The Orioles in 2012 used an abnormal amount of roster moves throughout the season to band-aid a rotation that broke down. Only Wei-Yin Chen made it through the entire season without being removed from the rotation due to injury or ineffectiveness. Jason Hammel succumbed to a knee injury; Jake Arrieta, Brian Matusz and Tommy Hunter were all too ineffective to stay in the rotation. The Orioles, however, were able to band-aid the rotation fairly well because they had the flexibility necessary to send pitchers on the Baltimore-Norfolk express and they were able to hit on some pitchers who were thought of as fringe type guys.

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Arrieta, Matusz and Hunter all had options remaining, so they went to the minors. Up came Chris Tillman, Miguel Gonzalez, Zach Britton, and to a lesser extent, Steve Johnson. Tillman and Gonzalez, as we all know, worked out; Johnson was effective in a tiny sample. (They also traded for Joe Saunders.) The Orioles, as the story went, didn’t necessarily have strength in quality but certainly did in quantity; if you have a bunch of fringy guys; you may very well hit on one or two of them over a 90 to 100 inning sample. And they were able to freely rotate those pitchers because most of them had options remaining. There’s value to having a flexible roster.

Fast forward to 2013 and the Orioles went into camp with a similar composition to their rotation – lots of pitchers and lots of pitchers with options, but not a ton of quality. The question, of course, was simple – was this merry-go-round rotation a viable long-term organizational strategy? (Side note: I’m sure the Orioles would love to have only used five starters to this point, but it didn’t take Nostradamus to figure out that the Orioles would be using a ton of starters this year.)

So here we are, in mid-May, and there’s only two pitchers left from their five on opening day. Jair Jurrjens will become the tenth Orioles starter this season when he starts on May 18. May 18. Injuries and ineffectiveness have again plagued the rotation, but the team’s patience seems thinner than it was last year. Arrieta, Matusz and Hunter regularly made starts deep into the summer last year. However, this year Arrieta had a leash of four starts. Josh Stinson, Zach Britton and Steve Johnson got one start before getting the heave-ho. Arrieta, Stinson, Britton, Johnson and Freddy Garcia have combined to pitch 51 innings, allow 41 runs, walk 27 batters and strike out 34. Miguel Gonzalez v2.0 hasn’t walked through that door.

I thought that the Orioles should have pursued a starter harder in the offseason; for example, I thought the deals that Brandon McCarthy, Ryan Dempster and Dan Haren signed were all solid deals for the teams involved. It didn’t make a ton of sense to me to go into the spring with so much uncertainty when it seemed pretty clear that the rotation could use more, well, certainty. However, there’s no use in crying over spilled milk. And there’s a flip side to signing a starter for even mid-range money – there’s no sending them down to the minors if they’re bad. If you sign a veteran starter reasonably big money contract, he’s not getting sent down to the minors no matter how bad he is. He’ll make his 32-34 starts barring injury. The commitment of a 25-man roster spot is one of the risks a team takes on aside from a monetary one when it signs a big league free agent. Handing Jake Arrieta the fifth starter’s job brings no roster commitment or monetary commitment. Neither does starting Britton. Or Johnson. Or Garcia. There’s value to that. The problem, however, is that you’re relying on fringy guys, and a lot of times, fringy guys pitch like fringy guys and not like 2012 Miguel Gonzalez.

Luke Jackson
Luke Jackson

Luke Jackson was born and raised in the Baltimore area and currently lives in College Park, Md. Jackson is a May 2013 graduate from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in broadcast journalism. Luke was the programming director at WMUC Sports and broadcasted Maryland football, basketball and baseball, among other sports.

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