Where Do the Orioles Go from Here?

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.

You know the numbers over the last week. Over the last month, it’s still not good, with a 5.52 ERA and a 5.13 FIP. Spanning the whole year, Orioles starters have pitched to a 5.12 ERA and a 4.79 FIP. Starting rotations with an ERA north of 5.00 don’t typically make the postseason. Starting rotations with an ERA north of 5.00 certainly aren’t to be trusted in the postseason, at the very least.

All the same, the Orioles have had that starting rotation all year, and here they are, still in first place, still well above .500, and still possessing roughly a 50% shot of making the playoffs. Those 50/50 teams are interesting, because those 50/50 teams have questions, questions like, in this case: How did they get here? What does the starting rotation hold? With the trade deadline looming, in what ways could that rotation be improved, and to what extent?

They got here with the bats, and the bats expect to stay. It’s been a top-five lineup thus far, and it projects as a top-five lineup moving forward. They got here with the bullpen, and the bullpen expects to stay. By WPA, Baltimore’s had baseball’s third-best bullpen this year, thanks to Zach Britton taking yet another step forward and Brad Brach cementing himself as one of baseball’s better non-closing relievers. The projections see no reason for the bullpen to fall off any time soon.

But that rotation? It’s been ugly, and it expects to remain ugly. The only teams with worse rest-of-season projections in the rotation are the Brewers, Angels, Royals, Braves, and Reds. Four of those teams are well out of contention — three never had any intentions to compete in the first place — and the fifth is on its way. After a great start to the season, Chris Tillman‘s got a 4.28 ERA and 5.46 FIP over his last 10 starts, and his season peripherals are back to their typically underwhelming, mid-rotation level. Likewise, Kevin Gausman’s mediocre peripherals remain unchanged. Yovani Gallardo has completely crashed and burned, which might’ve been easy to spot in the offseason. Ubaldo Jimenez has been one of the very worst starters in baseball by RA9-WAR, lost his spot, and is only back in the rotation due to Baltimore’s complete lack of depth.

So, there’s the first problem: the projections don’t see much hope. And the bigger issue might be that Baltimore entered the season without much in the way of any backup plans. Dylan Bundy’s not ready to be stretched out into a starter role, which leaves guys like Vance Worley, Tyler Wilson, Mike Wright, and Odrisamer Despaigne as the alternatives to Gallardo and Jimenez.

And while it’s true that with a truly elite bullpen, the Orioles can be less reliant on starting pitching than most teams — “We’ve kind of skirted with conventionality for quite some time now. Not just this season, but through the years,” manager Buck Showalter recently said — it’s hard to imagine giving starts to both Gallardo and Jimenez in a seven-game playoff series. Even the Royals, who have thrived off a similar model in recent years — get the starters out early and let the bullpen do the work — went and added a Johnny Cueto at the deadline to bolster the front half of the rotation, and had the back-half guys like Kris Medlen and Chris Young pitching well.

So, can the Orioles go get their Johnny Cueto? Cueto didn’t exactly light the world on fire in Kansas City, but the ace acquisition at the deadline turning into a pumpkin should be viewed as the exception, not the rule. Who’s out there? Unfortunately for Baltimore, the ace market is slim. Guys like Sonny Gray and Chris Archer have had their names tossed out there, though that’s likely got more to do with their underperformance than anything else. Add Francisco Liriano and Andrew Cashner to the list of exciting names in the midst of disappointing seasons. The Tyson Ross injury sapped an intriguing name from the market. The Braves insist Julio Teheran isn’t going anywhere, and besides, what would the Orioles have to get him?

Baltimore’s best and most sensible trade chip at the moment might be Dylan Bundy, who’s currently buried in the bullpen’s depth chart but would be a tough pill to swallow. Trading away a key part of the major-league roster is robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Baltimore entered the season with a bottom-five farm system that saw its top prospect, Hunter Harvey, undergo hernia surgery in early May, from which he’s just now recovering.

Tier two includes guys like Rich Hill, Jake Odorizzi and Drew Smyly as sensible candidates, but even then Baltimore could be competing against teams like Boston and Texas who possess far more in the way of prospect firepower. So, what then? Ervin Santana? Jeremy Hellickson? How different are those guys from Gallardo or Jimenez?

Maybe it makes more sense to improve elsewhere. A once-elite Orioles defense is now grading out as soundly negative for the first time in several years, and so maybe a Zack Cozart at shortstop or a Josh Reddick in right field makes more sense, pushing worse defenders out of the way to ease the burden of the pitching staff while helping make a great lineup even better.

In the last week, Baltimore went from a three-in-four chance of making the postseason to a coin flip, mostly due to a starting rotation that’s been shaky all season long. Still in first place, the Orioles are obviously a contender, but they’re sliding to the point where a direction needs to be chosen. If they wish to add, the most sensible place is that rotation. That’s where the problem lies. The bigger problem, though, might be the apparent lack of answers on how to fix it.