I just finished writing about how good the starting pitching has been these last four-days, which of course leads to today when Kevin Millwood takes the hill.
Through May of this year, Millwood had started 11 games, and pitched a total of 74 innings to a 3.89 era. That was a bit above expectations, and it was reasonable to expect him to regress. There were already warning signs as Millwood had already allowed a total of 12 homers in those first 74 innings.
The regression has been anything but slight. Millwood has pitched a total of 51 innings since June 1st. In these innings, Millwood has amazingly allowed 52 er, including 11 homers. That works out to a 9.18 era over the last 10 starts. He has allowed exactly 5 er in 5 consecutive outings.
Clearly the O’s would prefer to be replacing Millwood from the rotation at this point. The problem is Tillman, and Britton are not exactly kicking down the door right now.
Tillman threw his 2nd AAA shut-out of the year on July 5th, and again earned his promotion to Baltimore. Making his 5th Major League start of the year, Tillman was awesome over 7.1 innings in Texas on July 10th. Due to the All-Star break, and where he was slotted in the rotation, Tillman’s next start occurred July 19th against Tampa where he was shelled and sent back to Norfolk.
Since going back to the Minors, Tillman has made 3 starts, each of which have been poor. There have been some reports of Tillman attempting to use his 2 seam fastball and cutter more often in these recent starts, and that might explain away some of the lack of recent success. In the end, if Tillman becomes more comfortable with those pitches, it should help him when he returns to the Majors. Still, you do not want to see his confidence suffer.
So, if Tillman is not quite ready to comeback to Baltimore and replace Millwood – the next logical candidate is Britton. You can argue about starting his service-time clock, you could argue about him achieving Super 2 status, but I believe if Britton was pitching a bit better he would be in an Oriole uniform to end 2010. While he has given-up just 2 er in three consecutive starts, he has also failed to go past the 4th inning in two of those three outings.
If Millwood again struggles today, maybe we see newly acquired Rick VandenHurk get the call to replace him. Ultimately I see VandenHurk in the O’s bullpen as early as next Spring, but on a temporary basis he might be able to improve the rotation.
Including his 8/2 debut for Norfolk, VandenHurk has allowed 1 er in four consecutive starts.
8/2 VandenHurk: 7 ip, 4 hits, 1 er, 1 bb, 4 k’s
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Chris Stoner founded Baltimore Sports and Life in 2009. He has appeared as a radio guest with 1090 WBAL, 105.7 The Fan, CBS 1300, Q1370, WOYK 1350, WKAV 1400, and WNST 1570. He has also been interviewed by The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Business Journal, and PressBox (TV). As Owner, his responsibilities include serving as the Managing Editor, Publicist, & Sales Director.