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Splitting O's

When do the O's pitch and hit their best?

By Ryan Pollack
Hannah Foslien

I thought it'd be fun to use Baseball-Reference's Split Finder tool to see how the O's are doing in various situations. There's some interesting data and fun observations to be had here. All stats are through Sunday.

Pitching Splits

  • Away: 3.81 ERA, batters are hitting .252/.319.388 against O's pitchers.
  • Home: 4.87 ERA, batters are hitting .258/.341/.440. The offensive boost given by OPACY rears its head here.
  • vs. right-handed batters: 3.93 ERA, batters are hitting .238/.315/.383.
  • vs. left-handed batters: 4.74 ERA, batters are hitting .273/.346/.444. We see now where the damage is being done.
  • Bonus split: lefty-on-lefty. 4.23 ERA, .260/.295/.418. O's lefties get hit pretty hard by left-handed batters. Not what you want to see.

Starters' splits by times through lineup:

  • First time faced: 3.87 ERA, .234/.311/.382.
  • Second time faced: 4.76 ERA, .263/.336/.432.
  • Third time faced: 6.91 ERA, .311/.378/.547. Basically, if you face an Orioles starter for the third time in a game, you hit like Mike Trout. Yikes.
By first-pitch strike:
  • In plate appearances that begin in a 1-0 count, O's pitchers allow a batting line of .271/.385/.433.
  • In plate appearances that begin in an 0-1 count, O's pitchers allow a batting line of .214/.270/.351. You can see the correlation of success and a first-pitch strike in these numbers.
The worst count for an O's pitcher to be in is, oddly enough, 1-2. In this count O's pitchers allow an OPS+ that is 21% worse than the rest of the league. (There are worse counts, but either the sample size isn't meaningful or the BABIP for those counts is too high.)

The best count for an O's pitcher to be in is 1-0. In this count O's pitchers allow an OPS+ that is 22% better than the rest of the league.

Batting Splits

  • Away: On the road, O's batters hit .273/.326/.451.
  • Home: .256/.322/.418. You can see why the O's lose at home; the pitchers allow an extra run every nine innings and the hitters do worse than they do on the road.
  • vs. RHP: .278/.340/.447.
  • vs. LHP: .232/.286/.408. Why can't we hit lefties?
  • Bonus split: lefty-on-lefty. .228/.282.368.
Against starters multiple times in a game:
  • First time faced: .300/.344/.533. The O's like to score early!
  • Second time faced: .236/.295/.398.
  • Third time faced: .284/.355/.420. It's fascinating to me that the second matchup is so bad but the third one is quite good.
By first-pitch strike:
  • In plate appearances that begin in a 1-0 count, O's batters hit .264/.372/.450.
  • In plate appearances that begin in an 0-1 count, O's batters hit .256/.289/.394.
O's batters have done the best in even counts (0-0, 1-1, 2-2). In these counts, batters' OPS+ is 18% better than the rest of the league.

O's batters have done the worst in 0-1 counts. In this count, batters' OPS+ is 9% worse than the rest of the league.


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