The Orioles Should Not Be Buyers

“Our future is now,” Dan Duquette told Fox Sports on Wednesday of last week.  This is one of many articles linking the Orioles to acquiring players at the trade deadline in order to make a run at a playoff spot this year.  On Orioles fan sites, there are running commentaries on who the Orioles should trade for this month.  The Orioles have been mentioned in numerous trade rumors by national news outlets because the fans aren't the only ones who think the Orioles should be buyers at the trade deadline.  The GM does too.

“We’re going to try to do everything we can to get into the playoffs this year,” Duquette said. “I just think it’s important to the fans that they know we’re trying to put a good team on the field and have a good season.”  The Orioles have been linked to Chase Headley, Jason Vargas, and Juan Pierre in this article.  They've been linked to Clayton Richard in this one. 

Is the Orioles trading prospects for veterans to try to win now the right strategy for the organization to take?  I would definitely say no.

The Orioles record at the moment is 52-47.  The team is in second place in the AL East 7.5 games behind the Yankees.  They're also 1.5 games out of the second wild card spot with 3 teams ahead of them in the wild card standings.  There are 4 other teams within 3 games of them in the wild card standings.  At best, the Orioles have a small chance at a wild card spot and would have to fight off 7 other teams in order to win one.  Baseball Prospectus gives the Orioles just a 3.7% chance of making the playoffs.

There are many reasons to believe that the Orioles have gotten lucky in order to achieve their 52-47 record.  One of them is their staggeringly bad run differential.  The Orioles have been outscored by a total of 53 runs this season, which is the 3rd worst run differential in the American League.  While it can't be used as definitive because there are other factors that go into a team's won-loss record, their pythagorean record is just 44-55.  8 games worse than their actual record.  Some have pointed to the Orioles record in 1 run games (19-6) as a measure of the strength of the team's bullpen.  General sabermetric wisdom would say that there was a lot of luck involved in compiling that record, and the team is bound to regress and start losing more of these 1 run games going forward.  Thanks to some great work by Andrew on Camden Chat, we can see that the Orioles bullpen really didn't do anything special in all those 1 run games.  They were good about the same number of total times that they were ok or bad, but the O's won games when the bullpen pitched well and when it didn't.  That could mean that regression in those games is coming.

Jeff Sullivan of SB Nation just wrote a great article, which generally stated that the Orioles aren't that good of a team but they're in a wild card chase so they should make small upgrades to try to win a playoff spot.  In the post, he states:

The Orioles have had the second-worst team offense in the American League, between the A's and the Mariners.

By defense-independent statistics, the Orioles have had the fifth- or sixth-worst starting rotation in the American League. Their 4.41 FIP ranks between the Indians and the Red Sox. They've also had a lower-half bullpen, with a 4.00 FIP that's better than the Angels but worse than the Indians.

The Orioles presently have the American League's worst UZR, which is a measure of team defense. They're also the worst in the American League in Defensive Runs Saved.

That pretty much covers the three phases of the game: hitting, pitching and defense.  The Orioles are close to the bottom of the American League in all three.  Now after going through all that, I'm not sure how he gets to the conclusion that the Orioles should be buyers at the deadline, but he does. 

The new Collective Bargaining Agreement that was put in place during this past off season added a second wild card to the playoffs in each league.  These two wild cards will now meet in a "play-in" game to determine which wild card team gets the right to advance to the division series.  Dave Cameron of Fangraphs recently examined how the new wild card format should affect team's trading deadline decisions.  It's definitely worth a read.  If the Orioles do somehow manage to win one of the two wild card spots, in all likelihood, they will face a much more talented Angels ball club that will probably have the chance to line up Jered Weaver to start the game.  It's doubtful that the Orioles would have the opportunity to line up their rotation as they will be in a dog fight just to win the wild card, so the Orioles would have to pitch whoever's turn is up in the rotation.  The Orioles would be huge underdogs in that one game playoff, which at best would be a 50/50 proposition.  Should the Orioles be trading prospects that have a chance to help the ball club in the future for the chance to play in this game?

It would be extremely misguided for the Orioles front office to even consider trading Manny Machado or Dylan Bundy, so we should all be thankful that neither of them is on the table.  However, I have to believe that guys like Jonathan Schoop, Xavier Avery, Nicky Delmonico and others would be on the table.  The team has also been rumored to be thinking about trading from the group of young pitchers that have struggled on the major league team this season such as Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta, and Chris Tillman.  If they traded one of them at this point, the value they would receive would be much less than the upside each of them possess. 

The Orioles should be focusing on the the next few seasons when they will still have their current core in place, but will also have Bundy, Machado and Schoop on the team to supplement the current talent.  At that point, the team will hopefully be ready to compete for the division title which is much more valuable under the new playoff format.  They shouldn't be trading anyone away that has a chance to help them when they are truly ready to compete.  The team is just not at the point yet where they are a real contender.

The Orioles have been a great story so far and it's exciting for the fans to get to watch the team in a playoff race, but that doesn't mean the Orioles should trade pieces that could help them in the future to try to win this year.  Do they owe it to the fans to try to compete after 14 straight losing seasons?  I'd say they owe it to the fans to try to be competitive over the long term, not just this season.  Their best pitcher so far this season, Jason Hammel is out until at least mid-August and we don't know how he's going to pitch when he comes back.  That's not going to make winning down the stretch any easier.  While this season has been fun to watch and I'd love to see them fighting for a wild card spot in September, the team shouldn't mortgage the future in order to do it.  If I was running the team, I'd actually be in favor of trying to sell a few pieces in order to load up for the next few seasons.  I'll be fine if the Orioles stand pat at the deadline to take a shot at the 50/50 wild card spot.  Just don't sell the farm, please.

What's Behind Jake Arrieta's Fast Start?

Third year Orioles starting pitcher Jake Arrieta is off to a very nice start to the season through three starts with a 2.66 ERA and 0.89 WHIP.  Buck gave him the nod on opening day and so far has been rewarded for showing faith in the young right hander.  The ERA estimators agree that his good start is legitimate rather than just a result of good luck.  Currently, Arrieta has a 3.33 FIP, a 3.55 xFIP, and a 3.55 SIERA.  All of these are much improved marks from anything that he's put up in his previous two seasons.  Has Arrieta changed at all as a pitcher?  What's behind this good start?

Since three starts is still only about 10% of his work for the season, we have to be careful to not read too much into certain numbers.  Most of his statistics are not reliable at this point.  I'll just get it out of the way now...small sample size.  I know, I know.  But if we didn't analyze baseball in small sample sizes at this point in the season, what would we talk about?  With that out of the way, I'll do my best to only look at the stats that become at least semi-reliable in the small sample sizes.

The first stat that becomes reliable at this point in the year is velocity.  And that just so happens to be much improved for Jake so far this year.  Check out this velocity graph from fangraphs.  Click on it to embiggen.

His average fastball velocity so far this season has been 93.8 mph.  In 2010 and 2011, it was around 92.5 mph.  So through his first three starts, he's gained about 1.5 mph on his fastball.  There is no question that is a positive development.  I don't recall the exact number, but someone did a study on the effect of an increase in velocity for a starting pitcher.  There was something like a .50 ERA improvement for every mph increase.

It's more informative to look at his K% and BB% rather than K/9 and BB/9 at this point in the season, since it makes the sample size bigger.  Usually, I don't mind using K/9 and BB/9 but this early in the season, the percentages are better.  Through 79 batters faced, Arrieta has a 20.3 K% which is up from 17.8% last year.  So he's made a small improvement in his K%. 

Drilling down even farther, Jake has a swinging strike % of 7.5% so far in 2012.  In 2011, it was just about the same at 7.4%.  It's been shown that swinging strike % has a high correlation with K%.  League average has been about 8.5% for the last few years, so he's actually below average there.  He's accumulated 16 strikeouts in his 79 batters faced and 20.1 innings thrown.

It's in his walk rate where he's made a big improvement.  He's only walked 4 of the 79 batters he's faced this year, which is a rate of only 5.1%.  If he could somehow keep this BB%, we will see a big step forward out of Arrieta this year.  There's no way to really know if he can keep this up.  Throughout his minor league and major league career so far, his walk rate has been around 11%.  Hopefully, this is real improvement but his BB% just hasn't stabilized yet so it's hard to say.

The last thing I'll look at are his luck stats.  His BABIP is an extremely low .214.  Obviously, this won't last and some of those line drives he's been giving up will start falling for hits.  Jake is stranding 67.9% of runners that reach base, which is slightly below the league average of 72.5%.  We can expect this number to improve slightly.  Lastly, his HR/FB rate is fairly normal at 9.1%.

What I'd take away from Arrieta's performance so far is the fact that his velocity is up 1.5 mph, he's getting a little lucky on his balls in play, and he has greatly improved his walk rate.  If he can maintain the velocity and keep some or most of the gain to his walk rate, I think we're going to see the best year of Jake Arrieta's career this season.  Maybe the Orioles did have a real opening day starter after all.

I'll leave you with this look at the pitch f/x graph of his pitches so far in 2012. Enjoy.