The Orioles’ Frustrating Season
It wasn’t supposed to be this way for the Orioles. After a second trip to the postseason in three years, one in which they got about one-sixth of a season from Matt Wieters and half a season from Manny Machado, making the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1996-1997 was the clear goal. It hasn’t happened that way. The team recently dropped six straight, and has dropped eight of their last 10, to give themselves a firm uphill climb toward a wild-card berth.
Perhaps what is most frustrating for the Orioles is that they have significantly outscored all four teams standing with them or in their way of the second wild-card slot:
| Team | W | L | Run Diff | BR Run Diff | WC Playoff Odds |
| Texas | 65 | 61 | -29 | -43 | 28.2% |
| Anaheim | 65 | 62 | -4 | -20 | 31.8% |
| Minnesota | 65 | 62 | -9 | -80 | 13.0% |
| Tampa Bay | 63 | 64 | -19 | 21 | 10.7% |
| Baltimore | 63 | 64 | 49 | 9 | 7.7% |
When you expand from actual run differential to BaseRuns run differential, you can see that the Rays have a legit case to be positioned ahead of Baltimore, but overall that has to be a pretty frustrating table for the Orioles and their fans.
In order to get to this point, several frustrating things have happened throughout the season, as well. We can start with Wieters. While Wieters was once thought to be a franchise cornerstone — he was drafted fifth overall in 2007, and was in the majors by 2009 — it’s an open question as to whether he is even worth re-signing in free agency this winter. Though his recovery time from Tommy John surgery was roughly normal for a catcher, he hasn’t hit well at all since returning in early June.
He has only tallied extra-base hits in back-to-back appearances three times, and back-to-back Orioles’ games just once — July 31st and August 1st. His strikeout rate has gone through the roof — he is swinging out of the zone more often and in the zone less often, and missing way more no matter the pitch’s location. His swinging strike percentage has risen from 7.7% before his surgery to 12.2% this season. And while sometimes hitters trade strikeouts for power, Wieters’ power has fallen through the floor — his .149 ISO is the third-lowest of his career, and a 32-43 point drop from his previous four seasons. If it weren’t for a .344 BABIP propping up his batting average, he’d look like a complete zero offensively. Oh, and he sucks at pitch framing.
In one sense, he has proved a much better draft pick than the team would have gotten otherwise. While the team could pine over Madison Bumgarner (taken 10th) or Jason Heyward (14th), the four players taken directly after Wieters — Ross Detwiler, Matt LaPorta, Casey Weathers and Jarrod Parker — have only combined for 6.7 WAR. Weathers still hasn’t reached the majors. In comparison, Wieters’ career 15.5 WAR doesn’t seem that bad. But he was supposed to be so much better that it doesn’t quite feel that way.
The same feeling extends to much of the team’s outfield, but particularly Steve Pearce and Travis Snider. Pearce posting a 103 wRC+ against lefties and Snider a 84 wRC+ against righties isn’t that bad. But after a 2014 in Pearce posted a 209 wRC+ against lefties and Snider had a 110 wRC+ against righties, 2015 has been a let down. Pearce took a long time to get going this season, and once he was finally rounding into form he hurt his oblique and missed a month.
They haven’t been the only underwhelming outfielders, of course. Alejandro De Aza hit himself out of the lineup, as he posted a 69 wRC+ in the first two months before being dumped. His resurgence with the Red Sox was salt in the wound. Delmon Young not being able to follow up his career year wasn’t much of a surprise, but with the rest of the outfield not named Adam Jones collapsing, his drop back to earth stung a little more.
Finally, there is David Lough. A nice little player, David Lough was. He was a defensive stud who hit well enough to be worth a couple of wins per year. He was good on Kansas City, but KC — where they are turning the farming of good defensive outfielders into a cottage industry — didn’t need him, and he was worth the same two WAR in more limited time last year in Baltimore. This year, though, his hitting has fell off the table, and amazingly, so did his defense. The O’s finally outrighted him, but the damage had been done. Of the 401 players to tally at least 100 plate appearances this season, only 31 have been less valuable than Lough.
That we’re this deep into the post and haven’t discussed J.J. Hardy is telling. He hasn’t been the team’s biggest problem, but he has also been a far cry from the solid three- to four-win player he has been for much of the past decade. His performance against fastballs, sinkers, sliders and changeups have fallen through the floor. He is hitting ground balls at a rate that dwarfs his previous career-high GB/FB rate, and he is hitting the ball hard far less frequently than he ever has. In addition, his K/BB continues to move in the wrong direction. In other words, his 52 wRC+ looks very much well-earned. Yes, his BABIP is low, but it is basically at the same level as it was in 2013, when he posted a 100 wRC+.
It hasn’t just been the hitters, of course. Ubaldo Jimenez has been the team’s best pitcher by FIP-WAR, and he’s come crashing back to earth after coming down with a bad case of homer-itis in the second half (nine homers in 42.1 innings in the second half after just eight allowed in 99.1 IP in the first half). Some regression from him was inevitable, but aside from Wei-Yin Chen, no one has stepped up to help. Well, Chris Tillman did in July, but his success was fleeting.
Of course, when it comes to the starting rotation, it hasn’t just been the players who have underperformed, but also the team’s management. Kevin Gausman may not be the next Mike Mussina or Jim Palmer, but looking back it is pretty odd that Miguel Gonzalez, Mike Wright and Bud Norris were all given multiple opportunities in the rotation before Gausman finally got his shot on June 20th. The latter trio has put up a 5.33 ERA, 5.18 FIP and 1.59 HR/9 across 221 innings pitched this season. That’s not only failed to get the job done, but makes Gausman look positively Cuellar-ian by comparison. Gonzalez, in particular, has been a favorite of the coaching staff, but his success has always been smoke and mirrors, and this season the magic act has abruptly ended.
The final month of the season could be just as frustrating as the first five have. The O’s have three more road games left than home games, and most of their remaining games are against teams still in the fight:
- Tampa: 7
- Toronto: 7
- Yankees: 6
- Boston: 6
- Kansas City: 3
- Texas: 3
- Washington: 3
One the one hand, this gives Baltimore a sort of opportunity — 10 games against the four teams they’re chasing for the second wild card. Unfortunately, the Orioles are chasing those clubs because, in most cases, they’ve been better than the Orioles. Indeed, Baltimore opponents possess a .522 rest-of-season winning percentage (weighted by the how often Baltimore faces them).
Not all things have been a disaster for the Orioles this year. Adam Jones, Manny Machado and Zach Britton are still awesome. Chris Davis has rebounded from his worrisome 2014 campaign, and Gausman and Jonathan Schoop now look like part of the solution. But overall, things simply haven’t clicked the way they did in 2012 and 2014, and if the O’s miss out on the 2015 postseason, it is going to be a soul-searching offseason for Dan Duquette and Co., because their plan forward is more “choose your own adventure” than it is “here is our clear road map to success.”
Paul Swydan used to be the managing editor of The Hardball Times, a writer and editor for FanGraphs and a writer for Boston.com and The Boston Globe. Now, he owns The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Acton, Mass. Follow him on Twitter @Swydan. Follow the store @SilUnicornActon.
What happened to the Orioles secret sauce to bullpen management and beating base-runs?
Well, to be fair, their 80 bullpen FIP- ranks second in the game. it’s just all the other stuff that hasn’t gone well.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2015&month=0&season1=2015&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=14,a
Haha, payback for the last few years. As a Rays fan, I approve of this.
I thought I smelled trash.
Someone is going to get a bargain of Steve Pearce on a cheap 1 year deal next year right?
ROFL. Someone is going to pay a few million for a negative WAR.
.8 fWAR in a down and injury shortened year. 4.9 last year. About 2 per 150 in his career. He probably will be a bargain sign and can play multiple positions. He’s not a bad fielder. But yeah, Pearce/Snider replacing Nelson Cruz did not work out. Davis come back and Machado taking a big step up balanced that out. Joseph kinda balanced out Wieters. But Hardy down year, left field hole and starting pitching dragged the O’s down.
Pearce is going to be 33 next season. Looking an awful lot like last year was a complete and utter fluke. Which happens more often than we like to think.
Pearce is a decent hitter for a Second Baseman.
Part of this is that they let Cruz and Miller walk without replacing them, right?
No mention of losing Nelson Cruz?
You’re not allowed to say positive things about Nelson Cruz on Fangraphs. I believe it’s part of the standard contract.
If the Orioles had the kind of hindsight you’re using to claim keeping Cruz was a no-brainer…I’d imagine they’d do a lot of things differently.
There are some years left on that Cruz contract, no? Mariners may yet rue the day they signed him.
This year was not the issue with signing Cruz. The O’s don’t have money to burn. A lot of contracts to give out in the next few years.
Jeff was singing his virtues in chat today, but sure, keep grinding your axe.
The strategy that the Duquette/Buck regime has implemented has been pretty unorthodox. They’ve created an amorphous blob of a roster, shuttling guys to and from Norfolk while constantly attempting to juice every bit of use out of other teams’ DFA’d guys. The amount of success that the Orioles have gotten with this strategy, to me, is nothing short of miraculous. I mean, their strategy for the last 3 years has mostly centered around, seemingly, throwing shit at a wall, seeing what sticks, and then being able to cut bait precisely when those players stop sticking.
The strategy cannot be sustainable, simply because they have to hit on every guy, every decision, every single DFA, trade, free agent acquisition, etc. They’re living on the razor’s edge. The fact that they’ve been so successful thus far, again, is amazing to me. Perhaps this is finally the regression to the mean that every smart non-Orioles fan (and the smart Orioles fans) have been seeing coming forever.
It’s almost as if Duquette has decided that he can’t out-spend other teams, he can’t out-smart other teams… But he and Buck CAN out-work other teams on the margins. Frankly, he hasn’t been wrong thus far, and that’s super commendable, I think. But I think we’re seeing the Orioles coming back to earth. I have a feeling that they’re going to be an 82-84 win team this year, and I have a hunch they’re going to be around .500 for the immediate future. I have a feeling that Duquette/Buck teams are never going to be awful, but unless they get some surprise young talent coming through, they may never be great, either.
To be honest, this isn’t *that* different than what he did with the Red Sox. It’s just that he was also able to acquire big tickets like Pedro, Manny and Damon when he was in Boston, too.
He signed Anibal Sanchez and Hanley Ramirez and pulled off a block buster trade that got him Lowe and Varitek for Slocuum. He was very under rated. Not a people person though so the press ate him up
Preaching to the choir my friend. I wrote back in Mind Game about how underrated Duquette was with the Sox.
They have had a lot of luck with scrap heap types, but I suspect their recent success is more due to having 1) a great bullpen, 2) two superstars in Machado and Jones, and 3) Wieters notwithstanding, very few injuries. In particular their starting rotation has been remarkably healthy.
Actually, the injuries to Schoop (who is playing like a star player this season), Wieters, and Hardy (although it is hard to tell whether the bad performance is due to injury or not, although he did miss a month), have been bad. Pearce was also hurt, although it is unclear how much of a loss that was considering his poor performance this season.
And the bloom is off the rose regarding Duquette for me. he had a poor offseason, making bad decisions on almost all of the non-star players the Orioles need to have success. I don’t know if the fact that the Blue Jays were courting him (why no tampering charges were filed is beyond me) distracted him or not
The thinking that Adam Jones is a “superstar”.
I think you left out the great defense + medicore pitching + good bullpen aspect. I have a gut feeling this has been the cheapest way to buy wins over the past few years. The Royals seem to be doing OK by it. The Os defense seems to be worse this year as well, which I think weighs a bit on the pitching stats.
Yeah this is a bit of a trend. Good pens and great defense can steal you a whole bunch of wins. And is generally cheap.
““We’re such a great team,” Harper said of the 14-15 Nationals, who have won seven of their last nine since a six-game losing streak. “We’re the team to beat. Everybody knows that. We’re going to get hot. Everybody knows that too.”
Just going to leave this here.
Replace “hot” with “hurt” (just two letters!) and he’s practically Nostradamus.
Of the 401 players to tally at least 100 plate appearances this season, only 31 have been less valuable than Lough.
I protest the use of the word “only”.
How is your protest manifesting itself?
To me it was all about the SPing regressing. Chen has been good and 1st half Ubaldo, but after that just garbage time. Basically a collection of # 5 SP’ers in the 2nd half except Chen.
The offense is still good enough to win, but not without pitching. Duquette needed to make some moves at the deadline and inexplicably did not address his major need, which is a SP’er. Perhaps he is being restrained since he is in exit mode, or maybe because he has nothing to sell
They still have a shot at the WC though, as does any team within reach of 85 W’s
I think you really nailed it, Mr pft.
The aging curves on great, good, mediocre, and the rest are about the same, but of course those that are less than good age right below replacement level pretty quick, whereas the good & great have a greater distance to fall.
Let’s see: hole in LF, hobbled starting catcher, weak starting rotation, aging shortstop, superstar 3B, great DH, some star players having good seasons… this is what the Blue Jays looked like until the trade deadline. Add Price, Tulo, Revere, Lowe, Hawkins, & Pennington to the Orioles…!
Of course, maybe the Orioles don’t have as many farm arms to trade away.
I guess this is what happens when you don’t go 50-1 in 1 run games or whatever. Shame on you, reality!
I’m an Orioles fan and I could see this coming, I’m not disappointed at all.
Last year, just about every starter outpitched their peripherals. This year, the ERAs are more in line with their FIPs. Did anybody really believe that Norris and Gonzalez (clever as he is) could repeat the numbers they put up last year?
And yes, Gausman should’ve been inserted into the rotation sooner. The problem with Gausman is that he’s essentially a two pitch pitcher. Since being re-inserted into the rotation, he’s been throwing his four seamer over 70% of the time. It’s nice that he has great velocity (averaging 95mph) and a nice whiff rate with that pitch, but still it’s hard to succeed when the other team knows what’s coming. Whether he becomes a solid #2 type starter in the future depends on how well he progresses with his slider and his splitter—which he has been tinkering with lately but not using very often—and improving his command of the strike zone. We can only hope that he can expand his arsenal successfully.
Corner outfielders: was it a bad gamble to trade for Snider? He had a good year with the Pirates and he’s always flashed power. A left handed power hitter in Camden Yards has a good chance of reaching 20 home runs. But Snider tinkered with his swing again, and the power vanished. And like Delmon Young, he was a dreadful outfielder on a team that relied heavily last year on team defense to succeed.
Pearce was really unlucky to start the season. Through the first five weeks of the season he posted the best line drive rate of his career. But every well struck ball found a glove and eventually he started slumping. His versatility–this year he played some second base and didn’t embarrass himself–makes him very useful even if he isn’t able to correct his splits next year. I’m hoping he and the Orioles can work out a short contract extension.
Wieters: yep, he’s not a good pitch framer. Last year, he seemed to find a way to beat the shift as a LHB before the injury, greatly increasing his offensive value to the team. When he was drafted, some people said that he’d be the next Johnny Bench. That kind of expectation is a heavy burden. And he simply wasn’t up to the challenge. He’s gone. Wieter’s mediocre career so far illustrates one principle of drafting: pick the best player available, regardless of need.
In 2008, the Orioles had the 4th pick in the draft. Yes, they needed pitching. But Buster Posey was there for the taking. During the last 25 years, pitchers taken in the first half of the first round are less likely to succeed than hitters. The Orioles passed on Posey because they already had Wieters. What’s the problem with asking one of them to change positions? The Nats did that with Harper. (BTW, three years later the Nats selected Rendon with their 6th pick. They didn’t need a 3B, but they picked the player they rated as the best available.) Or see which one succeeds more quickly and ship the other off for a good pitching prospect?
Matusz wasn’t an awful choice, but most scouting reports said he had a good changeup and not much else. We know the Posey story.
Matusz was a very highly-touted pitcher out of college. Tony Gwynn said he was the best college pitcher aside from Strasburg that he had seen. And the strange thing is that he has mothballed his changeup mostly now, which was supposed to be his best pitch. Matusz is not having that bad a season. I agree that Wieters’s failure to become a star on the level of Harper and Strasburg and Price, etc. has been a big disappointment for the Orioles.
Gonzalez had been good for years, ad was good for half of this year. I am not so sure this is a case of luck running out so much as something related to the injury he suffered in June. I don’t know what happened to Bud Norris – you knew regression was likely but he fell off the Earth. According to what he said, his severe bronchitis early in the year was hard to come back from, and then he psyched himself out because he was in a contract year. Whatever it was, he cost himself a lot of money, and gave the Orioles 15 starts of dreadful pitching.
Regarding Matusz: with all due respect for Gwynn’s opinion, most of the prospect hounds said Matusz would make a solid #3 starter. Just as they did with Tillman. Those kind of guys are not so hard to find.
I like Miguel too, but let’s face it: apart from a nice changeup, he really has been getting by with smoke and mirrors. Except for last year, his K/9 rate has never been above ~6.50, his walk rate has always been just under 3/9. Those are not numbers that are conducive to long term success. He had a strand rate of better than 85% last year; that’s what accounted for his success in 2014. Given his strand rates of previous years, it was unsustainable.
And now we’re in the toilet. All I am hoping for at this point is a respectable and competitive end to the season rather than one of those all-too-familiar end of season collapses (I mean, beyond what has already happened). I hope they play for some pride and for a few guys to position themselves for jobs next year.
Sigh.