Orioles left-hander DL Hall was Dan Duquette’s No. 1 pick in the 2017 MLB Draft. For as vaunted as he has been as a prospect, his delivery date to the big leagues seemed to move in slow motion. There were a multitude of injuries, and basically a swimming-uphill attempt to ever ramp up his innings to a point where a team could reasonably expect him to be a productive member of its starting rotation.
Now, I know I have never earned a single dollar as a scout for a major league team, but I have seen a lot of prospects in person. I learned long ago how to read a past-performance chart at the racetrack, which isn’t all that dissimilar to looking at the statistical line of a young player.
Hall will never offer the Orioles the optimum value he has in that powerful left arm of his if he is forced to go down the road of being a starting pitcher.
There are quite a few former Orioles pitchers (or at least prospects with the Orioles) who struggled in the starting rotation but thrived working out of the bullpen, including longtime big league reliever Arthur Rhodes.
Rhodes was once upon a time (in the late ’80s, early ’90s) was a phenom making his way up the ladder to become a star starting pitcher for the O’s. The only problem was he never really was able to ramp up his innings or refine his control. Luckily, someone in the Orioles’ brain trust made the call to pull the plug on Rhodes as a starter.
In 1991, Rhodes made eight starts (36 innings) and posted an 8.00 ERA and 1.94 WHIP. In those 36 innings, Rhodes walked 23, matching his strikeout total.
The 1992 season was the lone bright star in his starting career in the majors. He won seven and lost five. In his 15 starts, he averaged six-plus innings per outing, his ERA was 3.63 and the WHIP was a nice 1.32. He only allowed six homers, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio was trending much better (77 strikeouts and 38 walks).
But there was a ton of slippage in 1993. He started 17 times and was just 5-6 across 85.2 innings. The ERA was 6.51 and the WHIP ballooned to 1.63, while he again had a matching 49 strikeouts and 49 walks.
In 1994, Rhodes made 10 starts that netted just 52.2 innings. The ERA was 5.81 and the WHIP was 1.54. From that point on, Rhodes gradually pivoted to the bullpen. I remember arguing with Kevin Malone, the assistant GM of the Orioles under Pat Gillick, about Rhodes’ value coming as a reliever.
From 1996-1999, before he left as a free agent for Seattle, Rhodes became a very valuable ‘pen arm. So much so that in addition to the four good years in Baltimore, he was good enough to find a job pitching for Oakland, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Florida, Texas and St. Louis until his career ended in 2011.
This is an important part of the Hall equation, too. Arthur Rhodes still earned nearly $39 million during his career. The cost of an arm like Rhodes has probably doubled since those days. Hall doesn’t have to view the ‘pen as a negative in that sense. It doesn’t render him a low earner.
I could go on and on reciting stats, but I’ll let you Google names such as Andrew Miller, Joe Kelly, Jorge López and Dillon Tate to see examples of teams wasting years of value.
A lot of people I spoke with after Hall’s debut were disappointed in his outing. I was not. Trust me, I am as negative as it comes in terms of doubting prospects. But with pitchers with Hall’s kind of dynamic arm, I choose to see the glass half full.
Moving a pitcher from starter to star reliever is not an overnight process, which is why the sooner it takes place and you get the essential buy-in of the player the better.
It was a curious roadmap the club took with Hall. He comes up and has this short start, and the word was that he then would go to the ‘pen. But rather than disrupt what they have going on now, Hall is back at Triple-A Norfolk and we’re told he’ll transition to bullpen work with an eye on a September recall to help the ‘pen.
If you look at the Hall situation and take the emotion out of it and just try to see where this is going to go, it’s inevitable that as the Orioles continue to load up, there is an excellent chance they’ll have one dynamic left arm out of the ‘pen.
Photo Credit: Scott Sears