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The home run is his biggest issue against righties. He has allowed homers at a 5% clip against righties since the start of 2015, second to only Anibal Sanchez (6%) for the league’s worst mark. If you remove home runs, Gausman drops to a .591 OPS against righties which is still worse than average (.575, min. 380 batters faced), but nowhere near worst in the league level. What leaves him so homer-prone against same-handed opposition? Honestly, it’s his entire arsenal, but as a 69-70% fastball pitcher it always comes down to the heater.

In 2014, he had a career-best .662 OPS against right-handers, allowing just 3 HRs in 189 PA. The fastball was the driving force, allowing a .663 OPS in 151 of those plate appearances. More importantly, they hit just one homer off the heat. He had just a 6% HR/FB rate that season and while he almost certainly had some influence on that, there was also some good fortune. A rate like that is best-in-the-league kind of stuff. Since the start of 2014, just two qualified starters have a 6% HR/FB – Jake Arrieta and Adam Wainwright – and they are pacing the league (min. 300 IP). Gausman’s 11% in that timeframe sits 67th out of the 109 qualified pitchers.

If the 6% in 2014 had some good luck behind it, perhaps the 14% he’s had since then (20th-highest out of 107 SPs w/at least 180 IP) has some bad luck to it? He does pitch in a homer-happy ballpark, but he’s actually allowed 17 homers on the road since the start of 2015, compared to 12 at home in nearly identical innings totals. Twelve of the 22 total homers to righties since 2015 have come off the fastball. There are distinct differences in the fastball usage between 2014 and 2015-16. In ’14, he works down and in regularly with 71% of his heaters in the lower half and 60% on the inner half of the plate. In ’15-16, those figures are at 63% and 56%, respectively.

I think it is a matter of predictability. It doesn’t matter if you can pump fastballs in the mid-90s, if a major leaguer knows it’s coming, they’ll hammer it. Since the start of ’15, when a righty is ahead, he gets a fastball 71% of the time from Gausman and 40% of those are down the middle so it’s no wonder that they have a .406/.506/.828 line against it – the worst in baseball (min. 70 PA which yielded 68 pitchers). In 2014, they had a .324/.395/.405 line in 43 PA. He could go to another pitch more often, but that would likely only mask the issue. The simple fact is that he needs to command his fastball more, even if it means toning down the velocity a tick.

His fastball has incredible armside run which dominates lefties as it runs away from them. I wonder if there is some hesitation to let it get that same movement against righties for some reason. I say “some reason” because I can’t even foster a guess to what he’d be worried about. When he busts the fastball in out of the zone against righties, he’s got a .564 OPS over the last two years. In fact, all of his pitches have generally worked out of the zone on the inner half of the plate against righties in that timeframe. His .585 OPS is better than the .610 league average in that span (min. 100 PA). Just leaving the zone isn’t the answer, though. While he is better when he does that, it’s more in comparison to how horrible he is in the zone as opposed to being a stud out of it.

The answer might be a cutter against righties. I know, I know…Baltimore and the cutter don’t mix. But if we’re to believe the pitch data, Tillman doubled his cutter usage this year and it’s been a key factor in his success. One concern about the cutter is that it can morph with a slider and render both ineffective, or at least less effective. Gausman’s slider sucks, though, especially against righties. They have a 1.057 OPS off of it in his career, including an eye-popping 1.253 OPS this year with approximately 4,028 home runs. OK, both of those numbers are misleading.

Well, one of them is completely made up. The OPS is slightly misleading because it has come in just 75 PA across his four seasons and as such, the ugly 7% home run comes out to just five homers. But the point still stands that the slider sucks. If it’s in the zone, it’s game over (1.265 OPS) so maybe he could get more use out of it if he left the zone more (.330 OPS, but just 19 PA). I still think a cutter would be better, though. It would allow him to use that natural velocity and ideally, it would give him something he could use in the zone as a counter to the fastball that runs in on the hands.

The splitter has also been a nightmare against righties lately. Look at the OPS totals since 2013: .522, .468, 1.313, and 1.217. Similar to slider, it’s a small sample. All four seasons total just 88 PA, but it’s been so bad since the start of ’15 that I can’t just wipe it away with small sample size caveats. Check out the trend when it’s in the zone: .500, .818, 1.769, and 2.167. Again, the samples are even smaller, but the magnitude of awfulness can’t be ignored.

The overarching trend is that Gausman has poor command. He is danger any time he throws a pitch in the zone against righties. This is where the differences between command and control start to show. He has just a 7% career walk rate which is pretty good (just 6% over the last two years), so that tells us he can throw strikes. But the quality of those strikes is quite low. The ability to command your stuff in the zone – throw good strikes – is what separate studs from backend starters, especially with the fastball. This reminds me a lot of Michael Pineda.

The 27-year old righty has had a similar lack of consistency tied to his inability to throw quality strikes. He doesn’t have the same platoon problems, but instead he’s an equal opportunity homer run allower. He has a .513 OPS in 348 PA on pitches out of the zone since the start of 2015, compared to a .906 on pitches in the zone over 688 PA. For reference, the league averages .779 OPS in the zone and .560 out of it.

So where do we go from here? I’ll reiterate that despite the panic and discontent around Gausman’s inconsistency, it’s still remarkably early in his career. In other words, perhaps part of this is just outsized expectations placed on him. Despite everything I’ve laid out, we’re still talking about a guy with a 105 ERA+ since the start of 2014 in 58 appearances, 50 of them starts. He needs to hone his command of everything against righties and might even consider adding a cutter in lieu of the slider.

He isn’t good enough within the zone to be the kind of frontline arm the Orioles need to make a serious run this year. We see it in spurts – such as his last start – but most guys in a major league rotation can have a great start or three. I’d like to see Gausman work in and off the plate with the fastball and splitter to righties and bury the slider down and out of the zone (and/or add a cutter in the upper-80s, low-90s that can play in-zone).

He gets the lefty-heavy Mariners in his next start which sets up well for him. Nelson Cruz, Chris Iannetta, and Franklin Gutierrez (recently installed with the optioning of Nori Aoki) are the only righty regulars for the M’s and they could start Steve Clevenger at catcher over Iannetta. It’ll be an isolated couple of at-bats, but I’ll be focused on how Gausman attacks Cruz. He gets the Dodgers after that and they too have a lot of lefties (Corey Seager, Adrian Gonzalez, Chase Utley, Joc Pederson, and Yasmani Grandal [switch-hitter]) so this is a chance for Gausman to get on a roll after the 7.2 scoreless innings vs. Tampa Bay over the weekend.

The post Reviewing Gausman appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

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If they want to stay in contention, they’re going to need some reinforcements. Dylan Bundy isn’t coming out of the bullpen. The Double- and Triple-A affiliates don’t have anything worthwhile on the horizon, either. Sorry, Odrisamer Despaigne. So they are going to have to hit the trade market. Unfortunately, that means they will have to give from their already-thin minor league system, but I’m not sure they are going to pass an opportunity to stay in it.

Here are some potential arms they could chase down. Let’s start a couple guys who will be available, but probably don’t make sense for different reasons.

TOO EXPENSIVE

Julio Teheran | Atlanta Braves | 2.77 ERA, 1.07 WHIP

Everyone has the Braves dealing Teheran because they’re terrible and they’ve been dealing everything not nailed down for prospects. But Teheran is a whopping 25 years old and signed to a super-favorable deal until 2019 with an affordable 2020 team option. Per Ken Rosenthal, Braves GM John Coppolella has said he’ll need to be overwhelmed for Teheran. More to the point, they would need a young, MLB-ready bat. From the same Talking Chop piece:

[T]he only way in which Teheran will be traded is if they receive a major league hitter “of comparable quality and age in return.” Coppolella went further and stated that “the days of moving guys like Teheran for prospects are over,” and that he’d have to receive an “overwhelming” offer in order to move Teheran for prospects.

About the only thing I could think working here is Jonathan Schoop-for-Teheran and while I’m a huge Teheran fan, I’m not sure that’s enough of a net positive to pull the trigger. The fact is, the Orioles can’t afford to take from their MLB team to improve the pitching. Their offense is already far from perfect and taking one of the two young building blocks in the lineup is a bad idea. Teheran could give them a nice 1-2-3 with Tillman & Gausman, but he’s cost-prohibitive.

BAD FIT

James Shields | San Diego Padres | 4.28 ERA, 1.43 WHIP

Shields took a 3.06 ERA into his Tuesday afternoon start in Seattle and he was positively devastated to the tune of 10 runs in just 2.7 innings (of course when you allow 10, you can go all nine and your ERA is still destroyed so who really cares how many innings he went). His ERA jumped 1.22 runs and WHIP 0.43 points in this one outing. That’s the kind of stuff that happens in early April when numbers bounce around wildly. It’s not often you see that on your 11th start of the season.

This shellacking couldn’t have been worse timing for the Padres as they look to deal the veteran arm, but it also highlighted his biggest weakness: the home run. Even if he still had the 3.06 ERA/1.30 WHIP combo he entered the day with, it’d still be a poor fit for the Orioles specifically because they play in both a home run park and division. Shields allowed an MLB-high 33 homers last year, his first in the NL, and now has a 1.2 HR/9 after Tuesday’s start.

On paper, he’s a semi-fit because his contract will make it difficult for San Diego to ask for a ton unless they send a mint with him. So the O’s could offer to pay a larger portion and give less, but his profile just doesn’t fit and with the contracts of Jimenez and Gallardo already in tow, they don’t need to be paying Shields $21 mil per for 2017-18.

Now, three arms likely to be available and possibly strong fits for Baltimore.

GOOD AND AVAILABLE

Rich Hill | Oakland Athletics | 2.25 ERA, 1.13 WHIP

He’s the prize of the trade market right now. The A’s are tied for last and 7.5 games back of Texas and Seattle (who are tied themselves) so Hill’s excellent numbers aren’t much use to them. He’s also 36 years old and on a one-year, $6 million dollar deal so he’s not really a long-term fit for them, either. He suffered a mild groin strain in his last start, but it’s expected to be just fine so let’s operate as though he’s healthy for now. Though, it’s also worth noting that he has an injury history that contributed to his combined 182 MLB innings since 2007 after a breakout campaign in which he threw 195.

OK, so he has some injury risk. Any 36-year old would. We can accept that. Beyond that, he’s been absolutely incredible in 15 starts last September. Former MLBer Brian Bannister got Hill to re-think how he thought about pitching and focus on his amazing curveball to find success. The dividends came through in Triple-A and then in a four-start audition with the Red Sox. He faced the rest of the AL East and absolutely smashed them with a 1.55 ERA, 0.66 WHIP, 7.2 K:BB, and three 10-strikeout games.

Hill really only has fastball/curveball. While Fangraphs shows a 10% slider, it’s really just manipulation of his curveball, so he essentially throws his curve 52% of the time and the fastball 48%. He gets a ton of whiffs to support his 28% strikeout rate and when he is allowing contact, it’s rarely for hits (.206 AVG) and regularly on the ground (48%). The difficulty in squaring him up shows in his 6% pop-up rate which is almost double the MLB average. The skills aren’t really in question for Hill, even after only 15 starts. Walks are issue sometimes, but being pretty unhittable gives him leeway there. The only substantial risk is injury, a risk worth taking for his upside.

The cost wouldn’t be insane, but he’s not coming freely, either. The A’s can give him a qualifying offer which would either re-up him at a very fair rate or get them a first-round pick so the O’s will need to give up a medium prospect. Given the thinness of their system, I could see it being a backend top-10 guy.

IMPROVED AND AVAILABLE

Jeremy Hellickson | Philadelphia Phillies |

I don’t love Helly, but the market isn’t ripe with options. He was once a promising prospect with Tampa Bay and even had a couple strong seasons – though he was definitely outrunning his modest component numbers – but he was downright bad from 2013-15 with a 4.86 ERA in 383.7 innings before pitching better this year. He has trimmed his walks and upped his strikeouts en route to a 3.68 ERA in 63.7 innings so far.

His changeup has become a devastating pitch with just a .318 OPS and 61% strikeout rate. Prior to 2016, it was .633 and 21%. He’s always had strong swing-and-miss rates, but just finally turned it into some actual strikeouts. He’s not a complete game-changer, but with their bullpen they don’t necessarily need a game-changer. He’s better than 3/5ths of the current rotation and that’s true even when Gallardo returns. His home run tendencies are worrisome in Camden Yards. He’s allowed 1.2 HR/9 over his career and he’s up at 1.4 HR/9 this year.

The 29-year old righty is a free agent after this year so he won’t command a large asking price. I can’t imagine any urgency from Philly to keep him around beyond this year given the path they’re on right now. They’re building for a run so those innings are better used on a young arm who could be a key part in their next good team. I could see Hellickson costing a second-10 prospect from the O’s and perhaps deeper. Just a lottery ticket type that many of us haven’t even heard of yet.

THE AVAILABLE REBUILD

Andrew Cashner| San Diego Padres| 4.79 ERA, 1.40 WHIP

I almost put LA’s Hector Santiago here, but the only real reason I could justify him was because of his left-handedness, something the O’s lack in their rotation. Cashner’s numbers are actually worse this year and last, but I think he’s a better bet for the change-of-scenery rebirth. There isn’t a great statistical case for Cashner turning it around. He’s already in a favorable park residing in the NL and he’s getting smashed around. But the idea is that Baltimore (or another club, honestly, I just think he gets moved) could tweak some things to get Cashner back on track.

The 29-year old righty can run it up in the mid-90s regularly and has flashed some impressive secondary stuff at times, but the fastball has flattened and he can’t get the secondary stuff, which has fallen off in the interim as well. But we’ve seen much worse cases emerge from deeper holes. Even with a mile lost, he’s still sitting 95.2 MPH on average. He has a curveball and slider. Maybe the O’s see a case to chop one and focus on the other. Or maybe they have a mechanical suggestion to get him back to 2013-14 levels when he had a 2.87 ERA and 1.13 WHIP in 298.3 IP.

Cashner is also a free agent after this season and he’s more of a fringe qualifying offer candidate given his health history and fall off since the start of 2015. Those factors would contribute to a lower cost, too. He’s probably be in the same range as Hellickson in terms of a prospect return.

The post Three Starters the Orioles Could Acquire Via Trade appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

In fairness, he battled a rib cage/oblique all month and it seemed to really impact his bottom line numbers. Plus, he usually has at least one month every season, but I think people tend to freak out a little more when it’s the first month of the season. However, he has had his bad month in April before, too.

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2012: Had .684 OPS in August

2013: Had .634 OPS in June

2014: Had .659 OPS in April

2015: Had .556 OPS in May (and .598 in September)

Of course, it wasn’t just April for Jones this year. Through May 8th, he had just a .543 OPS and I was ready to go ahead and sell him in fantasy. And I guess he didn’t take too kindly to that as he’s been on fire literally since that podcast. Check out his numbers from May 10th on: .520/.556/1.080 with four of his five homers and half of his 18 RBIs. So was it just the injury and now he’s feeling better or are there some fundamental changes in his game?

FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS

Usually the first things I look at when investigating a hitter is his strikeout and walk rates and then his BABIP in relation to his batting average. Jones only has 32 games played this year so any parsing of that sample is trimming an already-small sample so let’s understand that right away. I’m looking at his first 26 games (in which he accumulated that .543 OPS) and comparing it against these last six when he’s started to get loose.

First 26: 18% K rate, 8% BB rate

Last 6: 19% K rate, 7% BB rate

First off, it’s worth noting that the 18% and 8% rates from the down period are actually better than his 19% and 4% career rates so from a base skills standpoint, there was no real reason for him to be sputtering as much as he was through 26 games. His .240 BABIP in that time was a whopping 57 points off of his career mark. The only thing askew in his batted ball profile was that he hit on the ground a lot more, but that is often a positive for batting average, especially when you also consider that his hit-speed profile was in line with his career marks. He had an 18%-49%-33% soft-medium-hard contact profile which is in line with his 19%-49%-32% career marks.

Maybe a lot of sharp groundball right at the defense?

In these last six games, he’s obliterating the ball. Like I said, the strikeout and walk rates are basically the same, but he’s got an absurd .563 BABIP, a 35% line drive rate, and 55% hard-contact rate. Now, this obviously isn’t who he is any more than the downturn was, but it’s nice to see him smashing the ball again. Have pitchers approached him differently in the two periods?

PITCHER’S APPROACH

The approach in location has changed some against Jones between the two samples. Early on they were working him more low in the zone and he wasn’t doing any damage.

First 26: 16% High, 31% Middle, 53% Low

Last 6: 22% High, 30% Middle, 49% Low

Jones is actually still struggling a bit with stuff low in the zone, but middle-up he has been devastating.

First 26 OPS: 1.126 High, .219 Middle, .618 Low

Last 6 OPS: 3.457 High, 1.333 Middle, .700 Low

Low in the zone has never been a strong suit for Jones, though, so it’s not particularly surprising to see him struggling there in both samples. Dating back to 2009 (which is as far as this dataset that I have goes), he had just a .697 OPS on pitches in the lower third in 2115 PA. Combining middle-up, he’s at .885 in 2290 PA.

As for pitch mix, things aren’t too different:

First 26: 54% Hard, 46% Soft

Last 6: 55% Hard, 45% Soft

The mix in soft stuff has changed a bit as breaking balls are up in these last six games from 31% to 39%, but his .500 OPS on breakers hasn’t really impacted Jones because it’s only four PA. In the first 26 games, he had a .548 in 37 PA. If pitchers won’t to cool him off, they need to get back to breaking balls down in the zone.

Of course, he’s not really giving them a chance to get to their soft stuff because he’s swinging early and often. He’s ended 56% of his PA in three or fewer pitches over these last six games, compared to 47% in the first 26 games.

CONCLUSION

It is difficult to make any sweeping judgments off of the 26-game sample let alone the six-game one, but looking over Jones’ statistical profile and how he’s being approached suggests an Occam’s Razor type answer to his outbreak: he’s healthy. Let’s be honest, obliques are a bitch. They can linger and really impact a player long what we might expect, especially since they don’t always require a DL stint and so the fact of the matter is that he may not be fully out of the woods yet for this season, but he certainly appears to be much closer to 100% now than he was at any point in the first month-plus of the season.

He’s getting lift back into the ball and doing a lot of damage. The surge puts him just 11 points away from his .781 OPS from the last two years and the FanGraphs projections systems expect him to maintain that level going forward. Jones getting back to and maintaining his above average level of production will help offset the pending regression of some of his teammates, namely Mark Trumbo.

I was originally going to look into his start to see if it was sustainable, but a cursory glance suggested it was like the many hot starts that Trumbo has had in the past. And the lack of any discernible skills changes means he will come down from this peak. Being back in the AL where he’s logged two 30+ HR seasons and another 29 plus being part of a stacked lineup in a great hitter’s park gives him a chance to match his previous highs of 34 HRs (2013) and .808 OPS (2012), but that’s a far cry from the 50/.955 he’s pacing toward currently. Putting a quick fantasy spin on it because that’s what I do, maybe see if you can trade Trumbo for Jones straight up.

The post Looking At Adam Jones appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

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.

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

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.

—

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. 

The post The Silver Lining appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

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On Chris Tillman…

We can’t get too deep here because he threw just two innings, but they were perfect and he fanned five of the six batters he faced so it’s hard not to feel at least a little good from it, even though the excitement has to be tempered. The rain ate up him and Ervin Santana, both limited to just two innings. So I think I’ve stressed enough how we can’t overreact here, but let’s dive in just the same.

• Perhaps most impressive was Tillman’s velocity which Brooks had at 94.6 MPH on average. Even accounting for that the fact that it almost certainly would’ve come down some as he moved deeper into the outing, this is still very encouraging.
• He also worked the fastball up. In my breakdown of Tillman, I mentioned an elevated heater being key and he did that on Monday. He got four strikeouts; three on whiffs, one called. That’s huge.
• He only threw seven off-speed pitches because it was a 22-pitch outing. But he did freeze Byung-ho Park with a filthy slider:

• Positive outing for what it was, but we need at least one full start to start freaking about any sort of potential Tillman breakout.            

On Manny Machado…

• He was 1-for-5 atop the order which is fine, any game you can get a knock is worthwhile, but I didn’t love the 10 pitches in five plate appearances. *Insert one more caveat that acknowledges that we’re overreacting to one game* so I’m not saying get him out of the leadoff spot or anything. It was just something I noticed during the parts of the game I watched (full disclosure: the rain delays kept me from watching start-to-finish).
• Another reason we really needn’t panic over this is the fact that he knows what he’s doing up there. He has a career .864 OPS out of the leadoff spot (including a .300/.364/.512 line last year in 496 PA) and takes 3.9 pitches per plate appearance while batting first.
• In short, I’m picking nits!

On Jonathan Schoop…

• He only saw seven pitches in his four plate appearances, but popped a double and drew a walk so it’s tough to smash for the low count.
• Fernando Abad walked him on four straight pitches in the sixth. None of ‘em were close, but Schoop has a free-swinging reputation (which is earned) so I like seeing him come out of the gate with a free pass.
• The three first pitches he swung at on the other plate appearances were all good pitches worth going after, too.
• This is a good example of why you can’t just look at the pitches per PA and decide what’s good or what’s bad. The makeup and breakdown of those pitches over the 3 or 4 PA in a given game are more important. For only seeing 7 pitches, Schoop did a helluva job.

On Mark Trumbo…

• He’s already delivering the two things this team brought him in for, base hits and stolen bases! Wait, what? Trumbo didn’t steal a single base in 2015 and went 2-for-5 in 2016, so of course he swipes a bag in his Baltimore debut!
• He’s not really much for singles, either, so dropping four in a game was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Don’t be surprised if he stays hot, though. Trumbo’s MO is to get off to a blazing start before a fade.
• His career OPS totals by month: .826, .902, .676, .749, .728, and .692. His 27 May homers are the most in any month for him, too.

LOOKING AHEAD

The team gets Kyle Gibson tonight. He works down, down, down often below the zone and has a 53% groundball rate in 425 major league innings. This plays away from the power strengths of the O’s so they will need to be patient with him. When he’s just below the zone, he’s devastating, but get him to come in the zone and that’s when you can do damage.

Looking at Gibson’s pitches in the lower half last year, we see that he allowed just a .438 OPS out of the strike zone and an .808 OPS in the zone. He doesn’t miss a ton of bats, instead relying on weak groundball contact for a ton of his outs. When’s he off, he’s really off, though. He was mostly good last year, including two solid outings v. Baltimore (one home, one away), but they had their chances as his 3.08 ERA was paired with a 1.45 WHIP.

Yovani Gallardo is on the mound for his much-anticipated Baltimore debut. I wrote about him here after the signing and I’ll definitely be watching tonight to see how it goes.

All in all, not a bad Opening Day. A Wieters walkoff made the delays worth it! 

The post It’s Been One Game, But… appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

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We’ll look at four different facets of his offensive profile:

HIT TOOL

Schoop is a career .238 hitter in the majors over 774 at-bats (814 PA). His biggest sample (the 455 AB in 2014) delivered a vomit-inducing .209 average which has severely weighed down the average. Last year he was at .279 in 305 at-bats. His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) underscores the sharp disparity in the two batting averages.

In 2014 he was at .249 – well below the .299 league average (even looking at just 2B, it’s .292) – which looks unlucky even in light of his plate discipline considering how hard he hits the ball. But if we’re going to give him something of a pass for 2014, we have to acknowledge that his .329 BABIP from last year was high even considering that he hit the ball even harder in ’15.

It’s tough to rely on him for a positive batting average given his plate approach to date (more on that in a bit), but he was solid throughout the minors (.268; routinely young for his level, too). And again, when you smash the ball like he does (which we also get deeper into here in a moment), you can out-run some of the other factors and simply slug your way to a good batting average. Chris Davis is hardly anything like a 1:1 comp for Schoop thanks to 4x the walk rate, but his strikeout rate (career 31%) can leave him susceptible to a bad batting average in a given year, but he regularly hammers his way to useful average, topping .260 in four of his last five seasons.

A breakout season from Schoop likely don’t go much beyond last year’s .279, but doing it over a full season should be considered growth. The high-end batting average I can see for him is probably about .295 which isn’t that big of a difference from what he did in 2015. His full-season pace would’ve yielded 161 hits in 575 at-bats. A .295 average in the same allotment of time is 170 hits. But again, it’s a whole lot different to do even a .260 for a full season than it is to do .279 for half a season so while it might feel like modest gains for this hypothetical breakout season, it would actually entail a sharp improvement.

POWER

This is where folks begin salivating because we don’t really have to dream on his power. We’ve seen it. We haven’t seen a full year yet, but we’ve seen it in sustained runs and it’s evident that the power facet of his game is the most developed of his hitting profile. Even in a mostly ugly 2014 he popped 16 HR in 481 PA – a 20+ HR full season pace (assuming 650 or so PA). His .145 ISO from ’14 doesn’t jump off the page, but it was still well above the .113 league average for second basemen.

His ’14 ISO is right in line with his .147 career minor league mark which includes spikes at .163 (2010) and .182 (2013). He set his best mark as a pro in 2015 at .203, albeit in just a half season. There is some question about how sustainable his 2015 level is, but the minor league spikes show that it’s not completely out of the realm. Schoop had a 17% HR/FB rate last season which is well above the league average (10-11%), but not so outrageous when considering how hard he routinely hits the ball.

His 35% Hard contact rate in ’15 was six percentage points above the league average and nearly 10 above the 2B league average. He also charted well on batted ball distance, coming in eighth behind power luminaries like: Nelson Cruz, Jose Abreu, Kyle Schwarber, Paul Goldschmidt, Pedro Alvarez, Chris Davis, and Giancarlo Stanton. Even in ’14, he slotted 47th which is still pretty good, especially considering that it wasn’t a great year all told (just a 64 wRC+, where 100 is average). It’s easier said than done, but if Schoop has the breakout that I and many others believe he can have, then it likely entails a full season of his 2015 work, so a .200+ ISO and approaching 30 homers.

PLATE APPROACH

Schoop has 23 career walks; Joey Votto had 23 or more walks in each of the final four months last season (23, 26, 38, and 28 Jun-Sept). Meanwhile, he has 203 strikeouts in his 817 PA, more than Buster Posey has in his last three seasons combined (191 in 1823 PA). Now those are two of the best players in the game so I’m not saying Schoop has to be like them, just using them to highlight his less-than-stellar marks in those categories so far. However, there is reason for hope.

He didn’t have such a free-swinging, no-walk approach in the minors and given he’s just 24 years old, he should start moving closer to that approach as he matures in the majors. He had 2017 plate appearances coming up through the minors posting a 16% strikeout rate and 8% walk rate, both fantastic marks. A lot of times the minor league rates don’t fully transfer, but Schoop has definitely been an outlier to be so far from his MiLB rates with his 25% strikeout and 3% walk rates in 817 MLB plate appearances.

The tradeoff of course has been the power. He is selling out for it as a major leaguer resulting in tons of swings and misses. While he never had a .200+ ISO in the minors, Schoop still maintained respectable K and BB rates in his two power-spike seasons. Neither is standout, but the 18%/6% combo he had in 2013 when he posted his career-best (to that point) .182 ISO would be sharp improvements on what we’ve seen in the bigs. Even pushing toward those marks would leave him less BABIP-reliant and shouldn’t force him to sacrifice much or even any of the power we’ve seen from him.

One area where he could really improve is when he gets behind in the count. Granted, that’s a big area of opportunity for tons of hitters – young and old. The league only has a .535 OPS when the pitcher is ahead, but Schoop ranks just 211th out of 269 batters (min. 400 PA) with a .473 OPS and his 43% strikeout rate is well above the 34% average. His .136 ISO beats the average (.106), but if he can cut down the strikeouts when behind, that can help stabilize his batting average and be another key factor in making him less BABIP-reliant.

Expecting him to reach his minor levels all in one fell swoop is wildly unrealistic, but even something like a 5-6% walk rate and 21-22% strikeout rate would be a substantial jump forward and put him well on his way toward becoming at least league average in both categories (8%/20%). If he does have the dream breakout season this year, my guess is that the strikeout rate would show bigger improvements than the walk rate. So maybe a stretch goal is an 18-19% strikeout rate, though still just a 4-5% walk rate. With the way he smashes the ball, increased contact is more important than more walks.

SPEED

Stealing bases has never been a huge component of Schoop’s game so I don’t have any lofty expectations for him there even in a breakout season. His career high was 12 SBs back in 2011 and that came on 19 attempts for a paltry 63% success rate. A full season where he’s just clicking on all cylinders probably yields 5-6 SBs, nothing special.

BOTTOM LINE

Adding it all up, the dream breakout season for Schoop might look a little something like: .285 AVG, 30 HR, 85 R, 95 RBIs, and 5 SBs. There have only been five such second base seasons in the last decade so it’s definitely lofty, but if Dan Uggla and Aaron Hill can do it, so can Schoop. The other three to reach those heights are a lot less surprising: Robinson Cano, Chase Utley, and Brandon Phillips.

For comparison’s sake, I looked at Schoop’s 90th percentile projection at Baseball Prospectus: .282-25-68-77-3. So I’m not too far off when you consider that “dream breakout” is more of a 99th percentile kind of season. The biggest differences are the R/RBI totals which I understand since Schoop has always batted low in the order, but if he has the kind of season we’re talking about here, then he will likely move up the batting order at some point in the season, which will add to those counting stats.

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Alvarez brings with him a 29% career strikeout rate and that 9% walk rate we discussed earlier. His 25% and 27% rates the last two years are actually a sharp improvement on the 31% rate he held for the first four years of his career. And yet despite all the swing-and-miss and only a decent walk rate to kinda balance it out, he’s still been a plus bat every year but once – a disastrous 2011 in which he played just 74 games. By the way, that 74-game sample is a good look at how this kind of profile can go cold for huge stretches. Hell, even his 2015 which was 14% above average by weighted runs created (wRC+) had a 40-game run of .592 OPS in the early summer.

But are strikeouts really the problem for this team?

They could be as Dave Cameron notes in a piece at FanGraphs, but they aren’t the real problem with this team. The problem is that they don’t offset the swing-and-miss tendencies with enough walks. Alvarez himself comes with a 9-10% walk rate in most seasons with a low of 8% and high of 10%. Of the nine hitters to log at least 300 plate appearances for the O’s last year, only Davis was north of 10% at 13% while Manny Machado’s 9.8% rounds up to 10%.

Meanwhile, four of the nine players with those 300+ PA had a walk rate of 5% or lower. Of the 268 batters who had 300+ PA in the majors last year, only 52 carried a 5% or worse walk rate. Or 19%. Four of them were on the Orioles and account for 44% of their players with 300+ PA (the 300+ PA threshold is what we’re using the rest of the way, too, so keep that in mind when I cite stats). Houston was the only other team that had four, but one of theirs was Jose Altuve so it was hardly a negative. All four of the Orioles players – I guess I should name ‘em at some point: Adam Jones, J.J. Hardy, Jimmy Paredes, and Schoop – all had a .310 or lower on-base percentage.

On the other hand, there were 48 batters with a 25% or higher strikeout rate last year. The Orioles also had four of those guys. Unfortunately there is some crossover with the 5% or lower walk rate group as Paredes and Schoop are joined by Davis and Ryan Flaherty. Guess how many of those 48 batters had a walk of 8% (league average) or higher? Yes, it was 29, I heard you say it, you in the back of the room. Good guess. Only Davis qualified among the Oriole quartet. Those 29 guys had about a .327 OBP on average. For the 19 who were at 7% or lower, they amassed just a .292 OBP on average.

Strikeouts do matter because at least anecdotally it seems like high-strikeout teams are prone to slumps and those slumps tend to be amplified in October when facing the best pitchers at max effort. But LOL on Baltimore worrying about October right now. I’m not saying it won’t happen, I’m saying October performance shouldn’t be a major concern right now considering the path to getting there remains a laborious one that has just begun. Speaking of October, in a four-game sweep at the hands of the New York Mets, the Cubs fanned 27% of the time – even more than their league-leading 25% mark from the regular season.

There is a glimmer of hope for the team’s OBP in the form of Hyun-Soo Kim. In 4768 plate appearances over in Korea, he walked more than he struck out and posted a 13% walk rate. The strikeout rate was just 11%. That’s almost the inverse of Machado’s rates which were pretty good at 10% BB and 16% K. One guy alone won’t fix things, but he can definitely move the needle if he’s able to emulate his Korean Baseball Organization marks or deliver a reasonable facsimile thereof. I have to stress it’s only a glimmer of hope, though.

The ZiPS projection system at FanGraphs projects just Davis and Alvarez for a 10% walk rate. Machado and Reimold each get a 9% and then Kim and Rule 5 newcomer Joey Rickard each check in at 8%. Only Machado, Davis, and Kim are projected to have better than .330 OBP. A total of 118 players were projected at .330 or better – or about four per team, so the O’s are one shy of the average which doesn’t feel big because “one” never feels big, but another 500-something plate appearances of a .330 or better OBP would really help this lineup.

Now because ZiPS doesn’t try to guess playing time there are tons of players projected for awful numbers in substantial samples of playing time that they’d never get if that’s how they were playing so just counting the sub-.300 OBPs or low-.300s ones isn’t terribly instructive. There are 702 guys projected to be .300 or lower and the O’s have 24 of them which is their reasonable share if you’re dispersing the 702 among the 30 teams. But the problem for the O’s is that many of those 24 are expected to be key contributors or prominent backups in the case of injury: Hardy (.283), Paredes (.284), Caleb Joseph (.286), Flaherty (.289), Henry Urrutia (.293), Dariel Alvarez (.294), Christian Walker (.295), Schoop (.295), and Reimold (.300). Plus five others on the wrong side of .315.

For those curious, league average OBP last year .317 so all of these guys are projected to be below the global average let alone the fact that most would also be well below the average for their position. Here is the average OBP by position last year:

• Catcher .302
• First Baseman .336
• Second Baseman .315
• Shortstop .307
• Third Base .318
• Leftfield .319
• Centerfield .326
• Rightfield .326

Strikeouts aren’t great, but plenty of times they are no worse than any other out and in some situations they are even better (those are admittedly quite rare). They are not why this team is starting to get inked into the five-spot of AL East predictions. In the last three seasons, there have been 26 teams to post a .310 OBP or lower (including the 2015 Orioles). Those teams averaged 3.8 runs per game with the aforementioned ’15 Orioles topping the list at 4.4 runs per game.

They were one of just two teams in the (admittedly small) sample to top the 4.2 runs per game league average from that three-year span (Minnesota 2015 was the other). The 2015 team’s .421 SLG was easily the best of those 26 teams and obviously helped offset the lack of on-base ability. But they were an outlier within this group. It seems the best the Orioles can hope for on offense with this construction is a repeat of last year and that yielded all of a .500 record. Barring a team-wide change in approach, the lack of runners on-base is going mitigate the impact of the power and result in a lot of solo homers.

The worst part of it all is that it further reminds us of how just perfectly Dexter Fowler and his career .363 OBP (even last year’s career-low .346) would have fit atop the lineup.

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First off, if you followed his 2014 closely, it was clear that his 3.34 ERA was a bit lucky for the skills he posted with it. The strikeout rate really tumbled from 2013 with the only counterbalance being a drop in home run rate from 1.4 HR/9 to a more palatable 0.9 HR/9. But even with that as a backdrop, his 2015 was a big disappointment. Even the most pessimistic on Tillman didn’t tab him for essentially a 5.00 ERA in 31 starts. The strikeout rate sank further and the walk rate jumped a little, but the BABIP and LOB% rates both fell apart, though.

STRIKEOUT RATE

Given the way the skills have matched the last two years compared to that 2013 season, I’ll be comparing ’13 vs. the combined efforts of ’14 and ’15. In 2013, he fanned 21% of the batters he faced (league average for starters was 19%). In 2014-15, he fanned just 17% while the average held firm at 19%. One of my favorite metrics for judging stuff is Swinging Strike rate which is just the percentage of pitches that were swung through.

In none of the last three seasons has Tillman even been average with his overall rate and it gets even uglier when you viewing it by pitch. Sometimes a pitcher might not have a great overall SwStr%, but if he has that one pitch that really stands out, he can still get a decent number of strikeouts. Tillman doesn’t have that. Look at his pitches compared to average the last three years:

If you’re not getting swings-and-misses, that means you’re allowing contact and not much good can come from contact. That’s why strikeouts are viewed so favorably. The only way you can even reach base on a strikeout is if the catcher makes a mistake. But allowing contact opens a whole can of worms. Is it a playable ball? Will the defense even make the play if it is? Groundball contact goes for more hits, flyball contact (obviously) goes for more homers. On the extreme end of either, the pitcher is given some credit for being in control and inducing weaker contact (dribblers and pop-outs, respectively).

BABIP

Tillman is stuck in the middle. He has been increasing his GB/FB ratio each of the last three years, but still barely above a 1:1 ratio: 0.78, 0.97, 1.03, and 1.23. In 2013 and 2014, Tillman posted BABIP totals of .269 and .267. It obviously wasn’t due to any extreme inducing of weak contact either on the ground or in the air so it must’ve been one of the other key components of BABIP: defense. Regardless of what kind of contact a pitcher is giving up, the defense can minimize the damage by turning it into outs. An exemplary defense can really help a pitcher (see also: Royals, KC). Turns out the team defense might’ve been a big key for Tillman.

Looking at the FanGraphs defensive runs above average data over the last three years shows the Royals heads and shoulders above the league, but then the Orioles checking at second and they’re also ahead of the next time by a wide margin.

However, we need a detailed look at those last three years to see why Tillman might’ve fallen so hard in 2015. Baltimore’s rankings by year: 3rd in 2013, 2nd in 2014, and then 15th last year. Tillman’s BABIP by year: .269, .267, and .293. His 2015 mark is actually a few ticks better than the .297 league average for starters, but with his skills he need to substantially beat the average to post quality results.

PITCH LOCATION

So we saw Tillman strikeouts, become more hittable, and generally struggle all year. In fact, it wasn’t for his July, he might’ve been near the mid-5.00s with his ERA. His ERA by month: 7.58, 5.03, 5.13, 1.31, 5.73, and 6.51. We know the defense got worse behind him which really hurt, but a shift from great to average defense isn’t the sole reason in going from the mid-3.00s to a near-5.00 ERA in one season. What else happened?

Something that I think might be a factor is his pitch location. Specifically, his fastball. And more specifically than that, the high fastball.

Let’s look at his percentage of fastballs in the upper third of the zone of the last three years: 44%, 44%, and 38%. And the majority of that loss in the upper third went directly into the middle third of the zone – aka the hitter’s sweet spot. Now let’s look at his batting average and BABIP off fastballs in the upper third: .240/.274, .230/.256, and .270/.314. As the fastball comes down in the zone, it’s going for more hits.

Let’s isolate the performance of the fastball in the upper third and break it down as 2013-14 together and then 2015 by itself since last year saw the substantial BABIP jump.

2013-14: .196/.283/.324 with a .232 BABIP in 434 plate appearances on fastballs in the upper third

2015: .245/.350/.387 w/a .314 BABIP in 182 PA.

Not only were there were fewer fastballs in that zone, but they were also hit harder. Parsing the data one step further, let’s look at his groundball performance on fastballs in the upper third with one key element added in: pull percentage.

2013-14: .174/.174/.203, 32% Pull

2015: .421/.421/.526, 16% Pull

Pulled groundballs are generally weaker and easier to turn into outs. I didn’t include BABIPs there because it’s obviously the same as the batting average since we’re only looking at pulled groundballs off of fastballs in the upper third – admittedly a very parsed sample, but still instructive nonetheless.

WHAT NOW?

Can Tillman reverse the trend and recapture his 2013-14 form? I’ll answer that with a resounding “maybe”. Followed by a firm “but probably not”. Tillman just doesn’t have enough swing-and-miss stuff, leaving him at the mercy of his defense and plain ol’ luck.

Part of the issue in 2015 might’ve simply been the fact that shortstop J.J. Hardy only logged 995 innings at short. That was easily the lowest of his five seasons with the club, but at age-33, it’s unlikely to shoot back up to the 1371 he averaged over the last three seasons. He wasn’t even expected to be this durable in the first place as he averaged just 112 games per season in his first six years before joining Baltimore.

Manny Machado is still a total stud at third base, essentially a second shortstop, but he can’t do it alone. In addition to Hardy’s falloff in playing time, Jonathan Schoop fell apart at second base going from 7.5 DRAA in 2014 to a pitiful -3.8 last year. So the infield defense has regressed, leaving Tillman to fend for himself with luck. And when you’re allowing as much contact as Tillman is with that lame 16% K rate, the margin for error on luck is small. Again, this is why strikeouts are so important.

There is nothing in his profile as it stands today that should lead us to believe he can spike his strikeout rate. He might add a tick or two up to 18%, but even that is still two percentage points below average these days. What I’ll be looking for early in the regular season is how often he elevates the fastball.

Up there, he can get the benefits of effective velocity and turn his 91-93 MPH heater into something that is seen more as a mid-90s offering to the opposition. Since generating swings-and-misses isn’t a key component to his game, he needs to induce weaker contact and that high fastball was a key to doing so when he was successful in 2013-14. I was one of those who believed Tillman could bring his FIP closer to his ERA as he went into his mid-20s, but I no longer feel that way with this particular skillset. I think a low-4.00s ERA should be the upside projection right now.

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Let’s be honest, most NRIs are NRIs for a reason. They’re just not expected to make the roster for any number of reasons, the two most common being: last-ditch retreads getting a shot and prospects who are almost certainly a couple years out. Sometimes they are former impact players who are coming back from major injury or maybe a couple years of severe under-performance. The other big one is former prospects who haven’t lived up to expectations with their first (and sometimes second) organization.

If I’m being honest (and I proved earlier that I am when I chose not to lie), the O’s list is underwhelming compared to some others, but here are three interesting NRIs to watch in March:

Xavier Avery | 26 years old – OF – LHB: Yep, Avery is back. After failing to latch on with Seattle, Minnesota, Detroit, or San Francisco, he’s back in camp with Baltimore. I honestly could’ve put L.J. Hoes here, too. I didn’t want to spend two spots on them since they’re pretty similar. Hoes only went to Houston in the interim and found some playing time, but couldn’t make anything of it. He’s also 26 years old. In the end, I chose Avery over Hoes because of the handedness. When you’ve got nearly identical profiles, go with the better platoon advantage.

Avery’s chances at playing time slim further if the Dexter Fowler rumors come to fruition, but there is still bench bat potential if something clicks for him. Nolan Reimold and Joey Rickard are currently penciled in by RosterResource, both right-handers, though Rickard was a Rule 5 pick so they’ll be looking for reasons to keep him whereas Avery will have to truly standout. Still, Reimold’s health is far from a guarantee.

Andy Oliver | 28 years old – RP – LHP: Oliver had some decent results in 29 relief innings at Norfolk last year (3.72 ERA, 1.35 WHIP), but it’s hard to overlook the five walks per nine rate he had, which is actually an improvement over his six walks per nine minor league rate over 641 innings. A big issue for Oliver has been the fact that he’s not even a LOOGY as he carries reverse platoon splits since 2011 (LHB are +46 OPS pts). Usually a lefty who does better against righties is noteworthy given how much the lefty-lefty matchup favors the pitcher.

Oliver has big heat and two reliable secondary pitches, but he can’t regularly command any of it. FanGraphs tells us that a 9% walk rate is “awful”. Oliver is at 15% for his minor league career. Him simply being awful with his walk rate would be a drastic improvement and maybe one big enough to finally deliver some consistency.

Hunter Harvey | 20 years old – SP – RHP: I told ya it’s a thin list and I realize Harvey is a bit obvious so I put him last. There’s obviously no chance he makes the club, but it will be nice to see him pitch. He’s been throwing issue-free for a month per the last Rotoworld update. He could be lined up for a few early starts with the big league club and ideally at least one would be televised, but either way we’ll get reports on the young righty. He still remains a huge part of this organization’s future. Just getting through the Grapefruit League will be a success. 

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It’s not so much that they had to keep the pick, it’s more that Gallardo just wasn’t the best spot to use it. Signing Justin Upton would’ve been worth it. Same for Alex Gordon. Hell, Hisashi Iwakuma would’ve been worth it, even being five years older than the 30-year right-hander. Gallardo had some decent results with Texas, his first year in the AL, but it’s not readily evident in his profile how can emulate those results, or better yet improve upon them. After all, he still had just a 1.42 WHIP.

He posted a 3.42 ERA in 184.3 innings on the strength of a groundball lean that has taken hold over the last three seasons and transitioned him out of being a strikeout pitcher like he was in the prime of his Brewers career. From 2009-12, Gallardo had four straight seasons with a 24% or better strikeout rate (between 9 and 10 K/9), but he has been steadily declining since with 19%, 18%, and 15% marks the last three seasons. His swinging strike rate is tumbling in concert, offering little hope for a rebound.

One big reason behind the strikeout decline has been the rise of the slider. Literally. As he brings it up in the zone on average, it has generated fewer swings-and-misses. That isn’t terribly surprising, especially when you see this great article by Eli Ben-Porat that deep-dives the slider and highlights how swinging strike rate falls as the pitch moves up:

This model estimates that, for every foot lower you can throw your slider, you’ll gain about 10 points of SwStr%.

Gallardo had a 20% strikeout rate with his slider from 2009-2014 (data unavailable for 2007-08), but then posted a meager 11% mark in 2015. He threw just 47% of his sliders in the lower third of the zone – 135th out 148 starters who threw at least 100 sliders – well below the 61% league average (and Gallardo’s own average coming into ’15). He was throwing his slider in zone less and less prior to 2015, but last year was the cliff dive, since ‘09: 61%, 62%, 62%, 61%, 60%, 59%, and then the 47%. Given that it was such a sharp change last year, maybe he reverts back closer to his mean, but if the strikeouts don’t tick back upward, he could be in big trouble.

While he has managed to keep the ERA respectable – 3.70 in the last three seasons and on a downward trend – the WHIP has been atrocious at 1.36 and could become especially problematic in the AL East. The parks and offenses in the AL East could send his home run back upward, too. His 0.73 HR/9 last year was third-best in his career, but he has a 0.92 for his career including several years north of 1.0.

Perhaps the biggest issue with signing Gallardo and paying a pick is the fact that there were comparable arms available for much less money and no pick. Let’s look at them in comparison to Gallardo over the last three seasons:

The only thing Gallardo has on the group is innings, but those innings aren’t worth the vast disparity in contract value, plus the pick – which I keep harping on, but it’s a huge part of why this deal is just not that great.

• Fister is coming off of a brutal year with his strikeout and swinging strike rates tanking even harder than Gallardo’s, but I’d still prefer betting on a rebound for one year at seven mil compared as opposed to a multi-year commitment and pick.
• Latos is the most glaring comparison that makes this deal for Gallardo look especially bad. He was signed right around the time the Gallardo news was breaking and it’s hard not think Chicago’s $3 million dollar investment isn’t way better – even accounting for the potential attitude issues that Latos brings with him.
• I’m not giddy about Happ back in the AL East after that magical run with Pittsburgh, but I put him on here because it’s the same years, less cash, and no pick for a pitcher who is at least as good albeit three years older.
• Not a huge Masterson fan, either, but he’s going to be dirt-cheap when he does finally sign. Injuries might be a big issue that is keeping teams away, so I get it, but his ERA indicators are right in line with Gallardo’s and he’s an even better groundballer than Gallardo.
• Hill is a big gamble given his low innings count and high age (eldest on the list), but he still would’ve been a better bet, even as more of a flyball pitcher in his career (though his GB% was at 48% in his small 2015 sample).

Between Gallardo’s declining skills, the pick, and the availability of comparable arms at much cheaper prices make it tough feel great about this move. Yes, the team did need a steady, veteran-type arm for the middle of the rotation, but this wasn’t the best deployment of their resources.

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