Baltimore Orioles: Chris Tillman and the 59-foot Pitch
Baltimore Orioles ace starter Chris Tillman simply could not find the feel for his pitches in Seattle Thursday evening as the O’s dropped the series opener 5-3.
As with most pitchers, it is all about command. Tillman’s stuff was plenty good enough, he simply could not put the ball where he desired. He never found the curve ball, walking two batters in the first inning before giving up the initial run on 30 pitches. Tillman was over 100 pitches in the fifth inning and was out of the game after giving up four runs.
My primary memory of attending games at Oriole Park pitched by Tillman is that they have been endless affairs due to the first innings taking one-half of forever to complete. He often has a problem settling into the game in the opening frame.
Over his career, Tillman has a 5.08 ERA in first innings. The next inning isn’t much better at 4.83. Then he has very good numbers in the next three frames before it jumps up again in sixth innings.
In spite of the overall very good year he has had in 2016, Tillman’s splits for this season actually rather precisely mirror the inning-by-inning numbers posted above.
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The trend is not good for Tillman, and it is therefore grievous for the hopes of the Orioles this season. They simply HAVE TO HAVE Tillman pitching at a very high level.
In his first 10 games of this season he posted an ERA of 2.61 with a batting average against of just .204. In the seven games since then his ERA is 5.31 with a BAA of .286. This is troubling.
Some issues related to 59-foot curve balls in the dirt…
- Matt Wieters made one amazing catch and stop after another, stopping some even with his face.
- It was great and fortuitous that Caleb Joseph did not have to be the guy catching on this night, or it might have been one day back before being painfully out again.
- Since the umpires throw every ball that is pitched in the dirt out of the game, it was a wonder they did not run out of baseballs last night by the fifth or sixth inning.
On a positive note, the Orioles did indeed set a new all-time MLB home run record for the month of June. The big blow came from that power bat of Hyun Soo Kim, who else?