Contenders Rotations

[LTO's]

5 minutes ago, DrinkinWithFermi said:

It certainly could work out that way, but that is not really relevant to assessing the rotations as they currently stand.

Well I don't see much of a point in assessing rotations before Christmas as I think they add another SP at some point.  But for the sake of argument, I think Grayrod is being heavily underrated here. As a prospect he's as good if not better than all of the #1s listed were. Lots of things can go wrong obviously health wise, but I see no reason why he won't come up and have Adley/Gunnar type impact immediately. At a certain point people need realize that failures of past regimes here and their prospects have no bearing on what's happening now. Adley, Gunnar, G-rod and even Hall to a certain extent are elite, All-star, MVP type guys and the guys that came up, aside from Hall (who still had a 1.65 FIP), had stellar debuts. Also, it's just hard to ignore all the minor miracles this front office and their coaches were able to get out of waiver wire scrap heap guys and even someone like Jordan Lyles. 

Last year, the team won like 20 more games than what was considered the reasonable prediction here. I'm just shocked to see all the doom and gloom because they didn't sign one of the mid tier FA available. They were never gonna be in on the cream of the crop as any real O's fan was aware. What this FO was building in the minors is finally starting to show up in Baltimore and so far what we've seen is exciting. I believe that will continue whether or not they sign someone like Ross Stripling or Chris Bassit. 

[Sports Guy]

Can’t forget Means and Hall either. Means won’t be there early and Hall probably won’t either but they could factor into this as the season goes on and they could be better adds than anything you see at the deadline.

[HakunaSakata]

I'll take it one step further. If we don't make another move we have 12th best rotation in the AL (out of 15 teams) with potential to move up to the 10th best, but I think that's the ceiling. I also think if things break wrong we could potentially fall behind the Royals and Tigers. I think if we would have signed Bassitt it would have bumped our floor up to the Guardians / Angels range. 

1) Blue Jays

2) White Sox

3) Yankees

4) Mariners

5) Houston

6) Rangers

7) Rays

Guardians

9) Angels

10) Twins

11) Red Sox

12) Orioles

13) Royals

14) Tigers

15) A’s

Edited December 14, 2022 by HakunaSakata

[Just Regular]

17 minutes ago, HakunaSakata said:

This isn't true at all. McCullers, Urquidy, Garcia, and Javier all had very good 2021 numbers as well. 

I think more the low dollar Latin guys, who are making Zito-Hudson-Mulder look puny.     Plus the Oakland guys were blue chips to help Scott Hatteberg get famous.     Framber and Javier are like if Hatteberg became Jason Giambi too.

Whether it was Jeff Luhnow, Oz Ocampo, Mike Elias, Brandon Taubman, Kevin Goldstein, Sig Mejdal or someone else in the collective, that's really the baseball development story that's helped Astros version 2.0 (no Cole, Greinke, Springer Correa) to stay at the top.

In terms of being hopeful, Gunnar Henderson's breakout and Cristian Javier's maybe have some of the same curators.

Its important for this roster not to let obviously strong below replacement level candidates to pitch at all, but whether Eovaldi, Kluber, Smyly, whoever, that guy is just helping the ball stay out of the gutter.      Means is reasonably likely to return in some form in the second half and if he were upright now, I think the next target might lean DH rather than SP5.

[RZNJ]

That's why they play the games.  Bradish could take another major step forward and GrayRod could look all-world.  Then it's a whole new ballgame.  On paper,  our rotation is so so.  

[eddie83]

25 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Rays were my pick last year and I’m staying with them as of now. With basically all there best players hurt, missing most or all of the season, they still managed to win 86 games.

Now those players will be healthy and they don’t have to play the division as much. 
 

If the Rays have a great year that severely impacts the playoffs possibilities for the Orioles. Possible to be a 4th place team and make it but not likely at all. 
 

Keep thinking Yankees sign Rodon to improve division odds to get a bye and also give Cole support in a WS run.  

[LTO's]

 Means was a 4 WAR pitcher before the renovation. Something to consider especially as a lefty. 

[tabletop]

55 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Yankees will unquestionably add someone but I think their rotation is ugly even with Cole.  Probably better than ours but if the Os ended up better, it wouldn’t be shocking imo.

A lot depends on how good Grayson is immediately.

Even if you ignore Cole who is a true ace you have Cortes who has an era under 3 for the last 2 years and peripherals that suggest it should be around 3. Severino who came back from injury last year and had a 3.18era with peripherals that suggested he wasn't just getting lucky. Montas as their #4 who has a career 3.90era with a 105 era+ and German as their #5 who has a career 4.37era with a career era+ of 98. For reference, the only projected O's starter who has an era+ over 98 is Wells and that is because of his 2021 numbers as a reliever. His 2022 number as a starter was 94.

How is that an ugly rotation? How is that only "probably" better than a rotation which includes 4 people who have career era+'s that are below average and a guy who has never thrown an MLB pitch?

 

[HakunaSakata]

1 minute ago, RZNJ said:

That's why they play the games.  Bradish could take another major step forward and GrayRod could look all-world.  Then it's a whole new ballgame.  On paper,  our rotation is so so.  

That's fine, but Bradish showed no signs of potential improvement or an upcoming breakout last season so I'd say the odds of that happening aren't very high. Certainly not high enough to bank on it. And even if Rodriguez is the number one we're hoping he'll be it's still a pretty bad rotation. Look at the Rangers just for comparison. They have all world number one in deGrom and complemented him Heaney, J. Gray, Perez and Odorizzi. For context, if we added Gray or Heaney today they would instantly be our best pitcher (until Rodriguez proved himself). 

[Just Regular]

30 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I would say that ours has the most question marks and could easily be the worst.  Each of the rotations listed has a true "Damn, that guy is a stud" at the #1 spot, we don't.  We've got a guy that could be there in G-Rod.

 

They aren't going to let Grayson Rodriguez pitch Opening Day, but in a dream scenario its in play for me that he'd kick sand in Chris Sale's face in 1 of 162, and hold his own against Jacob deGrom in 6 of 162, and that'd be a fun orange carpet.    My actual hope is say Jake Odorizzi in game 5 of 162.

Adley had the right answer last spring...this spring we get to see if the 3-win guy or the 7-win guy shows up.

[HakunaSakata]

4 minutes ago, LTO's said:

 Means was a 4 WAR pitcher before the renovation. Something to consider especially as a lefty. 

I just don't think it's wise to bank on someone coming off a serious injury. Any contribution Means makes this season should be just an added bonus. 

[HakunaSakata]

2 minutes ago, tabletop said:

Even if you ignore Cole who is a true ace you have Cortes who has an era under 3 for the last 2 years and peripherals that suggest it should be around 3. Severino who came back from injury last year and had a 3.18era with peripherals that suggested he wasn't just getting lucky. Montas as their #4 who has a career 3.90era with a 105 era+ and German as their #5 who has a career 4.37era with a career era+ of 98. For reference, the only projected O's starter who has an era+ over 98 is Wells and that is because of his 2021 numbers as a reliever. His 2022 number as a starter was 94.

How is that an ugly rotation? How is that only "probably" better than a rotation which includes 4 people who have career era+'s that are below average and a guy who has never thrown an MLB pitch?

 

The short answer is, it's not. I have the Yankees ranked as the 3rd best in the AL and even a conservative ranker would say they are top 5. 

[eddie83]

22 minutes ago, LTO's said:

Well I don't see much of a point in assessing rotations before Christmas as I think they add another SP at some point.  But for the sake of argument, I think Grayrod is being heavily underrated here. As a prospect he's as good if not better than all of the #1s listed were. Lots of things can go wrong obviously health wise, but I see no reason why he won't come up and have Adley/Gunnar type impact immediately. At a certain point people need realize that failures of past regimes here and their prospects have no bearing on what's happening now. Adley, Gunnar, G-rod and even Hall to a certain extent are elite, All-star, MVP type guys and the guys that came up, aside from Hall (who still had a 1.65 FIP), had stellar debuts. Also, it's just hard to ignore all the minor miracles this front office and their coaches were able to get out of waiver wire scrap heap guys and even someone like Jordan Lyles. 

Last year, the team won like 20 more games than what was considered the reasonable prediction here. I'm just shocked to see all the doom and gloom because they didn't sign one of the mid tier FA available. They were never gonna be in on the cream of the crop as any real O's fan was aware. What this FO was building in the minors is finally starting to show up in Baltimore and so far what we've seen is exciting. I believe that will continue whether or not they sign someone like Ross Stripling or Chris Bassit. 

It’s not doom and gloom it’s the reality of the situation. You have to be better than 9 teams to make the playoffs. 
 

There seems to be this idea from some that wanting more this year is some indication that people don’t believe in the overall status of the organization. I am very happy with where the organization is at. What happened in the past has zero bearing on anything for me. 
 

This is about the 2023 season and if the pitching staff can hold up enough to get to the playoffs. Nothing more. In 2012-16 it felt like the Orioles had to be close to perfect in the pen to get to the playoffs. There was little margin for error. We all know how important the pen is in the modern game but it would be nice to have more room for error. The best year during that run was 2014. Not a coincidence it was the best year the rotation had.  

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, tabletop said:

Even if you ignore Cole who is a true ace you have Cortes who has an era under 3 for the last 2 years and peripherals that suggest it should be around 3. Severino who came back from injury last year and had a 3.18era with peripherals that suggested he wasn't just getting lucky. Montas as their #4 who has a career 3.90era with a 105 era+ and German as their #5 who has a career 4.37era with a career era+ of 98. For reference, the only projected O's starter who has an era+ over 98 is Wells and that is because of his 2021 numbers as a reliever. His 2022 number as a starter was 94.

How is that an ugly rotation? How is that only "probably" better than a rotation which includes 4 people who have career era+'s that are below average and a guy who has never thrown an MLB pitch?

 

They didn’t even want to pitch Montas in the postseason.

I will believe Severino makes it through a season healthy and gives them a full season worth of  innings and starts when I see it.

Cortes could stay good or could turn into a pumpkin.

[Orioles0615]

10 hours ago, DrinkinWithFermi said:

 

It has been reported that they are also trying to trade for Pablo Lopez, even after signing Bassitt.

Imagine the reaction when they (jays) do trade for Lopez and they will get them for less than what people thought. 

 

I am ready to rage

Edited December 15, 2022 by Orioles0615