Jack Flaherty Joins a New Flock in Baltimore

The Orioles entered Tuesday with the American League’s best record at 65-41 thanks to a rebuilding effort that’s finally paying off. Nonetheless, the team made just one move to shore up its major league roster in the final week ahead of the trade deadline, acquiring righty Jack Flaherty from the Cardinals in exchange for a trio of prospects, infielder César Prieto, lefty Drew Rom, and righty Zack Showalter.

It’s hardly a high-impact move, particularly given that the Orioles were reportedly among the frontrunners to land Justin Verlander and could deal from strength thanks to their well-stocked minor league system. Yet Verlander — who to be fair could have used his no-trade clause to block a move to Baltimore if it weren’t to his liking — instead wound up being traded back to the Astros. What’s more, aside from Verlander and former Mets co-ace Max Scherzer, who was traded to the Rangers on Saturday, this wasn’t a market where frontline starters changed teams. Instead the moves were centered around rentals such as Lucas Giolito and Lance Lynn, whose new teams are hoping they’ll rebound with a change of scenery, while moves for better performers, and pitchers under club control, were generally stifled by the high asking prices. Notably, the Rays, who entered Tuesday a game and a half behind the Orioles, were one team willing to bite the bullet for a better-performing starter by trading for the Guardians’ Aaron Civale.

The 27-year-old Flaherty, who can become a free agent for the first time this winter, fits into the bounce-back group. The former 2014 first-round pick, who had spent his entire career with the Cardinals, made an impact in his first few seasons, placing fifth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2018 (his age-22 season) and then fourth in the Cy Young voting (and 13th in the MVP voting) the following year. For those two seasons combined, he pitched to a 3.01 ERA and 3.64 FIP with a 29.8% strikeout rate and 6.9 WAR in 347.1 innings. Whether it was his workload, which included 196.1 innings at age 23 (plus another 17 in the postseason), or just bad luck, his availability has only been sporadic since then. He’s totaled 264.1 inning since the start of 2020, and didn’t throw more than 78.1 in any season from ’20–22 due to an oblique strain and recurrent shoulder woes, which combined to send him to the 60-day injured list three times.

Flaherty has been healthy this season, avoiding the IL and missing only one start due to right hip discomfort. His performance has hardly been remarkable, however. In 108.2 innings, he’s pitched to a 4.43 ERA (106 ERA-) and 4.22 FIP (100 FIP-) while striking out 21.9% of hitters, 0.1 points below the major league average for starters. He’s walking 11.1% of hitters, and so his 10.7% strikeout-to-walk differential is almost exactly half of his 21.6% differential from his 2018-19 heyday. Where he generated a 31.7% chase rate and a 13.6% swinging strike rate in those two seasons, he’s down to a 27.7% chase rate and a 10.2% swinging strike rate this year.

Not surprising given the injuries, Flaherty’s arsenal isn’t what it once was. His average fastball velocity is down 1.4 mph from his seasonal peak of 94.3 mph, set in 2019, and his horizontal movement on the pitch has diminished from an average of 4.8 inches in 2019 to 1.8 this year. When batters make contact with the fastball, they’ve hit it for a .304 average and .439 slugging percentage. The pitch was 22 runs better than average in 2019 according to Statcast, but is five runs worst than average now. His most effective pitch is his curve, which generates a 41.7% whiff rate; batters have hit it for just a .176 AVG and .324 SLG. The Stuff+ model isn’t particularly impressed with either pitch, grading his fastball at 95, his curve at 91, and his overall Stuff at 93.

The good news is that Flaherty has generated a career-high 44.6% groundball rate and allowed a career-low 0.82 homers per nine. He’s done a very good job of preventing hard contact; his 87.5 mph average exit velocity, 6.4% barrel rate, and 35.8% hard-hit rate range from the 71st to the 77th percentile. He’s been singed for a .345 BABIP, which figures to improve as he moves from a team with one of the majors’ worst defenses to one that’s been pretty middle-of-the-pack based on an analysis I did of several different metrics a month ago. If nothing else, the Orioles’ .686 defensive efficiency is 21 points better than the Cardinals’ major league-low .665, which should help trim that BABIP.

Flaherty joins a rotation that’s been better than expected — which isn’t to say that it’s been good, exactly. In our preseason starting pitcher Positional Power Rankings, the Orioles ranked 28th in the majors in projected WAR (7.5), but at this writing they’re 19th (5.7). Among AL teams, their 4.48 ERA ranks eighth and their 4.47 FIP 10th. A major area of concern is that three of their starting pitchers, namely Dean Kremer, Tyler Wells, and Grayson Rodriguez, have either already set career highs in innings (major league and minor league combined) or will do so very soon:

That doesn’t give the Orioles a lot of headroom if they’re playing into October, and what’s more, in adding Flaherty they now have three starters who have already surpassed last year’s workloads. Fatigue may already be a factor for Wells, who after totaling just nine innings and allowing 11 runs in his first three second-half starts was demoted to Double-A Bowie on Sunday. Said manager Brandon Hyde of the demotion, “We feel like he needs a little bit of a break… [R]eally the last three or four starts, there’s been some things in there that were uncharacteristic.”

Said Hyde of the pitchers heading into uncharted territory, “All these guys are going to go through things for the first time, honestly… It’s part of development, and it’s part of why they’re going to be really good down the road, too. We’re trying to win right now. We’re going to try to win down the road.”

Here’s general manager Mike Elias on the subject, from Sunday as well:

“We’re trying to be mindful of indicators that they might be exhibiting that that might be reason to pull back, other than just sort of the academic concept of, like, ‘Oh hey, look at how many innings this guy’s thrown. Let’s back that off,’” Elias said. “There’s really not a ton of science, or any science, there. We try to use common sense, we try to use our expertise.”

Touché. Still, one would have expected a team in the Orioles’ position to come away from the trade deadline either with higher quality or greater quantity than just Flaherty, who at this stage is a quasi-LAIM (League Average Innings Muncher), albeit one with merely a modest appetite for innings based on his spotty track record for health. If a contact-oriented Cardinals starter about to hit free agency was the order of the day, why couldn’t the Orioles land the more durable and reliable Jordan Montgomery, who was instead traded to the Rangers? Maybe a change of scenery will help Flaherty, but an AL East where all five teams are above .500 is hardly the most hospitable landing spot for pitchers in need of a new backdrop.

As for the returns, Eric Longenhagen has a separate column devoted to them you can read here, but here’s a brief rundown. Prieto is a 24-year-old infielder who has hit a combined .349/.393/.475 (132 wRC+) with an absurd 7.4% strikeout rate split between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk; he was 27th on the Orioles Top Prospects list in February as a 40 FV prospect, and is now 18th on the Cardinals’ list. Rom is a 23-year-old lefty who has pitched to a 5.34 ERA and 4.21 FIP with a 25.1% strikeout rate in 86 innings at Norfolk; he was 29th on the O’s prospect list in the spring as a 40 FV prospect, and is now 24th on the Cardinals list. Showalter — no relation to the former Orioles manager, alas — is a 19-year-old righty who has posted a 2.37 ERA and 3.20 FIP with a 31.8% strikeout rate in 30.1 innings split between the Florida Complex League and A-level Delmarva. He’s not yet on The Board, but Eric indicated he will be added soon.

All told, it doesn’t look as though any of the prospects the Orioles gave up are likely to be impact players. While Elias sees this team as one whose competitive window is just starting to open, perhaps he and the Orioles will look back and wish they had dug a bit — or a lot — deeper to round out their rotation in pursuit of October success.