The Baltimore Orioles’ 2014 Playoff Rotation

With the Orioles clinching their first American League East pennant since 1997, it’s time to celebrate. Fans of the Baltimore Orioles: rejoice in the season’s equivalent of extra innings, the free baseball that comes with an extra serving of national attention. For the Orioles, the work isn’t over yet, though. Not for a team that’s slugged its way through obstacles like injuries to talented key players and (sigh) PED suspensions. Not for a team that has a legitimate shot at a deep postseason run. For the 2014 Baltimore Orioles, the hard work is only just beginning. Like it has all season, the offense will ride on the bats of stars like Adam Jones and Nelson Cruz and timely contributions from unheralded players like Steve Pearce. The defense will be led by stalwart JJ Hardy and owner of a MegaMan-esque arm cannon Jonathan Schoop and the quiet pitch framing help of Caleb Joseph. The Orioles have yet to announce which members of the rotation will lead the team from the bump. Rest assured, these pitchers will face scrutiny from the media like they have since Opening Day. “Not aces” and “journeymen,” all of them, the baseball equivalent to the NFL’s “game manager.” And I’m very confident, the staff of the Baltimore Orioles will turn in quality start after quality start, humbly and relatively anonymously doing their jobs well. These four starters are my choice to lead the Orioles to battle and to greatness.

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Chris Tillman

Lately, even Chris Tillman’s worst starts are quality starts. Since the All Star Break, he’s tied for fourth in the AL with 9 quality starts, or a quality start in 75% of his appearances. Tillman is also fifth among all starters in a stat that rarely draws attention: vertical movement on his fastball. Tillman’s average fastball has nearly 12 inches of vertical movement on it – more than notably pretty okay pitchers like Clayton Kershaw – meaning the ball doesn’t drop as much as it should, and batters expecting something more standard will be left swinging under the pitch or popping it up. It’s part of the reason Tillman’s whiff percentage on his fastballs is highest in the top of the strike zone and just above the zone: batters think they’re getting a belt-high fastball and it just never drops that far down.

In Tillman’s complete game shutout of possible future playoff opponent Kansas City Royals on May 16, his average fastball vertical break was a whopping 12.51 inches on 77 fastballs. Only one player whiffed on a fastball in that game, but 15 batters put fastballs into play for outs and only four reached base on fastballs. It’s hard to make good contact when pitches are placed well and seem to be defying gravity. His fastball was worth 3 runs saved in that game, which is both incredibly impressive and understandable when it’s thrown so often. Tillman’s high fastball makes his looping curveball that much more devastating. When he’s throwing it well, Tillman’s curveball lands in the dirt and still gets swinging strikes. In that CGSO, his average curveball dropped 11.36 inches, so it ended up about two feet below where his average fastball crossed the plate. That makes Tillman incredibly difficult to hit when he’s in control of his pitches.

 

Wei-Yin Chen

The Orioles’ greatest recent international signing is quietly putting together another very good year in the rotation. Chen has accrued 2.3 fWAR this season, already his highest total ever, and leads all Orioles pitchers with a minimum of 100 innings pitched. His biggest improvement this season is one that he can hopefully hold on to: he rarely walks batters. Chen issues a free pass to 1.66 batters per nine innings, considered excellent by the FanGraphs library. He’s actually striking out fewer batters this season than he has in the past, but because he’s not walking anyone, it’s not coming back to hurt him. His K/BB ratio is over 4, also the best among starters, nearly doubling from the previous two seasons. As a result, his SIERA has dropped all the way to 3.82 from the 4.20-ish mark he held in 2012 and 2013. Typically a flyball pitcher, Chen has upped the rate at which he forces ground balls as well. While he’s still not a pronounced groundball pitcher – he induces grounders in 40% of at-bats – it’s given the defense behind him the chance to do their jobs. According to Baseball-Reference, the defense behind Chen saves 0.42 runs per nine innings. That figure is pretty typical of the Orioles’ rotation this season, but Chen has helped himself by pitching to the excellent infield backing him up. To be perfectly honest, none of Chen’s pitches approach the top of baseball in velocity, movement, or results like whiff% or groundball%. He’s simply a consistent pitcher with decent stuff that can locate his pitches well. In 2014, he’s done a better job of concentrating his pitches low and away in the zone, particularly against lefties. It’s the reason his GB% against left-handed hitters is over 55%. Like most lefties, Chen gives up more home runs to right handers, but this year he’s actually striking out righties more often. He also happens to walk them more often as well (still only 4.8% of the time, great by FanGraphs standards), but that’s probably part of his dedication to keeping the ball low in the zone or away from right handed batters. Righties do end up hitting the ball in the air against Chen, but a whopping 12.4% of the time, balls in play end up being infield flys. He might never pitch very deep in a single game, but Chen will give the Orioles a chance to get ahead in every game he plays in. With the stacked bullpen that Baltimore will carry into October, that’s all this team needs.

 

Bud Norris

The third pitcher in the Orioles’ playoff rotation will be Bud Norris, in 2013 a midseason pickup via trade. Norris has been very good for the Orioles since then, occasionally turning in a gem or a laying an egg. Generally, he keeps the Orioles in the game but doesn’t blow anyone away. One of his greatest assets is his ability to pitch to lefties and righties equally as well. In 2014, lefties are hitting .252/.327/.407 and righties are hitting .234/.301/.384 against Norris. Essentially, lefties get an extra hit every 50 at-bats but don’t walk any more often or hit for that much more power. According to FanGraphs, Norris’s most valuable pitch this season has been his slider, worth 5.8 runs above average. He actually locates his slider very well, consistently hitting the bottom corner of the zone. When he fails to place it correctly, though, it can get hammered. If Norris misses the corner and throws the slider up and away, opposing right handed batters are slugging .750 against it. When he hits the corner or just outside the zone, righties are slugging under .200. He’s using it as an out pitch against righties, tossing it 49% of the time with two strikes compared to just 39% of the time overall. Norris’ changeup is key against lefties, and FanGraphs again rates it as worth 2.8 runs above average. He throws it 13% of the time against lefties, compared to just 4% of the time against righties. In fact, Norris tends to throw more offspeed and breaking pitches against lefties in general. Look for Norris to make an attempt to catch left-handed hitters off guard by throwing the changeup right away – he does that 19% of the time. Norris actually has pretty solid velocity, throwing his fastballs for an average of 93.2 miles per hour this season, which is his highest rate since 2010, but gets better results from his other pitches. Opposing batters hit .270 off of his fastball, and the pitch is rated as 13.2 runs below average this season. That’s actually better than it was during his time with the Astros. Perhaps this is all because Norris’ fastball doesn’t move horizontally much. In 2014, the average horizontal movement on his four-seam fastball is 4 inches, which is well below that of league leaders. Even in his best outing this season, an 8-inning, 3-hit affair against Boston, his fastball didn’t move horizontally more than 4 inches. I hesitate to call him a crafty pitcher because that sells his velocity short. It’s unlikely Norris will pitch deep into games in the playoffs, but the common refrain for this rotation is keeping the Orioles in games. Norris can and will do that for this team.

 

Miguel Gonzalez

A former scrap heap pickup and subsequent 2012 playoff stud with 7 innings of one-run ball against the Yankees, Miguel Gonzalez seems to keep succeeding just because. Nothing about him is otherworldly; he’s a true back-of-the-rotation starter who is regularly the subject of bullpen relegation talks. Regardless, he delivers consistent results somewhat inconsistently. So far as I can tell, he doesn’t have one repeatable skill that’s carried over from season to season that keeps him effective. Maybe he’s lucky. Maybe he’s adaptable. Either way, he’s earned the chance to pitch in the postseason. Gonzalez’s most valuable pitch this season is his slider, which he throws twice as often right handed batters. Per PITCHf/x, it’s worth nearly 10 runs above average this season despite throwing it only 51 times to righties (, while every other one of Gonzalez’s pitches is at or below average. When he grooves it, batters can hit Gonzalez’s slider for extra bases: opposing righties have an ISO of .159 against it. At the same time, righties are batting just .175 and .042 with two strikes against the slider. Gonzalez has thrown his sinker and split-finger fastballs often this season. The sinker is currently his second-most-thrown pitch. It’s not always serving him well: opponents are hitting .359 with a .594 SLG against Gonzalez’s sinker.  If he’s throwing it well, though, Gonzalez will be a successful postseason pitcher. The reason Gonzalez uses his sinker and split-finger fastball so often is because they, along with his slider, generate a ton of ground balls. Nearly 50% of his sinkers and sliders that enter play are ground balls, and over 60% of sinkers that enter play are ground balls.

In his last 5 games, Gonzalez hasn’t grooved a split-finger fastballand has only grooved 5 sinkers. Not surprisingly, each of Gonzalez’s last five outings have gone at least 6 innings (including one CGSO!) and he holds a 1.55 ERA in that time.

The Bullpen

I won’t list every member of my ideal playoff bullpen. The names are familiar; you already know them. Britton. O’Day. Miller. Hunter. I expect Brad Brach to be an X factor, despite his recent shaky outings.

I bring up the bullpen because it contains one of the greatest weapons on the Orioles’ roster: Kevin Gausman.¹ The young and future ace has served the Orioles admirably in their rotation this season, but his regular-season innings are reaching a tipping point. While good, his outings have been inconsistent. I fear, as the Orioles might, that Gausman is reaching the point of diminishing and unpredictable returns for 2014, which is why I expect him to join the party in the bullpen. Gausman can throw fire as a starter, but the wear on his arm might dampen his ability to do so in October. Short bullpen outings would give him the opportunity to rip his 97-mile-per-hour fastball into the strike zone without worrying about going for any distance. At the same time, his starting pitching pedigree gives Buck Showalter the opportunity to employ a short leash on Gausman’s former rotation mates. A shaky first inning from Chris Tillman – which wouldn’t be a surprise, though it could be devastating in a short series – could also become a limited outing with little to no dropoff in pitching ability. Gausman can be used effectively as a backup plan, or he can be used to make the game one inning shorter.² Either way, his best role for the team this year is in the bullpen. Notably absent from the bullpen will be Ubaldo Jimenez. In the first year of his four-year deal, Jimenez has proven nothing worth a playoff roster spot. His only consistency is that he’s inconsistent: nobody’s sure if he’ll fall apart in the first or fifth innings. He hasn’t proven effective out of the bullpen, and his limited action since moving to the outfield may tip Buck’s trust in the expensive offseason acquisition. He hasn’t earned a spot on the playoff roster.

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1. When I began writing this article, I tweeted that I wished that I had pictures of the Orioles’ pitchers looking like superheroes. This goes doubly for The Gasman. He already has a great nickname! 2. Seriously, opposing offenses have to look at the back end of the Baltimore bullpen and think that maybe it’s worth it just to go home after the sixth inning. It’s not like they’re going to get any work done against that crew.