FanPost

2016 pitching

There is the old saying "good pitching beats good hitting" and also "good pitching wins championships" but the Orioles don't believe in old sayings, and this year's iteration of Orioles baseball is trying to mash good pitching out of the park. But you simply don't win your division and get far in the post season without pitching, so how have the Orioles been able to lead the AL East, and at times even the whole league, with a sub-par starting rotation? It has been fun to watch this version of the O's, a team that has surprised many of its fans and performed above pre-season predictions of a distant division finish - in spite of poor starting pitching. With 2/3s of the season in the books I wanted to look closer at the rotation and see how it compared with the other teams contending in the AL.

To get a better idea of how this Orioles team compares to the top teams in their league I limited the comparison to teams currently above .500 in winning percentage and, at this point, best positioned to make post-season play. I also limited the comparison to only the top 5 starters in each team's rotation - based on their total number of starts through August 7, the date these stats were collected from mlb.com. The table below includes predominantly summary data for the top 5 starters of each team included except for ERA which I weighted by the innings pitched by each starter and then IP is weighted by the total number of games pitched; the pitching AVG is just the overall average for the starting rotation.

W L pct. wtd. ERA G GS wtd. IP H R ER HR BB SO AVG
CLE 62 47 0.569 3.531 103 96 123.9 536 265 241 78 180 578 0.232
TOR 63 49 0.563 3.650 109 109 138.6 610 300 280 82 212 571 0.232
TEX 64 47 0.577 3.824 88 88 111.2 486 242 222 66 185 369 0.246
HOU 57 53 0.518 4.132 102 101 123.6 628 285 276 72 197 524 0.269
BOS 60 49 0.55 4.164 102 91 123.4 569 301 271 71 166 503 0.259
DET 61 50 0.55 4.177 104 95 117.2 584 293 268 71 182 462 0.266
SEA 56 53 0.514 4.366 94 87 106.2 519 272 253 79 168 438 0.256
BAL 63 47 0.573 4.795 93 88 103.7 529 274 265 69 193 405 0.277

The first thing that jumps out when sorting by ERA is that the Birds' rotation drops all the way to the bottom, and trails by a lot - almost a half run. But look at those wins! Only 1 behind Texas as of August 7 - and the losses are in a 3-way tie for fewest in the AL. From there it's not very pretty: the O's give up a lot of walks, trailing only Toronto and Houston in BBs by their starters; this becomes a major contributor to the lofty ERA. There is only one team in the AL that has fewer strike outs than the Birds and that's Texas, who have five fewer combined games from their starting rotation. And then there's the AVG, where the O's trail all the other playoff contending teams in the AL.

But it's not all bad: the Oriole's starting five give up the 2nd least amount of home runs among these teams - which is a good thing considering the high number of walks. And, the O's starters don't give up a lot of hits, only the Rangers and Seattle give up a fewer number of hits, respectively.

Notes:

  • The Orioles starting five own a 30-win, 30-loss record as of August 7; no other playoff contending team in the AL has a .500 or below record from their starters.
  • In order to make up the O's top five to date I had to include 2 starters that are no longer in the rotation: Ubaldo Jimenez (18 starts, 9 Losses and 7.06 ERA) and Tyler Wilson (13 starts, 6 Ls, 4.98 ERA).
  • When you include the bullpen to their overall pitching stats the Orioles team ERA improves to 4.19, which is 6th best in the AL as of this writing.

The one aspect of good rotations is the quality and quantity of innings by the starters, and in this the Orioles have plenty of room for improvement. By moving Dylan Bundy into the rotation out of the bullpen and picking up LHP Wade Miley by the trade deadline, the Orioles have hopefully bolstered their pitching depth in time to make a significant run in the playoffs.

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