The imminent approach of spring training means another thing each year besides just the return of baseball. It also means the arrival of the various projection systems that step up to try to foresee the season to come. That includes the venerable PECOTA system, which issued its proclamations today, predicting that the Orioles will have a 69-93 record in the 2018 season.
This system in particular has been spectacularly wrong about the Orioles in the past, whiffing in its Orioles projection by 10+ wins in four of the last six seasons and by 15+ in three of those seasons. Success that confounded the computers and formulas and analysts was part of what made those seasons so fun.
However, as Orioles fans know, things have been far less rosy in two of the past three seasons. PECOTA was only two wins off in 2015, projecting 79 wins for the squad that limped to an 81-81 record, and off by just three with its 72 win projection for an O's team that eventually finished with a 75-87 record. So while the O's have beaten PECOTA in six straight years, it's not going to feel much better if they continue this streak with a 73-win team.
A year ago, one could, and an idiot on this website did, come up with a rosier scenario than the PECOTA projection by simply thinking, "There's no way that the 2017 starting rotation could be as bad as the 2016 starting rotation." This was a reasonable enough belief, although perhaps I should have been more concerned about every horrible 2016 starter being present again in 2017.
As we know, the 2017 rotation was not only as bad as the 2016 rotation, it was worse. Ubaldo Jimenez and Wade Miley did not improve, with Jimenez regressing from already-terrible numbers. Chris Tillman collapsed entirely even as he and the Orioles insisted that his shoulder was totally fine. Desperate July acquisition Jeremy Hellickson was worse than getting no help at all.
It's a tougher proposition for even the most partisan of Orioles fans to assail a projection like the one PECOTA has made here for this season. When you look at a starting rotation that is projected to have all of Alec Asher, Gabriel Ynoa, and Mike Wright, it's like, yes, of course that would look like a team that's going to give up 876 runs and be among the four worst teams in baseball.
The biggest piece of good news about the projection is that the number of available free agents means that the Orioles have the opportunity, if they sign or unearth the right players, to substantially improve on this projection. If Asher and Ynoa are replaced by two-win pitchers, that would make the Orioles better by about five wins. Not that a 74-win projection is great, either, but the O's have blown past something like that into the playoffs before.
There is an obvious problem with trying to cling to that good news: The Orioles don't sound like they're going to try very hard to sign any of those free agents. Perhaps an even more obvious problem than that is that the last four times the Orioles tried to add to their MLB rotation, they signed or acquired, in order: Jimenez, Yovani Gallardo, Miley, and Hellickson. Do they even know how to decide who's the right player to sign?
Though the starting rotation remains an apparently obvious fatal flaw, there are other players for whom an optimist could envision better performance than expected. One big example here is Jonathan Schoop, projected to be worth about two wins this year when he was worth about five last year. That's another three wins - if Schoop duplicates his 2017 performance.
In a similar vein, Manny Machado turning in "only" a three-win season as a springboard into free agency and an anticipated mega contract would feel like a disappointing performance for him. We know he's capable of better. He was worth almost seven wins in 2016. So maybe there's another three wins sitting right there with an optimistic idea for Machado.
That's a big maybe. This is not guaranteed. Neither is it a guarantee that Richard Bleier, who posted a 1.99 ERA in 2017, will beat his PECOTA-projected 4.63 ERA, nor that Brad Brach will beat a 4.13 ERA even though his overall ERA in four seasons as an Oriole is 2.74.
But for someone who desperately needs to believe that this season isn't a lost cause before it even begins - a group of people that may possibly even include GM Dan Duquette in its number - there is a life line to cling to, at least for now, before the "Nestor Cortes and Miguel Castro in the starting rotation" experiment goes the way most people who aren't Duquette assume it will go.
The pessimist might look at all of this and come away thinking that it's a fraught path to success for the 2018 Orioles even if by some longshot they're able to address their biggest glaring weakness from the past two seasons. There are a lot of ifs and maybes there, and that's without even getting into the disappointing slugger tandem of Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo, from whom the Orioles both need a rebound that may not be coming.
Where does it all leave the Orioles? PECOTA has given its answer: 69 wins. Orioles fans have to hope that the system is as hilariously wrong as it has been in the past. Fears about the starting rotation, and two recent disappointing seasons, are going to make it harder to dismiss the projection as just being that "PECOTA hates the Orioles."