Normally, baseball’s 162-game season ends on a Sunday. Given the lockout that occurred prior to the season and the desire of the MLBPA and MLB to cover the costs associated with a full 162-game slate, the season started late and is ending a bit later than usual.
Just as normal in recent years have been my season-ending MLB power rankings. Instead, I will do that on Thursday, after the final day of the regular season. For now, I thought I’d reflect on the Orioles’ surprising 2022 season.
Throughout the next month, I will discuss in detail who the Orioles may want to zero in to help them be even more competitive. But for now, I am setting up the areas of improvement for the club, beginning with the starting rotation.
First and foremost, we have to really give a tip of the hat to GM Mike Elias and the staff he has built. The Orioles moved to Baltimore in 1954, and in some ways what they embarked upon was a rebuild that was built upon being smarter than their competitors in the pre-draft world of signing any players you wanted if and when you decided they could help you. Manager Paul Richards really ran the baseball operations and direction of the on-field product.
The Orioles were the most successful team in the majors from the late ’50s to early ’70s. That success was fueled by the scouting department’s savvy. Every year or two, the Orioles were able to add a Brooks Robinson, Jim Gentile, Boog Powell, Davey Johnson, Mark Belanger, Bobby Grich or Don Baylor. And sure, the greatest trade of all time — the Orioles’ December 1965 acquisition of Frank Robinson — paid huge dividends and put the club over the top.
By the mid ’60s, baseball installed an amateur draft, and no longer did the Orioles have the same scouting edge. By 1976, when free agency came about, that scouting edge had been watered down more by attractive members of the Orioles’ front office — folks like Lee MacPhail, Harry Dalton, Frank Cashen and Lou Gorman — being plucked away by needier teams.
From the late ’50s to the mid ’80s, the Orioles were an ongoing conveyor belt of development. So, what Elias offered to Orioles CEO John Angelos in late 2018 was a no-holds-barred teardown and rebuild to turn the club into a player development machine once again. It took vision, leadership and most of all discipline. It would have been easy for Angelos to panic in the midst of the pandemic and push Elias into band-aid fixes, the way it used to be when the Orioles would trade for Sammy Sosa or sign an aging Vladimir Guerrero.
But to their credit, Angelos and Elias stuck to the plan. The 2022 campaign looked to be a 65-68 win season in which everyone would have been able to say, “Well, we didn’t lose 100 games, so we must be heading in the right direction.” But, what happened this past season was really quite remarkable — a 30-win improvement that thrust the Orioles into relevance for much of September.
What’s important for fans is that they saw performances from Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Kyle Stowers and DL Hall that conjured up an image of what is possible in the near term.
Building a baseball team is a lot like how you attempt to improve your golf game. Anyone with a lesson or two can go play 18 holes and start to drive the ball for distance and accuracy. But it’s what you need to accomplish in those last 125-175 yards that defines progress in your stroke-cutting goals.
The Orioles are at the point of this endeavor where they can hit the ball down the fairway pretty regularly. Now comes the much more delicate proposition of threading the needle in a couple key areas without spending excessively in a way that would block anyone of consequence from their appointed time of arrival at the big league level.
Again, to set the stage, I am laying out the areas of improvement, not who the solutions will be or should be. This column will be only about the starting rotation and how to make it better. As we move through the next several weeks, I’ll detail who I think the Orioles should target.
Let’s take stock of what the Orioles have and could use. Due to the fact that John Means doesn’t figure to be ready to break camp with the club, I will leave him out of this inventory. Still, he should be back in the club’s rotation sometime between mid-May and mid-June.
Overall, this to me was the Orioles’ biggest area of growth in 2022. No question Jordan Lyles delivered what he was brought in to do for this 2022 club. He ate innings, and despite two awful starts down the stretch, his 179 innings were vital to the overall performance of the staff.
Lyles has an $11 million team option. That may seem like a pretty high sum for an innings-eating No. 4 starter. But look, the Braves just signed veteran starter Charlie Morton to a one-year, $20 million contract for 2023. That’s now the going rate for that level of pitcher. How close is Lyles to that level? Morton posted a 4.29 ERA in 167.2 innings this year. Lyles has recorded a 4.42 ERA in his 179 innings, with perhaps one start remaining.
Dean Kremer was truly a revelation. We must again tip our hat to former Orioles executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette, who picked up Kremer in the Manny Machado trade. Duquette also picked up the long-gone Zach Pop in that deal, but let’s not go on a tangent. If Kremer can build upon his 2022 season, he is a long-term piece.
Kyle Bradish should be on the short list as part of the rotation puzzle going into spring training. At times, he looks like an incredible steal in the four-for-one Dylan Bundy deal. The chances of his ascension continuing are reasonably high.
Austin Voth benefited the most of any of the pitchers on the Orioles staff by working with Chris Holt and his analytics team. It sure looked at times as if Voth had the secret sauce oozing. He started 17 games and in only one, against the Yankees on Oct. 1, did he allow more than three runs. This came after Voth had posted a 10.13 ERA in 18.2 innings with the Nationals to start the year.
At 6-foot-8, Tyler Wells is an imposing figure. It’s clear the Orioles view him as a starting pitcher. Personally, I see a Twin Tower for the late innings with Félix Bautista. It’s not Wells’ results that push him into the bullpen for me. Rather, it’s his long injury history. He had Tommy John surgery in 2019, missed time this year due to an oblique strain and then was shut down late in the year with right shoulder inflammation.
We got a good look at Wells in 2021 as a late-inning, high-leverage guy. The Orioles were so devoid of starting candidates at the beginning of this season that they needed him in the rotation. That void no longer exists. Can you imagine Bautista, Wells and Hall holding down leads?
Grayson Rodriguez had a terrific season at the Triple-A level interrupted by injury. He pitched to a 2.20 ERA in 69.2 innings, allowing 44 hits, 21 walks and two homers while striking out 97. He suffered a lat strain of some significance in late June, just as the O’s were getting serious about his call-up. He figures to be a full-go next spring after making it back to the Tides this season.
Honorable mention candidates include Spenser Watkins (19 starts, 4.76 ERA) and Bruce Zimmermann (13 starts, 5.99 ERA). Neither elicits much confidence among the fan base or internally. Ideally, you’d like to see more prospects closer here. That’s why the club needs to go shopping.
Despite the looming return of Means, I think the Orioles need to pick up Lyles’ option and acquire another pitcher significantly better than him. They may need to also take a lottery ticket on an inexpensive guy coming back from an injury. I remember a few years ago at spring training I heard a now-former GM say what he was most nervous about was that he only had about 10 or 11 candidates for starting spots. He suggested he needed a couple more.
The Orioles currently have nine starting candidates under club control for 2023 (Bradish, Kremer, Means, Voth, Rodriguez, Watkins, Wells, Zimmermann and perhaps Hall). The three candidates I am pushing for brings the Orioles up to that 12 or 13 number.
In the coming weeks, I’ll break down the lineup and bullpen.
Photo Credits: Colin Murphy and Kenya Allen/PressBox