If you know baseball, I mean really know baseball, you’ll agree that good pitching is important to winning. There are few teams that have both a successful season and a below average pitching staff. The new 60 game season will allow for a lot more variance in terms of the standings than fans are typically used to, and the Orioles are in some position to wind up with a better than expected place in the standings due in large part to that variance. But, in order to take advantage of the shorter season and the error bars on said season being somewhere in between here and the moon, the Orioles will need pitching. Where will that pitching come from? That question sounds like a fairy tale Orioles fans have been telling their children since the late 80s.
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Roughly, depending on extra innings and road losses where you don’t have to pitch the ninth, there are 540 innings in a 60 game season. That’s 1,620 outs to get. So let’s start at top: John Means is about as top as the Orioles get. He’s the team’s ace, assuming every team has an ace. And if he replicates his 2019 performance where he threw 155 innings with a 3.60 ERA (31 percent better than league average) the Orioles are off to a good start. Any supposition that has the Orioles making any noise in this abbreviated season almost has to start with that. Of course Means won’t get a chance to throw 155 innings again due to the shortness of the season. Throwing 155 innings in 2020 will be Old Hoss Radbourn-esque. But the reasonable 2020 version of that would be a great starting point. Reasons to be skeptical include Means’ lack of strikeouts (depending on the defense to get outs can be problematic), and his 2019 DRA, a Baseball Prospectus stat that shows, in essence, what a pitcher’s ERA should have been given the way they pitched. It had Means 4.61, or right around league average.
But ignore quality for a moment. Means represents, if nothing else, quantity, and quantity can be very valuable, especially when the rest of the rotation is so uncertain. A reasonable guess for Means performance this year is somewhere around 70 innings of league average ball. Anything better than that and the Orioles are playing with house money.
You will now see why I spent the better part of three paragraphs discussing the ins and outs of John Means. Beyond Means, the Orioles have Alex Cobb, Asher Wojciechowski, and GM Mike Elias brought in former Twins first round draft pick Kohl Stewart and former Mariners starter Wade LeBlanc. That’s quite a group in the sense that it is literally a group and the word “quite” in this context essentially means “yup.” It’s worth pointing out that FanGraphs projects ERAs between 5.00 and 6.00 for each of them, including Means. If your goal is to make it through 2020, nab the highest possible draft pick, and hope that 2021 means Adley Rutschman, Ryan Mountcastle, an improved sophomore campaign from Austin Hays, and maybe Ryan McKenna, Yusniel Diaz, and/or Rylan Bannon, then this is kinda the starting pitching staff you’d probably design.
None of the above means the O’s rotation can’t surprise people, much like Means did on an individual level last season, it just means that it’s pretty unlikely. Orioles fans are probably used to that, so much so that they likely read the unwritten sigh following that previous sentence.
The Orioles do have some starting pitchers who, in a more perfect world, would be on the major league roster, pushing retreads like LeBlanc and Woj off to never-never land, or possibly Detroit. Keegan Akin is a former second round pick from the 2016 draft who had some success as a 24-year-old in Triple-A last season. Akin, unlike Means, can strike batters out, a useful skill in today’s game, especially from a starting pitcher. The words “if he can learn some control” have been uttered about a million failed pitching prospects over the past 150 years, but if he ca learn some control, he could be an effective starter at the major league level. Another guy who has warts along with some skills to like is Dean Kremer. Kremer, who my computer badly wants me to call “Dean Kermit,” has the command that Akin lacks, but not quite his stuff. If only there was a machine that could combine the two. Their parents would be upset, but the Orioles would have a fantastic young pitcher on their hands. In any case, Kremer is just 24 and finished last season in Triple-A (ignore the unsightly ERA, he pitched fine). Neither guy is likely ready to step into a major league rotation by typical standards, but then what is typical about this moment we’re living in? The truth is neither guy is likely to light it up, but stranger stuff has happened, and indeed seems to happen every damn day nowadays. The point is, if the Orioles wanted to take a chance and roll the dice on the weirdness that is 2020, those are two guys with some level of upside compared to, say Wade LeBlanc (who I’m sure is a fantastic person but who posted a 5.71 ERA for the Mariners last season: yuck).
One other guy to consider is Michael Baumann. Baumann threw just 70 innings at Double-A last season, but he’ll be 25 in a few months, so it’s not like the jump would kill him. They say don’t scout the stats, but for Baumann, last season’s stats were pretty spectacular: a 2.98 ERA in 124 innings at two levels, Double- and Triple-A, with good strikeout numbers and a minuscule record of homers allowed (just four in those 124 innings).
One way the Orioles could minimize the damage their prospective starting rotation can do is by minimizing their innings and maximizing those from what could be an interesting bullpen. Mychal Givens, Tanner Scott, and Paul Fry (who I like) aren’t exactly long relief options, but some judicious managing, and a bit of experimentation could help keep opponents in check maybe more than some people (me) think. Hunter Harvey is another guy who could be a difference maker here. No reliever is projected to throw more than 24 innings, but with Harvey’s semi-recent history as a starter, perhaps he and the relievers mentioned above could shoulder a slightly increased workload. Any way the Orioles can keep the ball out of the hands of their current starting staff will work to their benefit, up to and including hiding the ball, handing out the other team’s uniform before the game, and installing a manager-enacted trap door on the mound.
This article has turned in to less ‘where are the innings going to come from?’ than ‘where should the innings come from,’ but you know, the truth is we sort of know where the innings are going to come from for the 2020 Orioles: anyone who isn’t a long term piece (with the possible exception of John Means, though I still have my doubts there). This team isn’t trying to win. It’s a sad statement, but one that Orioles fans have hopefully come to terms with by now. Like the club in the movie Major League, they could surprise and contend, sure, but when you’re comparing them to a fictional baseball team, well, that kinda answers that question.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.