Coming off a 4-2 road trip in New York and Tampa Bay, the Baltimore Orioles won another close game against the Seattle Mariners behind Chris Tillman's pitching. With less than a third of the season remaining, the collapse that many have predicted has yet to occur. Considering that only one starting pitcher has remained in the rotation the entire season, the Orioles have outperformed the expectations for the team by far. While the negative run differential continues to linger, there are some reasons to believe that the Orioles can around and be in the playoff hunt come September. I will be looking at the numbers in the second half primarily.
Despite losing Jason Hammel to an injury in the first game after the All-Star Break (ASB), the Orioles rotation has performed to a respectable level since then. (A good start is one where the starter pitches more than 5 innings, and allowed less than half the runs as his innings. 2 runs or less in 5 innings, 3 runs or less in 6/7 innings, 4 runs or less in 8/9 innings are good starts to me.) Since the ASB, Wei-Yin Chen has 5/5 good starts, Miguel Gonzalez has 2/5 good starts, Chris Tillman has 3/5 good starts, Tommy Hunter has 3/4 good starts, and Zach Britton has 1/4 good starts. That is a combined 14 good starts of the total 23 starts (1 start by Jason Hammel). When you look closer, two of Gonzalez's starts have been borderline good (3 runs over 5 2/3 innings and 4 runs over 6 2/3 innings). That means the Orioles' starters are keeping the team in the game 70% of the time. That is a really good percentage. The only starter who has not performed well since the ASB is Zach Britton. If Britton continues to overwhelm, Arrieta may be back in the majors sooner rather than later. The bullpen has continued to perform, especially if you take away two of Jim Johnson's appearances (11 earned runs over 2 outs combined). Pitching has stabilized and if Zach Britton can perform to Tommy Hunter's current standard (hope he can keep up this standard), run prevention will not be as difficult as it was in the first half.
The problem so far in the second half has been offense. The Orioles have scored more than 3 runs in only 11 of the 24 games since ASB, 4 times scoring 4 runs. It is remarkable that they have won 13 games with this kind of offense. The starting lineup seems to be set now with no upcoming injury returns. Betemit and Andino will platoon at third base, and Lew Ford and Nate Mclouth will platoon in left field. There are some who are over-performing, like Nick Markakis and Omar Quintanilla. There are some who are under-performing, such as Matt Wieters, Chris Davis and Mark Reynolds. I expect the offense to improve slightly for the rest of the season, as Ford/Mclouth will likely be much better than Endy Chavez. I am not overly optimistic about Orioles' improvement in offense, especially in the infield. However, the outfield has hit much better since the return of Markakis and Ford should improve with a larger sample size.
The most improved aspect of the Orioles' game since ASB might be the defense. The Orioles have committed only 10 errors in 24 games, about the same rate as the team with the best defense in the league, Seattle Mariners. There are 4 legitimate outfields on the roster now, compared to 1 in June. Betemit has been better, and Reynolds has really shined as a first baseman. Taking Chris Davis out of the field to replace the injured Jim Thome has also been a plus to the defense.
Looking at every aspect of the game since ASB, I am optimistic about the pitching and fielding going forward, but not so much about the offense. A few of the players, JJ Hardy and Mark Reynolds, need to break out of their season slump, which may indicate that it is not a slump anymore. When the team does not have many opportunities to score, it is even more important to get clutch hits. However, the Orioles have ranked last in the AL in batting average with runners in scoring position for the season. If they can't improve their overall offense, an improvement in clutch hitting should at least help the Orioles to score more runs.
No comments:
Post a Comment