Fangraphs: Long season in Baltimore if FIP is an indicator

[Tony-OH]

https://www.mlb.com/news/how-teams-will-manage-innings-in-2021

We all know the Orioles are going to have to catch serious lightning in the bottle from guys like Matt Harvey, the Rule 5 picks while hoping for the development of rookies Bruce Zimmermann and Dean Kremer at the major league level for them to be decent. 

Obviously this article is only one projected way for teams to get through the season, but it does show how untested most of the Orioles pitching staff is this year. The Orioles are relying on veterans like Matt Harvey, Jorge Lopez, Wade LeBlanc, and Adam Plutko as well as a couple of pitchers who have never pitched above AA to get through the approximate 1,458 innings this year. 

Now it would be of no surprise if the Orioles set a record for pitchers this season, in fact, it's almost a sure thing. Afterall, if they are going to try and manage the starters innings this season, they are going to need a lot of starters and long relievers to do that job.

Now, the orange color glasses folks might want to pitch out that Harvey through the ball well this spring and looks to have regained some velocity and spin and the statcast numbers looked pretty good for Wells and Sceroler. John Means looked good at the end of last season and Zimmermann and Kremer should at least be decent as rookies. Akin, Baumann, Lowther and potentially Wells could only be a phone call away and all could the last three could all make their major league debuts this year though it's expected their innings will be monitored very closely as well. 

I don't want to be a bummer on opening day, but the Orioles will need a "Why Not?" type of perfect storm to not be pretty bad this year pitching wise.

The good news is the top and middle of the lineup looks very solid and the lineup potentially has a good chance of being good top to bottom. 

So if you like offense, this might just be the year for you.

[HowAboutThat]

I like defense.

Seriously, there is little doubt that our pitching will improve during the season, as guys show flaws and either fix them or get replaced. We have too many legit possibilities waiting to be bad all season.

The only concern is a guy pitching so well we trade him, or every prospect turning out to be awful. That would be unpleasant.

But that won’t happen.

look at yesterday’s Giants bullpen, or the starters for KC and Texas.

Thats not going to happen to us, so rest easy children. It’s going to be a good day!

Edited April 2, 2021 by Philip
Addendum

[Frobby]

Well, the good news is that we won’t need to cover 1,458 innings, since every time we’re losing a road game after our at bats in the top of the 9th, the game will be over and our staff will only need to pitch 8 innings.   That probably saves us 50 innings right there!     Of course, we’ll probably have to cover a few extra inning games, so maybe we only save 30ish innings net.    

Looking at our historically bad staff of 2019 (981 runs allowed), about half the innings that year were pitched by pitchers who had a FIP under 5.00.    I have a hard time believing this staff will be worse (40% projected by Fangraphs).    I think what happens as a season progresses is that the pitchers who perform better end up getting more innings and the ones who perform worse get fewer.   So, that will skew the number of innings by pitchers with a FIP under 5.00 to a higher number than what some preseason projection might say.   

That said, the graph certainly illustrates that our staff is expected to be bad.    Fangraphs pegs us at 902 runs allowed - not nearly as bad as in 2019, but a little worse than 2018, which wasn’t exactly stellar.   

 

[NCRaven]

I think Orioles pitching is a huge unknown this season.  Not only are we counting on young guys like Means, Kremer, and Zimmerman, others like Akin, Baumann, Lowther and Wells are likely to pitch, as well.  Some may bomb and others may excel.  It’s a great unknown.

[Sports Guy]

These predictions mean nothing because there is such limited data for these guys plus you have a potential comeback of Harvey (who will have bad projections right now).

It certainly may end up bad but we just have to see because there is such a small of historical data for us to go off of.

[interloper]

If anyone isn't already aware it's going to be a long (but I maintain probably pretty fun) season, then I dunno what to tell ya. Don't need FIP to tell us the team won't be very good. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

Just now, interloper said:

If anyone isn't already aware it's going to be a long (but I maintain probably pretty fun) season, then I dunno what to tell ya. Don't need FIP to tell us the team won't be very good. 

I'll take a bad team with promising young players who are improving over a bad veteran team that's at the end of the line. 

[interloper]

1 minute ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

I'll take a bad team with promising young players who are improving over a bad veteran team that's at the end of the line. 

Absolutely. 

[LTO's]

At least this year they get to play a schedule that includes some bad teams. Last year was a brutal draw which made their competitiveness all the more impressive. 

[Just Regular]

Also in this vein, at the end of Meg Rowley's summary of the FG positional power rankings, Z-Scores said the ORIOLES SP were the next to worst unit at any position in all of MLB in 2021.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2021-positional-power-rankings-summary/

As well as the bottom five:

• -2.3, Rangers third base
• -2.2, Orioles rotation
• -2.0, Rockies catcher
• -1.9, Rockies left field
• -1.8, Rangers shortstop

I don't worry much about this as I think there's a path in 2022 in which the Top 6 IP on the team are Means, Kremer, Baumann, Hall, Rodriguez and some credible Free Agent, never mind the Akin/Lowther/Smith/Stallings/Bradish of it all.   So sure, our Long Reliever tryout this 1st half is gonna have some blowups.   The last pitching cuts next spring should be a bit juicier than Lakins v. Sulser.

[Tony-OH]

8 minutes ago, LTO's said:

At least this year they get to play a schedule that includes some bad teams. Last year was a brutal draw which made their competitiveness all the more impressive. 

I sure hope the new collective bargaining agreement comes with a balanced schedule once again or allows for Division to change. It's not fair for the Orioles to have to compete against the big budget Yankees, Red Sox and Blue jays for 19 games a year and still be in a wild card hunt with a team in the AL West.

[eddie83]

24 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I sure hope the new collective bargaining agreement comes with a balanced schedule once again or allows for Division to change. It's not fair for the Orioles to have to compete against the big budget Yankees, Red Sox and Blue jays for 19 games a year and still be in a wild card hunt with a team in the AL West.

I expect the playoffs to be expanded. Just hope they don’t water it down too much. 

[HowAboutThat]

6 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

I expect the playoffs to be expanded. Just hope they don’t water it down too much. 

 Expanding the playoffs beyond 33% of the league is ridiculous. Why do you play 162 games if you’re going to take over 30% of the participants into the playoffs? That’s silly.

[HowAboutThat]

Meanwhile, remember that it is much better to curse bad baseball than it is to lament no baseball at all.

And remember, we are starting the season with 14 guys, we will end the season with 14 guys, but the 14 guys at the end will be far better than those at the beginning, we are only going to improve as the season goes on. The tram is going to beat every prediction,  portent, projection, and prognostication.

actually, I think it would be quite worthwhile to have a poll asking which if any of our pitchers will last the whole season without 1)injury 2) demotion 3) DFA,  or 4) being returned.

Hmmmmm anybody? Means is the only guy who comes to mind for me, but maybe Fry as well.

[interloper]

8 minutes ago, Philip said:

Meanwhile, remember that it is much better to curse bad baseball than it is to lament no baseball at all.

And remember, we are starting the season with 14 guys, we will end the season with 14 guys, but the 14 guys at the end will be far better than those at the beginning, we are only going to improve as the season goes on. The tram is going to beat every prediction,  portent, projection, and prognostication.

actually, I think it would be quite worthwhile to have a poll asking which if any of our pitchers will last the whole season without 1)injury 2) demotion 3) DFA,  or 4) being returned.

Hmmmmm anybody? Means is the only guy who comes to mind for me, but maybe Fry as well.

Haha this is actually pretty good. It's going to be a short list that's for damn sure. Even Means seems to get that dead arm thing around the break.