On June 29, the Baltimore Orioles reached their high-water mark of the season, according to our playoff odds. They’d defeated the San Diego Padres, 12-6 to win their seventh consecutive game, putting them 17 games above .500 with a 5.5-game lead in the division and a 71% chance to make the postseason.

And then the pitching staff happened. It’s been one week since that day, and in that week, little good has come out of the Orioles’ rotation. Baltimore followed up its seven-game winning streak with a five-game losing streak, due largely to the fact that its starting rotation averaged just five innings per start with a 7.46 ERA and 6.74 FIP. Sweeping conclusions aren’t to be drawn from any seven-game stretch, of course; the Cubs’ rotation has been equally underwhelming over the last week and there’s no alarm bells going off there. But unlike in Chicago, what we’ve seen from Baltimore’s starters over the last week only reinforces what we already knew: this Baltimore rotation isn’t very good.

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Tim Lincecum used to be freakishly good. He no longer is. Hampered by hip woes, the 32-year-old right-hander went from winning Cy Young awards and tossing no-hitters to the precipice of pitching oblivion. His velocity down and his ERA up, he succumbed to surgery last September.

He’s on the comeback trail, but not with the team he helped win three World Series. The former Giant signed with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in May and debuted with his new club in mid-June. His performances have been underwhelming. In four starts, the once-overpowering righty has allowed 29 hits in 18 innings. His fastball is averaging a pedestrian 89 mph.

The extent to which Lincecum can return to his old form remains to be seen. His surgically-repaired hip appears to be holding up, and his damaged psyche is healing as well. He’ll likely never be an elite power pitcher again — or a power pitcher at all — but he feels he can be a productive starter. Only time will tell.

Lincecum talked about his early development as a pitcher, and his career going forward, prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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Lincecum on pitching: “When you’re younger, you don’t have a plan. You either trust your stuff or you don’t, or you just throw it and hope. I always trusted my stuff. My fastball didn’t always play, but my curveball made my fastball better. That’s what I could execute. Some guys have an idea of how they can pitch — what pitches they should throw in what counts — but guys like me just end up throwing the ball and trusting it. There’s an aspect of that even at this level. You have a plan, but you’re basically throwing the baseball. It all depends on how well you can execute.

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A couple of months ago, we announced that we’d partnered with the Pitch Talks crew, and were going to be doing a series of events with them around the country this summer. Well, the first show of the summer is this Thursday, at The Wilbur in Boston, and the show is going to be great. Here’s the schedule for the show, in case you don’t believe me.

Paul Swydan and I will be representing the FanGraphs crew, hanging out with friends of the site Jonah Keri and Alex Speier, talking Red Sox and baseball from a nerdy perspective. A one-hour conversation with the Red Sox GM will follow — which is sure to be an interesting chat, given the Red Sox current position in the standings — and then the night will close out with a roundtable of some of the most notable beat writers in the area, plus a live recording of Jonah Keri’s podcast with Bill Lee, and then we’ll all hang out afterwards and have a good time.

Now, on its own, this is easily worth the $32 price of admission. But because we wanted to encourage those in the Boston area who overload on baseball conversations over the next month, we actually have a special offer for you to make this an absolute no-brainer.

If you attend the Pitch Talks show on Thursday night, you’ll be given access to a 24-hour promo code that will get you $32 offer the admission price to Saber Seminar, which is the best baseball conference of the year, and will be held on August 13th/14th on the campus of Boston University. A two-day collection of amazing speakers, presentations, research, and discussion, Saber Seminar is an absolute must-attend for anyone in the northeast interested in the game.

And, best of all, all of the money raised through ticket sales for the conference goes directly to cancer research and support; The Jimmy Fund and The Angioma Alliance will receive 100% of the proceeds raised through this great event. So you get to attend the best baseball conference of the year, and you get to support two great charities at the same time. It’s the biggest win-win in baseball.

But now, because of the support of the Pitch Talks crew, you now get to go to two great events for the price of one. Buy the $32 ticket to Pitch Talks on Thursday, then use the promo code to get a $32 discount on your ticket for Saber Seminar on Friday, and you’ll end up paying $140 for both Pitch Talks and Saber Seminar, while supporting two great charities at the same time.

If you’re going to be in the Boston area over the next five weeks, I highly encourage you to come to both events. Pitch Talks is going to be a lot of fun tomorrow night, and there is no better place to learn about baseball than Saber Seminar in August. I’ll be at both events, and would love to say hi to as many FanGraphs readers as possible.

So come hang out with me and a bunch of other great folks this Thursday at The Wilbur, and then come spend the weekend with even more awesome people at BU in August, all for just $140. Look forward to meeting plenty of you tomorrow night, and then catching up again next month, as we bond over baseball and our support of cancer research.

Buy your Tickets to Pitch Talks now, and we’ll see you on Thursday night!

Episode 665
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio he discusses how the Padres’ flurry of international signings might indicate an attempt by the organization to solve the wrong kind of problem; addresses the likelihood of the Yankees’ trading any of their impressive bullpen triumvirate; and explains the concept of diminishing returns to the host as if the latter were a small child.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 46 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Baltimore at Los Angeles NL | 15:10 ET
Gausman (81.2 IP, 89 xFIP-) vs. Norris (76.1 IP, 97 xFIP-)
If one takes for granted that ballplayers enjoy winning more than losing and prefer to qualify for the postseason rather than not to qualify for it, then one might also reasonably state that the recent trade between Los Angeles and Atlanta has improved right-hander Bud Norris’s professional life. On the day of that particular transaction (June 30th), Los Angeles possessed a 79.3% probability of qualifying for the postseason in some capacity; Atlanta, much closer to 0.0%. That represents an improvement of roughly 80 percentage points. How does this compare to other players? It seems the only other recent trade of note involved Fernando Rodney. He moved, on that same day, from San Diego (0.0%) to Miami (27.7%). Still an improvement, but roughly 50 points less of an improvement than the one experienced by Norris.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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A few years ago, I was driving down I-95 just north of Philadelphia when my timing belt broke. I had been happily cruising along in the far left lane of a four-lane road when all of a sudden my dashboard lit up with icons I’d never seen before and, even more alarmingly, my gas pedal refused to tell my car to “Go.” Without any means of acceleration, I somehow navigated my way across four lanes of traffic to the shoulder where my suddenly useless car came to a final stop. It was confusing, frustrating, and a little bit scary. Although I’ve never pitched professionally, I’m struck by a sense that right now Aaron Nola might feel a bit like I did that evening on the side of the road.

Aaron Nola was absolutely cruising. Through his first twelve starts he had a 2.65 ERA which was backed up by peripherals so strong that his FIP (2.77) and xFIP (2.74) provided an extra boost of confidence that, yes, Nola was for real. Then, without any real warning whatsoever, it all fell apart.

For the sake of convenience, let’s call those first 12 starts Nola’s Good Stretch and the most recent five starts his Bad Stretch. Nola has given up more earned runs (27 ER) in his 18-inning Bad Stretch than he did in the entire 78 innings of his Good Stretch (23 ER). That is an intense decline in results and, as a result, the Phillies announced that Nola will skip his final start before the All-Star Break in an effort to give him time to right a path that’s gone horribly awry. But look at a few more numbers across his splits and you’ll notice something a bit curious:

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Ah, this part. I always enjoy this part. Not because I enjoy when superstars struggle, but because I enjoy seeing the standards to which we hold those same superstars. The standards are revealed when people start to worry. Over his last…I don’t know, eight starts, Jake Arrieta has a 3.77 ERA. He’s allowed a slugging percentage of .331. This is Jake Arrieta in a rut. I mean, this really is Jake Arrieta in a rut — people aren’t making up the rut — but you can see how silly reality is. That all-time amazing version of Arrieta became the version we allowed ourselves to take for granted.

But, heck, where’d he go? Arrieta himself would admit he hasn’t been firing on all cylinders. He’d like to pitch better than he has. The Cubs would like him to pitch better than he has. While Arrieta hasn’t been bad, lately he’s fallen short of expectations. And if you examine the record now, you see signs that Arrieta has been off to some degree for several weeks. This isn’t all that recent of a thing.

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With the extended holiday weekend behind us, we get back to the business at hand: our position-by-position look at hitter contact quality. Only three positions to go. Last time, it was left fielders. This time: a fun-filled group of center fielders. As we have in the previous installments, we’ll use granular ball-in-play data, such as BIP type frequencies, exit speed and launch angle to perform this analysis.

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