Thoughts on the Baltimore Orioles as They Go to the Playoffs

I. The Six Man Rotation

The Orioles switched to a six man starting rotation in August to reduce the innings on their young starter’s arms going into the home stretch for the playoffs.  My gut feel was that the pitchers pitched worse with the extra day of rest, and so I did an analysis to convince myself. Bottom line up front: I don’t think the six man rotation had a negative effect on the starters.  Some of the pitchers had slightly better results with the six man rotation and some slightly poorer results, but nothing enough for a correlation with the exception of Jack Flaherty which I’ll get to. 

So here’s what I did.  I collected the stats game by game for each pitcher from August 12^th when Irvin was first inserted into the rotation as the six starter up until September 6^th, the last of the games with a six man rotation.  That amounted to four starts for each pitcher except for Flaherty who was skipped over one start because he couldn’t recuperate from a previous start.  Then I went backward from August 12^th to where I collected data for four starts prior to the six man rotation.  That stretched back to July 21^st.  Now everyone in that time had four starts except Flaherty who had joined the team on August 1^st, and so had only two starts.  Irvin obviously was not in the rotation and had none, and Tyler Wells had two starts in that span before he was sent down.  I’m not going to include his numbers.  So here is a pitcher by pitcher summary.

Bradish:

5-Man Rot: 4 starts, 24.1 inns, 20 hits, 10 earned runs, 9 BBs, 20 K’s, 3.73 ERA

6-Man Rot: 4 starts, 24.0 inns, 17 hits, 6 e.r., 3 BBs, 27 K’s, 2.25 ERA

Kremer:

5-Man Rot: 4 starts, 23.1 inns, 18 hits, 8 e.r., 10 BBs, 19 K’s, 2.25 ERA

6-Man Rot: 4 starts, 22.2 inns, 20 hits, 4 e.r., 5 BBs, 19 K’s, 1.62 ERA

 

Grayson:

5-Man Rot: 4 starts, 23.2 inns, 14 hits, 7 e.r., 8 BBs, 20 K’s, 2.72 ERA

6-Man Rot: 4 starts, 25.0 inns, 19 hits, 6 e.r., 6 BBs, 24 K’s, 2.16 ERA

 

Gibson:

5-Man Rot: 4 starts, 24.1 inns, 24 hits, 15 e.r., 5 BBs, 23 K’s, 5.60 ERA

6-Man Rot: 4 starts, 23.1 inns, 30 hits, 17 e.r., 3 BBs, 19 K’s, 6.62 ERA

 

Flaherty:

5-Man Rot: 2 starts, 11.0 inns, 10 hits, 4 e.r., 4 BBs, 16 K’s, 3.27 ERA

6-Man Rot: 3 starts, 13.1 inns, 17 hits, 14 e.r., 6 BBs, 13 K’s, 9.62 ERA

 

Irvin:

6-Man Rot: 4 starts, 21.2 inns, 20 hits, 9 e.r., 6 BBs, 24 K’s, 3.82 ERA

I provided Irvin’s six man rotation stats because he did a decent job.  What to make of it all?  You could make an argument that Bradish’s and Grayson’s stats were improved when in a six man rotation.  Kremer’s are a little deceptive because he recently had a four inning start where he did not give up any runs but actually did not pitch well.  Kremer is about no difference between the five and six man rotation performance.  Gibson was just bad in both rotations, but perhaps slightly worse with the six man.  Flaherty’s two starts in the five man was actually respectable, but he totally bombed in the six man.  Given Flaherty’s history this year prior to the Orioles, I don’t know if you can attribute that dramatic a fall off to the extra day rest. 

One could make the argument that the young pitchers had no problem with the six man, and may have even improved, while the veterans regressed from the six man.  The numbers are too close to make such a definitive statement.  So when you totaled it all up, the five man staff had an ERA of 3.71 while the six man staff had an ERA of 3.88.  Flaherty’s ERA elevated the six man. 

Overall I would conclude there was no difference between the five man and six man rotations.  If saving a start for each pitcher made a difference in their wear and tear, then it was worth it.  One caveat, the competition during the six man rotation was slightly weaker than during the five man.  That didn’t get factored in but I doubt it had that much of an effect.

One other interesting observation.  During the month and a half and 44 games I analyzed, I didn’t notice a single unearned run on any starter.  All the runs were earned, which tells you what a good defense we have behind the pitchers.

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II. The Orioles Pitching Staff for the Playoffs 

Who will the Orioles select for their playoff pitching staff?  I’m going to assume they will designate four starters, and then it’s a question whether the entire staff will be twelve or thirteen pitchers.  Typically during the season they carry thirteen but they could decide that in a short series where you can reconfigure your pitching roster for the next series they will go with twelve and carry an extra position player.  For the purposes of this exercise I will assume they go with thirteen.

One other caveat, how the pitchers matchup against the opponent, who is unknown at the moment, can and probably will influence the selections.  I can’t factor that in now.

So for the starting four I have Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, Dean Kremer, and John Means.  I guess it could be Gibson instead of Means, but Gibson has not been pitching well of late and Means has been acceptable.  I think they’ll go with Means over Gibson.  If they don’t then Means will make the bullpen as a long man replacing Gibson.

There are four relief pitchers that are absolute given to be on the playoff roster: Yennier Cano, Cionel Perez, Danny Coulumbe, and Jacob Webb.  After these four, the decisions get more difficult.  If the playoff staff will be thirteen, then you need five more with these nine possibilities:

Mike Baumann

Kyle Gibson

Jack Flaherty

Cole Irvin

Shintaro Fujinami

D.L. Hall

Nick Vespi

Bryan Baker

Joey Krehbiel

I think Baumann is likely and I think Gibson is probable.  He’s the veteran and would serve as the long man.  The staff probably needs one more left hander and no more, and that means it would be between Irvin, Hall, and Vespi.  Between those three I think it will be Hall, but Irvin would not be out of the question.  Vespi is very unlikely. 

That leaves two right handers to choose between Flaherty, Fuji, Baker, and Krehbiel.  It’s highly unlikely it will be Krehbiel.  Given that Baker is in the minors right now, the odds are the Orioles will select Flaherty and Fuji.  But I don’t know.  None of the three have been consistent.  I’m sure the rest of the regular season games will have a good deal of input to the decision.  If they go with a twelve man staff and can only could pick one of the three, who would you pick?  As it stands right now I would probably pick Baker, but there are ten regular season games still to play.

Here are the likely thirteen: Bradish, Rodriguez, Kremer, Means, Cano, Perez, Coulumbe, Webb, Baumann, Gibson, Hall, Fuji, Flaherty.  I’m sure I will be surprised.  My wild card unexpected pick that will replace one of the two last names there is Bryan Baker.

Note: Since I wrote the above, Tyler Wells has returned from the minors and is in the pitching mix.  He just pitched well, and I’m going to assume he will also be in the mix of the thirteen pitchers.  My guess is he will replace Flaherty in the thirteen I selected.

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III. Assessing the Orioles Offensive Consistency

A number of people have complained the orioles offense is inconsistent, scoring double digit runs one game, held to one or two the next night.  I brainstormed a week-to-week OPS assessment and its standard deviation as a means of trying to figure out if they are consistent or not.  I knew it wouldn’t be easy for me to get week-to-week OPS statistics but Baseball Reference does provide monthly OPS.  Now week-to-week might be a finer measure but monthly would provide a decent understanding of offensive consistency.  So here is the Orioles monthly OPS.

April   .761

May   .734

June   .730

July    .716

Aug    .781

Sept   .781

This works out to an average OPS of .751 with a monthly standard deviation of .028.

Not knowing how that compares across the league I did the same for some of our competitors.  I’m not going to provide their monthly numbers (you can find them in their batting splits) but it’s in my spreadsheet.  Here are the results for four other teams.

Rays: average OPS, .766, monthly S.D., .071

Blue Jays: ave OPS, .742, monthly S.D., .020

Astros: ave OPS, .772, S.D., .062

Braves: ave OPS, .844, S.D., .061

Rays, Astros, and Braves all have a higher OPS than the Orioles but more than double a standard deviation.  On a monthly basis, those teams’ offenses fluctuated more than twice the Orioles.  Side note on the Braves, though they fluctuated more than the Orioles, every month showed higher production than the Orioles.  They are a beast of a team.  Blue Jays had a lower OPS than the Orioles but slightly more consistent month to month.

I found this interesting.  As I said, such an analysis by week-to-week would be more applicable but even so I don’t think the Orioles have an inconsistent offense.

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Finally, the Orioles with just over a week to go in the season have clinched a playoff spot as a wildcard, but they are still fighting to hold on to the top spot in American League East Division.  This really wonderful video was put together to commemorate making the playoffs after four or five of the worst years any team has had to suffer through.  Enjoy it.

 

I am such an Orioles fan, since I was eight years old in 1970.  This video brings tears to my eyes.  Yes, it’s possible we could win the World Series this year.  Stay tuned.