(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

The 26 year-old Paredes was already in his fourth organization, and started the year in the Majors after a cup of coffee in Baltimore in 2014. Over his four year career he had accumulated close to a full season of plate appearances with a dreadful 242/.279/.330 line and 5 total home runs. I guess the O’s saw something in him. By May 9th of ‘15, Paredes had doubled his career home run total. By the end of June, he was batting .316/.345/.507 with 9 homers and a 134 wRC+. Jeff Sullivan mentioned the breakout of JD Martinez as a comparison. 

Since then, he has not been the new and improved Jimmy Paredes. That’s not surprising, since a .392 BABIP was very unlikely to be sustainable. The strike-out rate was a little high (25%), and the walk rate was a little low (5%). But even a little regression would have been fine. The fear was that he would turn back into the old Jimmy Paredes. Boy, would that have been nice (relatively speaking).

Instead, it’s been a total collapse. Only one home run since the beginning of July, to go along with a wRC+ of 30 (.188/.234/.248). Paredes has struck out almost 34% of the time, including over 40% of the time in August thus far. His .281 BABIP is low, but not outrageously so. One of the more important parts of hitting well is hitting the ball at all, and Paredes’ contact rate has fallen from an already poor 69% to just over 62%*. He swings more frequently than almost anyone in baseball, and you have to be superman to not connect and still deliver.

* 69% would be the 7th worst mark in the Majors this year among qualified hitters. 62% would be the worst, by a couple points.

Despite being a switch-hitter, Paredes has mostly been used against right-handed pitching – and that’s mostly were his decline has come (the drop-off in production versus lefties seems to primarily be explainable via decrease in BABIP). It would be interesting to know if it’s a timing problem, as the issue seems to largely be tied to change-ups and the like. BrooksBaseball shows that he’s swinging at off-speed (non-breaking) pitches – which he would chase more often than other types previously – at an even higher rate. And though he’s whiffing a little more frequently on breaking-balls, Paredes has gone from missing when he swings at an off-speed offering a bit over 40% of the time to close to 60% of the time. Perhaps with this in mind, righties have changed how they’re pitching Paredes – starting him off with a fastball more, but going to the off-speed pitch later in the count.

Baseball is a game of constant adjustments. It’s possible that his hot start caused pitchers to actually worry about getting Jimmy Paredes out*, and their adjustments seem to be working. We’ll see if he can make the proper counter-adjustments.

* Maybe even for the first time. Paredes never even had an .852 OPS in the minors, but he did in the big leagues, at least through June.

The post Jimmy Paredes Has Turned Back Into a Pumpkin appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Kansas City is currently lapping the field in UZR (+44), but Baltimore is solidly third in the Majors at +25. Machado (+9), Hardy (+7), and Jones (+5*) are making up the majority of that for the O’s, but they’ve also been pretty good at not having someone dragging things down – only the Orioles and the Royals don’t have a single player with worse than a -3 UZR (not counting the recently acquired Gerardo Parra).

* Second year in a row in positive territory for Jones. Fielding stats are imperfect, but if they’re close enough in this case then it’s nice to see that Adam has started to chew bubblegum and play plus defense.

According to UZR, the Orioles aren’t doing so well due to their tremendous range however (they’re just 9th in the Majors there – solid, if unspectacular). Instead the Birds just don’t make errors (41, fewest in baseball). They’ll air-mail a ball once in a while, which is why they’re middle-of-the-pack when it comes to throwing errors, but when it comes to fielding the ball cleanly the O’s are almost in another league.

Team fielding errors in 2015
Worst: A’s, Pirates – 48
Average: Braves, Card’s, Reds – 32
Second: Astros, D’Backs – 25
First: Orioles – 13

That is not even close. The O’s have fewer fielding errors than two players*. Manny Machado is the only Oriole with more than one (he has 4, but that’s OK because have you seen him play third-base?). FanGraphs has errors broken down between fielding and throwing going back to 2002, and the lowest full season total they show for a team is a tie, between the 2013 Orioles and the 2013 Rays, at 25. With 105 games already in the books for Baltimore in 2015, the team is on pace to beat that handily with just 20 fielding errors. And it’s not just a friendly scorekeeper, as it looks like the O’s have made only one more fielding error on the road than at home.

* Ian Desmond and Marcus Semien have 15. Pedro Alvarez and Elvis Andrus have 13.

That 2013 Orioles team holds the Major League record for fewest total errors in a season with 54*. The current version of the Birds would need to really ratchet down on their rate of miscues to approach that mark, as they’re on pace for 63. Still, every (unearned) run saved is one less the very average O’s offense (100 wRC+) needs to score. 

* The ’13 Rays club ended up with 59 as, in a sort of mirror of the McGwire-Sosa home run record chase, both teams beat the ’03 Mariners (65).

The post The Orioles Sure Can Pick It appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

* Bedard for Tillman straight-up would be looking pretty good right now. The O’s also got Adam Jones and his 24+ fWAR as an Oriole (16 in his first six seasons in Baltimore, if you want to count it that way).

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

In 2012 the velocity came back, and since July of that year Chris Tillman has been a mainstay in the O’s rotation, putting up back-to-back 200+ IP seasons in ’13 and ’14 with ERAs in the mid-3s (and an xFIP around 4, but let’s not worry about that). Maybe the O’s group of starters coming into this year wasn’t amazing, but Tillman was still the guy who got handed the ball on Opening Day. By mid-June, his poor performance may have caused some of the old doubts to creep back in. The 5-7 record could certainly have been worse given Tillman’s 6.22 ERA, and the walks and home runs had returned. It was hard times. Thank goodness the O’s had Ubaldo Jimenez to hold things together, am I right?

Fast-forward to last night, when Chris Tillman was one out away from a complete game shutout against the Braves. Since June 28th he’s allowed 5 runs (total) in his 6 starts. That is quite a welcome turnaround.

I hear throwing strikes is pretty good, and Tillman has started pounding the zone more frequently lately. Early in the year, fewer than half his pitches were in the strike-zone (according to FanGraphs), and now it’s up to 54%. The 4.4% walk rate in July is the best month of his career (with more than one start), and the increase in strikes might be making his off-speed stuff more effective; whiff rate (from BrooksBaseball’s PitchFX tool) on the change-up has gone from 13% to 22% and on the curve it’s jumped from 12% to 35%(!). Not huge sample sizes, but it makes some sense that getting ahead in the count would allow Tillman to better utilize those pitches.

It’s possible that his improved control has come from a mechanical change or his placement on the rubber, as Tillman’s release point is both a bit more consistent as well as a few inches more to his left than it was earlier in the season. (The movement is in the opposite direction from last year, where his release point drifted to his right. Plus, in 2015 the vertical component of his release point has stayed about the same, unlike last season).

The PitchFX also actually breaks out Tillman’s fastball between a four-seamer and a sinker. And the usage of the latter – slightly slower than the four-seamer, and with a touch more drop and especially more tailing action – has ramped up recently. While fastballs still make up about 65% of Tillman’s pitches, the split between the four-seamer and sinker has gone from around 60-5 early in the season to 50-15 in the last month. This might help explain that nice improvement in home run rate, as his groundball rate has jumped from 39% to 53%(!). Wanna guess how many months in his career Chris Tillman has had a groundball rate even close to 50% before July of 2015?

Twelve. Twelve months*.

* Just kidding, it’s zero. But there have been so many times in the past where I thought I’d found a cool little factoid and it ended up like that.

This all seems neat enough – maybe he’s figured things out. But it’s only six starts, so it could certainly just be a temporary reprieve. Still, of the 1.6 fWAR Chris Tillman has this year, 1.2 of it came in July* (and his June 28th start was pretty nice too). Which means that if he can keep this going, Tillman could turn what looked like a disaster of a season into a 4 WAR one. I imagine the O’s would appreciate that sort of performance down the stretch.

* 6th in the Majors among starters, just ahead of Zack Greinke. And right behind Jake Arrieta.

The post Chris Tillman’s Recent Resurgence appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Over the last two seasons, he’s been slightly worse than Clayton Kershaw. Sometimes that sort of sentence construction would indicate sarcasm – Delmon Young is slightly worse than Mike Trout* – but not in this case. Kershaw has the lowest FIP in the Majors over that time, at 1.97(!), but Arrieta comes in second among qualified starters at 2.38. He’s been outstanding. But let’s flash back ~screen wavers~.

* This is at least close to true if you’re looking at all people, and not just the universe of Major League baseball players.

After a couple of shaky seasons in Baltimore, Jake Arrieta had a somewhat promising 2012, upping his strike-out rate and handing out fewer free passes. The 6.20 ERA looked ugly though, and the walks came back with a vengeance in 2013 (6.5 BB/9!). Arrieta was sent to the minors at the end of April, and spent most of the following two months there.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

As the calendar turns to July, the O’s are 3.5 games out of first in the AL East and have one of the worse pitching staffs in the league. At this point, it sure seems like the Orioles don’t think Jake Arrieta can pitch well. The Chicago Cubs apparently disagree. They think he has a chance to be very good. And so Arrieta (and reliever Pedro Strop) are sent over to the North Side, in return for perfectly fine starting pitcher Scott Feldman (and back-up catcher Steve Clevenger). Feldman’s job is to solidify the O’s rotation down the stretch, before he left as a free agent at the end of the year. The Orioles finished the season 12 games out of first place. Feldman pitched a little worse than he had in Chicago, but his ERA jumped close to a point (small sample sizes, it happens). He still got 3 years and $30M from the Astros in the off-season.

At the time, the trade very much fit into the pattern Dan Duquette had established. He was willing to give up a younger player that he didn’t believe would actually help the team to get a marginal “veteran” upgrade. I hated it in a vacuum, but thought it was fine once you take as a given that the O’s had lost faith in Jake Arrieta (as had many fans, who also were happy to be rid of the inconsistent Strop). If Feldman was the difference between making the playoffs and not (unlikely, but not impossible), then he’s better than actual nothing. It clearly looked like a good deal for Chicago, even if all they were doing is picking up extra years of cheap team control over a back of the rotation starter. And then we saw a magic trick, as a 5 of Diamonds turned into the Ace of Clubs*.

* In this case, of Cubs. Who are like Clubs, but with fewer Ls.**

** I am so, so sorry.

Week after week, O’s fans would see updates on the news ticker; “Jake Arrieta takes a no-hitter into the 6th inning. Again.” There was some blame heaped on Baltimore’s front office for not allowing Arrieta to throw a cutter, and that very well may be deserved. It’s also possible that some pitching coach or other should have been able to help him find the mechanics that have done so much to improve his command. But there’s a reason that a player needing a “change of scenery” is an oft-used baseball cliché, and no team can guide everyone to their ceiling. Also, the O’s might have used up all their Magic on the bullpen and (selectively) the offense*.

* Chris Davis hit 53 home runs for the team the same season Arrieta was traded. The following year Nelson Cruz hit 40, and Steve Pearce added 21 in fewer than 400 PA. Jimmy Paredes has 12 homers in 80 games for the O’s after hitting only 3 in 127 games previously. Delmon Young hit .302 with the club in 2014, and had a game-winning hit in the playoffs. Delmon Young!

This year, Arrieta has accumulated 3.7 fWAR. Orioles starters, combined, have accumulated 4.8 fWAR. It’s not crazy to think that with him replacing the not so good innings pitched by Bud Norris and Mike Wright, the Orioles (currently 4 games out in the AL East) could be in first place. But that isn’t exactly how things work. If Arrieta was still with the O’s, he probably isn’t throwing that cutter (with its 26% whiff rate) almost a third of the time. And it’s very possible that he would never have quite put it all together enough to utilize his older repertoire effectively either. In which case the Orioles would have an additional promising hard-throwing young right-hander* not being used regularly at the big league level.

* Given recent rumors, history may be repeating itself to a degree.

As a baseball fan, it’s great to see Jake living up to his potential. He sure would look good doing that at the front of the O’s rotation though, and that’s the part that rankles just a bit.

The post Jake Arrieta, The Orioles’ Could-Have-Been Ace appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.