, here is where we are at this point …

So there is much to be encouraged about, even if it is only four games. We certainly didn’t want to see the Birds get off to a terrible start. And the only thing hot at all in Maryland right now is the Orioles baseball team. Stay warm this weekend, and good luck with that if you head out to the ballpark. I plan to catch the Shorebirds playing in Hagerstown on Sunday afternoon.