Chris Tillman is Back and I Feel Fine

The Orioles re-signed Chris Tillman on Monday to a one year contract, guaranteeing him $3 million while offering incentives that could bring the total commitment to $10 million for 2018. This was a widely expected move, given the apparent slowness of Tillman's market and the fact that the Orioles are the only team he has pitched for in the big leagues. Tillman has pitched over 1100 innings for the Orioles since 2011, winning 73 games and acting as the de facto ace of the staff, and given the holes in the rotation, a one year deal for not much money always seemed like an obvious one.

The problem, of course, is that Tillman has struggled for the better part of three seasons. Excluding his excellent first half in 2016, in which he put a 3.41 ERA and struck out nearly 8 batters per 9, Tillman has been mediocre or worse since 2015 began. In fact, in total from 2015 to 2017, he has pitched to a 5.12 ERA, a 4.89 FIP, a 1.454 WHIP, 6.6 K/9, and 3.7 BB/9.

That's...not great. In fact, not great would be an improvement over whatever this is. This is bad. Really, really bad. Since 2015 began, Tillman has the 7th worst ERA , the 9th worst FIP, and the 13th worst WHIP among all qualified starters in baseball. He is also in the bottom 25 starters in fWAR, putting up just 3.2 wins in that time period.

It's easy to write off Tillman's mind-boggling 2017 as injury-related or simply an extreme outlier, but  his decline was not as drastic or dramatic as maybe it seems. One of Tillman's defining traits during the years he was good, or at least solid, was an ability to get of jams. In 2013, 2014, and 2016, he was well above average in strand rate, and not coincidentally had three of his best seasons. Last year, he allowed over a third of his baserunners to score, which, I'm here to tell you, is incredibly bad. 

Maybe this was a fluke, but his stuff may also be in significant decline. In 2015, he threw his fastball 65% of the time. In 2017, it was down to just over 50%. He gave up by far the most hard contact in his career, had his worst strikeout rate, walked an insane 4.94 hitters per 9 innings, and generated the fewest swings at pitches outside of the strike zone in his career. He also got crushed in the strike zone, with hitters making contact with over 90% of pitches in the zone (side note, Andrew Cashner gave up contact on 92% of all swings on pitches in the zone, so that should work out just fine).

But, take a look at this.

Tillman's strikeout, walk, and home run rate were all generally trending in the wrong direction even prior to his disastrous 2017. What immediately seems possible is that Tillman was always a borderline pitcher who leaned on his defense and slightly above average stuff to generate contact and get outs. Once the defense and stuff declined, however, yikes. It is certainly tempting to blame 2017 on the shoulder injury that limited him to under 100 innings pitched, but these numbers indicate that the injury (unless it's been with him for years) is not necessarily the only factor driving the decline. 

All that said, we're talking about $3 million. I think it's unlikely that Tillman's skill erosion is so extreme that he's now the worst pitcher in baseball at age 29, and more likely that 2017 was simply an extremely terrible and unlucky season. If he even "bounces back" to his 2015 numbers, he'll earn that guaranteed money. With Tillman is almost certainly penciled in as the number 4 starter, though, the Orioles are taking a fairly big risk that 2017 was an aberration and not simply the culmination of a longer-term trend. If they somehow end up signing one of the better free agent pitchers left on the board, this move will probably look better overall than it does now. Even if that doesn't happen, though, there's a modicum of upside here, and I'd certainly like to believe Tillman is a better option than, say, Mike Wright. On February 19, with a rotation spot still open, that's about as good as you can hope for.