Orioles acquire Scott Feldman to upgrade rotation

The Orioles acquired Chicago Cubs right-handed starting pitcher Scott Feldman and catcher Steve Clevenger on Tuesday and sent Jake Arrieta, Pedro Strop and international bonus pool money to Chicago, as first reported by Keith Law of ESPN.

Feldman is on a one-year deal worth $6 million and is in the midst of a career year; in 91 innings, Feldman has a 3.46 ERA with strikeout and walk rates of 6.63 and 2.47. Feldman, however, has benefited from a .255 batting average on balls in play; his career BABIP is .292.

(Discuss this article on the BSL Board here.)

Feldman broke into the big leagues in 2005 with the Texas Rangers – his manager at the time was Buck Showalter – and remained with the club until 2012. Feldman shuffled between the majors and minors during his time with Texas, but Feldman saw his peripherals take a step up in his last two years with the Rangers. From 2005 to 2010, Feldman’s strikeout rate was 5.0 and his walk rate, 3.3. From 2011 to 2012, his strikeout and walk rates improved to 6.8 and 2.4. His FIP and xFIP took nosedives in those last two years in Texas, as well.

However, Feldman’s peripheral gains didn’t produce a breakthrough year with the Rangers. He pitched just 32 innings in 2011. He was given more opportunities in 2012, but his ERA at the end of the year was 5.09. Feldman became a free agent this winter. The rebuilding Cubs made a $6 million gamble that Feldman’s peripheral gains could be translated into results and that Feldman could turn out to be an attractive piece at the trade deadline. That’s exactly what’s happened for Chicago.

How Feldman performs with the Orioles remains to be seen, but he’d likely be best served to keep the ground balls coming. He’s posted a 50.7 percent ground ball rate this season and the success of the Orioles’ infield defense – particularly the left side – has been well-documented.

Feldman’s arrival will augment a rotation that has been in flux all season, particularly ever since Wei-Yin Chen went down with an oblique injury. Freddy Garcia, Kevin Gausman, Zach Britton, Jair Jurrjens, Josh Stinson, Steve Johnson and T.J. McFarland have pitched a combined 140 innings as starters. Between Feldman and Chen’s impending return, the Orioles will likely cut down significantly on the amount of innings given to starters that are fringy arms or are simply not ready to start every fifth day at the big league level. Starting those types of arms in a very tight division race has already come back to bite the O’s, but Feldman and Chen should be able to provide better innings than the aforementioned arms in the latter half of the season. The sooner the Orioles augmented the rotation, the better.

Chen has one more rehab start left, but once he returns, the rotation will include Jason Hammel, Miguel Gonzalez, Chris Tillman, Chen and Feldman. None of those pitchers are No. 1 or 2 starters and none of them miss a lot of bats, but the bar is low for what would constitute improvement in the rotation. Orioles starters have posted a 4.79 ERA, the fourth-worst mark in the majors entering Tuesday’s action. They’ve also given up 82 home runs, by far the worst mark in the majors.

“OK, so Feldman’s an upgrade,” you might be thinking to yourself. “But don’t we need an ace if we want to win the World Series? How about Matt Garza or Cliff Lee?”

This is certainly not an unreasonable thought. Here’s a list of the best starter (by fWAR) on each team that won the World Series over the past 10 years:

• 2012: Matt Cain (Giants)
• 2011: Chris Carpenter (Cardinals)
• 2010: Tim Lincecum (Giants)
• 2009: C.C. Sabathia (Yankees)
• 2008: Cole Hamels (Phillies)
• 2007: Josh Beckett (Red Sox)
• 2006: Chris Carpenter (Cardinals)
• 2005: Mark Buehrle (White Sox)
• 2004: Curt Schilling (Red Sox)
• 2003: Mark Redman and Josh Beckett (Marlins; virtually a tie)

You’re forgiven if you don’t think that none of the Orioles’ starters matches up to those guys. You’re forgiven if you think that the lack of an ace on the staff hurts the Orioles’ ability to make a run in October. We saw Sabathia did to the Orioles last fall. That’s an ace. That’s a pitcher you have no qualms about giving the ball to for Games 1 and 5 of the Division Series. The Orioles don’t have that pitcher. And while baseball’s postseason feels like even more of a crapshoot than March Madness, it sure helps to have an ace.

The state of the Orioles’ farm system limited the club’s ability to get involved in a bidding war for Garza or Lee (if Lee were to become available). The O’s aren’t trading Kevin Gausman or Dylan Bundy, who’s out for a year anyhow. Their trade chips are Jonathan Schoop, Eduardo Rodriguez, Nick Delmonico and LJ Hoes, among a handful of others. These are quality prospects and have a chance to contribute at the big league level, but these are not the kind of prospects necessary to land a top-end starter. It’s the same situation the Orioles found themselves in last year when they settled on Joe Saunders. Perhaps the Orioles could have acquired a starter with a little more of a track record than Feldman if they dipped into their minor league inventory – think Ricky Nolasco or Bud Norris – but the Orioles obviously felt more comfortable dealing from the big league roster for Feldman.

Whether Feldman is from across the hall or not remains to be seen.

For the Cubs, they’re rolling the dice on a couple of live arms. Jake Arrieta struggled in parts of four seasons with the Orioles (358 innings, 6.96 strikeouts per nine, 4.00 walks per nine, 5.46 ERA). I think Arrieta is best suited for late-inning relief, where he can max out his fastball/curveball combination in short bursts. I don’t think he has the command necessary to work through big league lineups three times an outing and I don’t think he has a weapon (like a changeup) to hold down big league left-handed hitters, who have hit .277/.367/.489 off him. At 27 years old, it’s probably time to think about Arrieta as a reliever moving forward. Arrieta is arbitration-eligible next year.

The Orioles acquired Pedro Strop in 2011 for one month of Mike Gonzalez. The Orioles got more out of that trade than could have been expected. From the time the Orioles claimed Strop off waivers on September 1, 2011 to complete the Gonzalez deal until September 1, 2012, Strop was awesome. He pitched 70.1 innings, had a 1.66 ERA, struck out 7.81 per nine, walked 3.84 per nine and had a nasty ground ball rate. From September 1, 2012 until now, Strop has been the opposite of awesome. He’s pitched 30.2 innings to the tune of a 7.04 ERA, has walked 7.34 batters per nine, has struck out 9.68 batters per nine and the groundball rate has taken a nosedive. If the Cubs can harness Strop’s two-seamer, the Cubs will have a hell of a reliever, but Strop’s issues with command and control date well back to his days with Texas. Strop, 28, is arbitration-eligible next year and is out of options, so he may be running out of opportunities to stick in a big league bullpen before entering the minor league free agent pool.