Baltimore Orioles: Defending the Denigrated Rotation

The starting rotation for the Baltimore Orioles is most often thought to be the weak link on the team, but there is reason to hope for better outcomes even in the near future.

Without doubt, though I have often defended the starters over recent years in the face of what I perceive to be frequently wrongful and unjust criticism, it was difficult to contend for them in 2015. After posting the fifth-best ERA in the American League in 2014 at 3.61, they then dropped to 14th a year later at 4.53.

Currently the Orioles starters are in the very middle of the AL pack at eighth place with a 4.31 ERA, and they are ninth in the statistical category of batting average against at .252. The league average for each is 4.19 and .256.

So it is pretty average at best. But there is a better way of looking at this.

Let’s take out the nine combined starts of Yovani Gallardo (4) and Ubaldo Jimenez (5). They have ERA numbers of 7.00 and 5.40. The total ERA of all other starting pitchers other than these two is 3.58.

Now I do understand that any team could take their starting rotation and drop out their two worst performers and significantly decrease the ERA. So let’s just take out one of them — Gallardo — since he is on the DL with no imaginable timetable as to when a return could happen. Adding Jimenez back in, the new ERA is 3.93. In other words, that is the team starting pitching ERA of the current staff on the active 25-man roster. That is not going to be the best in the league, but add this to the top-tiered bullpen and the potent lineup, along with arguably the best defense, and you have something quite commendable.

Steve Melewski of MASN put together another similar summary along this same line yesterday by writing …

If you take Gausman’s three starts this season, Chris Tillman’s last three starts and the last start each for Tyler Wilson and Mike Wright, you get an ERA of 1.78 with 10 earned runs over 50 2/3 innings and seven quality starts in eight outings. A nice run, indeed.

So I do think the rotation is going to be fine. To be truthful, I worry more about how this lineup is so effectively shut down when they run into a strong pitching performance, as they did in the final two games with the Yankees and on several other occasions already this year.

In an unrelated note, I thought the second base pickoff throw of Matt Wieters on Thursday night was one of the more impressive plays I have seen this year. That would seem to indicate that his arm is completely fine! As a pitcher, it is great when the catcher gets you out of an inning, which Matt did after the Zach Britton walk and wild pitch that put the runner at second base with two outs.

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The throw made me think of something I have not thought about in years. As a collegiate pitcher, I had a great catcher with a big arm (and a power bat … who later played some minor league ball). One time I walked the first two batters in an inning. For some reason, the other team attempted a double steal on the first pitch to the third hitter. He swung through a fastball and the catcher threw out the lead runner at third. On the next pitch which was a four-seamer called a strike, like Wieters, my catcher came up and picked the runner off second base. My third pitch was a slow breaking ball in the dirt that the hitter chased and missed. The pitch went to the backstop where the catcher chased it down and nailed the batter at first by a step.

You gotta love a catcher like that. And the Orioles have two of them, both of them playing today in the doubleheader with Oakland. The O’s now have Mike Wright starting in the first game at 1:05 and Jimenez pitching in the darker environment at 7:05.

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