Kicking off the third week of the season, the Orioles find themselves in first place with an 8-3 record as their offense has been even better than expected. The team is scoring 5.5 runs per game – fourth in the league (numbers are crazy early on, the Cards are scoring 7.1 R/G) – while the pitching has been something of a surprise, allowing 4.1 runs per game (beating the 4.2 league average). Unsurprisingly, the team’s ERA is built on the bullpen’s success (2.03, 2nd-best in MLB) as the starters have really struggled, as expected if we’re being honest (5.14, 8th-worst).
However, there is a silver lining. The rotation carries a 3.59 FIP, good for 13th in the league. So by the base skills, the rotation has pitched much better than their results. With this offense, if they can manage a middle-of-the-pack ERA out of the rotation, they are going to stick around in this AL East. Of course, even accounting for the small sample of just 11 games, the pitching has played out to the script. We kinda knew coming in that the starters were the biggest question on this club.
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Let’s look at the three mainstays and see if we can find a silver lining with each of them that might help push the team’s ERA closer toward the FIP. Vance Worley and Mike Wright are unlikely to stick in the rotation and one of them will certainly be gone when Kevin Gausman returns.
UBALDO JIMENEZ: 3.75 ERA, 2.86 FIP
We will start with the one start whose ERA is south of 5.00 so far. He has allowed 14 hits in his two starts, but also has 14 strikeouts and a 56% groundball rate. I still don’t really see Jimenez as much more than a low-to-mid 4.00s ERA pitcher, but I do like the early usage of his splitter. It’s up at a career-high 21% and I’d like to see him maintain or add to it as we move forward. When he’s burying it in the zone, it’s a really good pitch that a lot of batters swing over the top of as evidenced by the six punchouts he’s already notched with it in just 10 plate appearances.
The splitter to Eddie Rosario is the one he wants all the time (Rosario is the lefty batter in that GIF). The one to Byron Buxton is hardly bad, but you really have to be careful not to hang splitters so I’m more comfortable when it’s diving off the table and bouncing in there. The extra splitter usage is coming from the fastball, another factor I like about the surge given how much Jimenez struggles to command the heater (13% BB rate with it as an Oriole).
CHRIS TILLMAN: 5.11 ERA, 3.11 FIP
He’s a good example of how volatile small samples are early in the season. He entered his third start with a 1.29 ERA and after a bad sixth inning in which he allowed five runs, it was at 5.11. I didn’t get to see that game because I was out of town and when I lamented his outing on Twitter, I was told there was some misfortune for Tillman. Upon review, that’s fair. Mitch Moreland’s double and Ian Desmond’s single – back-to-back hits after legit knocks by Nomar Mazara and Adrian Beltre – were trash hits.
Moreland’s double fell into a no man’s land area in left field and was inches from being foul. Desmond was jammed on the handle and Chris Davis was indecisive about going to home or first and wound up getting nobody. Mychal Givens cost him a run after he was replaced, too. However, even with some leeway on the bottom line of 6 ER, Tillman still wasn’t great in Texas.
He only notched six swinging strikes in 86 pitches. He had four on Opening Day in those brilliant innings before the rain. A handful of little factors make up Tillman’s silver lining for me. First off, even with the struggles in Texas, he still has an 11% swinging strike rate – a career-high. He’s getting a lot of them with his fastball which is particularly encouraging. He has a 14% SwStr% with the fastball. His highest full season mark is 2013’s 10% and league average is about 5-7% depending on four-seamer or sinker.
Tillman has also elevated his cutter usage (though some sites classify it as a slider) and it’s also missing bats early on. Now the classification isn’t usually a major deal, but cutters have a lot lower SwStr% rates than sliders across the league. At 86-88 MPH, I understand why Brooks Baseball classifies it as a cutter. A cutter getting a 17% SwStr% is huge (league average 10%), but it’s still above average for a slider (15%). We know cutters are a point of contention in Baltimore, but again the classification doesn’t really matter if he’s having success with it.
I also like the spike in groundball rate off of the changeup so far. It’s at 56%, compared to a 45% career mark. I don’t expect him to become some big-time groundball guy (career 40%, never higher than 44%), but I like that the fastball and cutter get flyballs/pop-ups while the change gets grounders. Above all, I really want to see Tillman continue to miss bats regularly. If he does that, he can become a reliable mid-3.00s ERA kind of guy. He held mid-3.00s in 2013-14, but his ERA indicators suggested he was low-to-mid 4.00s.
YOVANI GALLARDO: 5.63 ERA, 3.11 FIP
Hmm, so… umm… yeah, a silver lining. I’m really at a loss here because even with the necessary caveats for three starts, he’s just not showing any real skills to feel good about right now. He’s not even generating the groundballs we’ve seen the last several years. And usually if you’re at a 44% flyball rate, there are some pop-ups to lessen the negative impact of them, but he literally has zero pop-ups! His waning strikeout is even worse early on. I didn’t like it at the 18% and 15% marks of 2014 and 2015 so it’s hard to say anything remotely positive about a 13% rate.
His velocity is also down substantially. His 88 MPH average fastball is a career-low and his max (90.8) is even matching last year’s average (91.6). I know I promised a silver lining for the three rotation mainstays, but I can’t just make one up for Gallardo. Best I can say is that we are talking about just three starts. That’s a tiny sample, no matter how bad. I don’t want to get smoked by confirmation bias, either, but the skills lagging and lower velocity have me concerned about a guy I wasn’t high on in the first place.
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The simple fact is that one of these three guys will have to be markedly better than expectations in addition to the long-awaited Gausman breakout if this team is going to continue having this level of success.
Paul Sporer is currently a contributor to FanGraphs / RotoGraphs. He has worked for/still works for Rotowire, Baseball Prospectus, Rotogrinders, The Fantasy Fix, Draft Day, and PaintTheBlack.com – his own website centered around pitching. Additionally, he’s written for several Baseball Prospectus Annuals, contributed to Rotowire’s 2015 magazine, and spoken at a couple of BaseballHQ First Pitch Arizona events. His popular starting pitching guide is available at paulsporer.com.