Orioles Pitchers Have Mastered The Clutch Popup

All data in this article does not include Sunday's game.

Every year, baseball fans can look forward to a few constants. The MLB-wide strikeout rate will increase. Mike Trout will be the best player in the American League, and Clayton Kershaw the best pitcher in the National League. And the Orioles will defy expectations, spitting in the face of BaseRuns, third-order winning percentage, and every other model out there.

This season — in the last regard, at least — has been no different. While the O's have gone 25-16 and are neck-and-neck with the Yankees in the AL East, the numbers don't back them up. FanGraphs gives the team a 20-21 expected record, and Baseball Prospectus estimates Baltimore should be 20.5-20.5 (don't ask). It's a familiar story for Birdland, but one element of it is a little different from the past.

Both FanGraphs's and BP's models think the Orioles offense has been unlucky. The real difference comes on the pitching side of things:

Metric	Actual	FG (predicted)	BP (predicted)
RS/G	4.78	4.90	5.17
RA/G	4.44	4.98	5.18

On first glance, the pessimism with runs allowed makes sense — to this point, Baltimore's pitching staff has allowed a .333 wOBA, the fifth-highest in MLB. But it's spread that wOBA so as to avoid runs. While the Orioles' .343 bases-empty wOBA is the second-worst in the majors, their .321 wOBA with runners on base comes in 12th. Only the Astros have stranded more baserunners than the Birds this season.

With the bases empty, the O's rank 23rd in strikeout rate and 27th in walk rate. With runners on base, they're 28th and 26th, respectively. Suffice to say, this is not a team that blows hitters away. Where Baltimore has done well is limiting base hits when it counts — the club has MLB's highest BABIP (.328) with no one on, and the fourth-lowest BABIP (.267) with men on.

Now we get to the heart of the matter — the reason the Orioles have given up so few runs this year, the reason they're near the top of the division instead of wallowing around .500. When pitching from the windup, Orioles hurlers have a 2.5 percent popup rate (meaning infield fly balls make up 2.5 percent of all their balls in play). When they're pitching from the stretch, that increases to 6.9 percent.

How rare is a jump like that? Since 2002, when Baseball Info Solutions began tracking batted-ball data, none of the 480 team seasons has stood out to that degree:

Let me put this another way. Over those 16 years, these are the biggest disparities in popup rate by situation:

Rank	Season	Team	BE_Popup%	MOB_Popup%	Differential
1	2017	Orioles	2.5%	6.9%	-4.4%
2	2017	Mets	1.3%	4.3%	-3.0%
3	2017	Red Sox	2.8%	4.9%	-2.1%
4	2017	Pirates	2.1%	4.1%	-2.0%
5	2012	Reds	2.7%	4.7%	-1.9%
6	2003	Angels	3.3%	5.1%	-1.8%
7	2012	Nationals	2.5%	4.2%	-1.7%
8	2017	Giants	2.4%	4.0%	-1.6%
9	2009	Marlins	2.8%	4.3%	-1.5%
10	2010	Athletics	2.9%	4.4%	-1.5%

You see a few more 2017 teams on the list, but none have gone above 5 percent, much less 6 percent. There's really been no one else like the Orioles.

For at least one Baltimore pitcher, this skill is nothing new. In 2016, Dylan Bundy got 7.1 percent popups with the bases empty, and 9.6 percent popups with runners on. Thus far in 2017, though, he's taken things to the next level: His popup rates in those respective situations are 5.0 percent and *deep breath* … 11.8 percent. And many of his teammates have followed suit — Brad Brach (13.1 percent), Alec Asher (12.9 percent), and Mychal Givens (10.7 percent) are among those in the double-digits from the stretch.

Approach-wise, it's unclear whether the Orioles can keep this up. Pitches in the upper part of the zone are the best for infield fly balls, yet when runners reach base, Baltimore goes low. No other team in baseball has thrown more low pitches with men on. This seems to suggest Bundy and co. will trade those popups for ground balls, which turn into hits far more often.

Still, we can't ignore what's already happened. Last year, the O's induced 70 popups with runners on; this year, they've already racked up 36. Even if they can't sustain that 6.9 percent clip, no one can take those 36 flies away from them. No team in that 16-year sample has broached 6 percent over a full season, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Baltimore has a fly ball-inclined pitching staff, and if those fly balls are of the lazy variety, that'll just make things easier for

We've been saying a lot of things about the Orioles aren't sustainable for a long time now. The 2012 record in one-run games, the 2014 rotation's overperformance, the 2016 power — through thick and thin, the O's just seems to have a way of proving us wrong. Maybe this…

GIF via MLB.com

…is just the latest oddity for Birdland to get accustomed to.

Wade Miley's Winning Combo: Great Command And Great Framing

Russell Martin is many things — a Canadian, a three-true-outcomes hitter, a strong defender — but above all else, he's an excellent judge of pitch location. Since 2007, the first year of PITCHf/x data, Martin has swung at 20.3 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, ranking 27th among 567 qualified hitters. (For what it's worth, he's also swung at 59.2 percent of pitches inside the strike zone, which is 124th in that sample.) Maybe it's because he plays behind the plate, or maybe it's just an innate talent; whatever the reason, he can usually tell the difference between balls and strikes.

We can understand, then, why he got a little miffed here:



With the Jays trailing the O's 5-3 in the sixth inning, Martin worked the count to 2-2 against Wade Miley. The left-hander uncorked a sinker that fell right on the edge of the PITCHf/x-defined strike zone, and though Martin checked his swing, Brian Knight rung him up. It was the eighth strikeout of the night for Miley, continuing an unforeseen run of dominance from the Orioles starter.

Heading into the year, most of us didn't expect much from Miley. FanGraphs' Depth Charts projected the southpaw to put up a 4.48 ERA and 4.34 FIP over 169.0 innings — the marks of a wholly uninspiring, mid- to back-of-the-rotation arm. Yet over his first three starts, Miley has earned a sterling 1.89 ERA and 3.15 FIP. While his walk rate (11.1) is elevated and his ground ball rate (48.7 percent) is in line with his career average, he's struck out 33.3 percent of opposing hitters. Even in this young season, that ranks fourth in the majors.

But wait. Looking at his PITCHf/x plate discipline metrics, we don't see much improvement from past years. If anything, Miley has performed worse in 2017:

Year(s)	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	Contact%	SwStr%	Zone%
2011-16	30.7%	63.5%	45.4%	81.0%	8.6%	44.8%
2017	31.3%	66.7%	45.7%	81.2%	8.6%	40.7 %

Miley's whiff rate hasn't budged from past years, and he has the unsavory combination of fewer pitches in the zone and more swings in the zone. How, then, has he fanned a third of the batters he's faced?

Well, aside from fortuitous sequencing — which is to say, luck — Miley's accumulated a lot more strikes than you'd expect, based on his zone and O-Swing rates. The trend has affected each of his starts:

Start	Pitches	Strikes	xStrikes
4/9	100	56	51
4/14	101	66	61
4/20	101	70	67
Total	302	192	179

xStrikes = Pitches * (1 - (1 - O-Swing%) * (1 - Zone%))

Getting those extra calls has given Miley an above-average strike rate (63.6 percent) and looking-strike rate (28.1 percent). That's made him a power pitcher, of sorts, and resulted in a lot of weird looks like the one Martin showed above.

So does Miley stand any chance any chance of keeping this up? Or will his greatness fade away, like so many other early-season success stories? (Remember April 2016 MVP Joey Rickard?) He probably won't have a higher strikeout rate than Max Scherzer by the end of the year, but Miley has a couple of factors working in his favor.

Baseball Prospectus debuted a metric called CSAA in February, which isolates a pitcher's ability to get called strikes as a proxy for his command. I'll let BP explain the details:

A pitcher with good command should be more predictable for the catcher—their pitches often end up in the locations, and with the movement that the catcher expects. This skill results in easier receiving for catchers, and additional called strikes for the pitcher. Once we aggregate the data cross thousands of pitches, CSAA is able to tell us whether a pitcher is reliably hitting his spots.

By this metric, Miley's always excelled. This year, though, he's taken things to another level:

As of this writing, Miley's 4.59 percent CSAA ranks third in the majors, trailing fellow left-handers (and past Cy Young winners) Dallas Keuchel and Clayton Kershaw. For whatever reason — maybe he's better with his sinker, which he's used more often this year — Miley's command has taken a huge leap forward in 2017, and his strikeout rate has spiked in turn.

But command, I'd argue, is not the most significant variable at play. As noted, Miley's command is nothing new (albeit not to this extent), yet he's never overperformed his expected strike rate like this. The bigger factor in his 2017 success seems to be the second half of the called-strike tandem — the man behind the plate.

While the Orioles brought in Welington Castillo and his lead glove to start at catcher, he hasn't manned the position every day. Caleb Joseph has gotten the nod four times this season — on April 9, 14, 20, and 22. If you've been checking the dates in that table above, you'll notice something: Joseph has caught all 19.0 innings Miley has thrown in 2017. Needless to say, it's shown.

In case you went into a coma during the mid-aughts to avoid another miserable year of Orioles baseball and just woke up, I'll fill you in on the secret around Baltimore: That Caleb Joseph fella? He's pretty good at framing. This year, he's posted a .029 CSAA, the highest in the majors. Since his 2014 debut, he's saved the Orioles 27.1 runs in less than 2,000 innings.

Miley certainly appreciates what Joseph has done for him, as he explained to PressBoxOnline's Rich Dubroff:

"Not to knock at Welington. I've thrown to him. He's outstanding as well," Miley said. "Something about Caleb from spring training. I don't know what it was. I know he works hard back there for me. We've got a good thing going right now. 

"As a pitcher, you've got a catcher back there working really hard for you, and you see that. You kind of build off of that, build off the energy you see him giving, and you go from there."

Whether "works hard" is just boilerplate athlete talk or a subtle nod to Joseph's framing prowess/dig at Castillo's framing ineptitude, we'll never know for sure.

Earlier in that piece, Buck Showalter swears there's nothing to the Miley/Joseph pairing, and that he doesn't believe in the idea of personal catchers. If Castillo catches Miley more often, it'll certainly put a dent in his numbers; still, it shouldn't sink him entirely. Joseph has worked with some pitchers more than others — last year, he caught a large chunk of Ubaldo Jimenez's innings, more so than any other Orioles regular:

Pitcher	Joseph Innings	Innings	Joseph%
Kevin Gausman	27.0	179.2	15.0%
Chris Tillman	23.2	172.0	13.8%
Ubaldo Jimenez	57.2	142.1	40.5%
Yovani Gallardo	25.0	117.1	21.2%
Dylan Bundy	32.0	109.2	29.2%

Some catchers seem to have a rapport with a given pitcher (or are just better at catching), and while Showalter understandably doesn't want to disrupt his schedule to accommodate that, he'll tweak things so guys like Jimenez and Miley can throw a few more innings to their backstop of choice. That helped Jimenez a couple of years ago, and it could work in Miley's favor this season.

As Martin and the Blue Jays have spiraled out of contention, the Orioles are, once again, flying high in April. No team in the American League has a better record than the Birds, and Miley has been the team's second-best starter to this point (can't knock Bundy, I'm afraid). His ERA won't remain below two for the entire season, or below three, but it's clear that he's not the 6.17-ERA starter we saw in the second half of 2016. Someone with command like this, who pitches to a catcher like Joseph, is bound to rack up strikeouts and keep runs off the board.

What To Know About Seth Smith

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Our long, citywide nightmare — also known as The Yovani Gallardo Experience — is over. The owner of the fourth-highest cFIP in the majors will weigh down Seattle's rotation in 2017, as the Orioles dealt Gallardo to the Mariners yesterday in exchange for Seth Smith. The 34-year-old outfielder will make $7 million in 2017, thereby saving the Birds at least $6 million (Gallardo is due $11 million this year and has a $2 million buyout for next year).

Aside from salary, Smith appears to differ from Gallardo in three key regards:

1. He's a hitter;
2. he's a lefty; and
3. he's a competent major league baseball player.

On that last note, let's elaborate! Smith brings a career triple-slash of .261/.344/.447 to Charm City, which has been good for a .343 wOBA and 112 wRC+. Thanks to that dependable bat and a not-terrible glove (more on that below), Smith's been worth 13.1 fWAR and 11.7 rWAR across 3,711 lifetime plate appearances — he's been just about an average player, which the Orioles will gladly take as they try to contend in 2017.

He has a good eye, and possibly a great one.

The Orioles, as you may have heard, don't walk very much as a team — they've placed in the bottom half of the majors in free pass rate in the last four seasons. Strikeouts have become a problem as well in recent years: After putting up the 11th-highest K rate in the majors in 2014, Baltimore's been in the top 10 in 2015 and 2016. Plate discipline, in other words, is something for which the Orioles are wanting.

At the beginning of his career, Smith had some plate discipline. From 2007 to 2013, he swung at 27.8 percent of pitches outside the strike zone (the 214th-highest mark out of 429 qualified hitters), along with 61.6 percent of pitches inside the strike zone (233rd-highest); simultaneously, he made contact on 78.2 percent of his swings (134th-lowest). All that resulted in a 10.0 percent walk rate and 19.3 percent strikeout rate across those years — respectable figures, albeit nothing impressive.

But Smith became quite impressive in 2014, when he arrived in San Diego. That campaign, he reduced his O-Swing rate to the 18th-lowest among 146 qualified hitters, at 23.2 percent, while his Z-Swing rate dipped to the 34th-lowest at 59.2 percent. And he accomplished that as he made far more contact, posting the 69th-lowest figure in the majors at 81.1 percent. A more patient approach and better judgment on his swings gave Smith a superb 13.2 percent walk rate and 16.7 percent strikeout rate. His 0.79 BB/K ratio was on par with David Ortiz, and better than Edwin Encarnacion and Andrew McCutchen, among many others.

Did Smith undergo a legitimate breakout? That was the conclusion drawn by MLB.com's Corey Brock, FanGraphs' Matt Klaassen, The San Diego Union-Tribune's Dennis Lin, and others. These writers attributed Smith's improved plate discipline — which boosted his wRC+ to a career-best 131 — to the Lasik surgery he'd undergone the previous summer. It certainly seems that being able to see would help a hitter out. Maybe with sterling vision, Smith was finally reaching his potential.

Sadly, that narrative has deflated after two campaigns in humid Seattle. During 2015 and 2016, with his eyes presumably still intact from the surgery, Smith walked in 10.7 percent of his plate appearances, while striking out in 21.1 percent. His O-Swing rate (24.6 percent), Z-Swing rate (58.2 percent), and contact rate (76.4 percent) all began to regress toward his prior career levels. The breakout faded, and Smith returned to normal.

For 2017, what does this mean? The rational expectation is that Smith will maintain his 2015-16 level of play; that's what Steamer foresees, calling for a 10.7 percent walk rate and 21.2 percent strikeout rate. Still, the potential for a resurgence remains in place — plate discipline doesn't necessarily fade with age. If Smith remembers how to judge pitches again, he could again reach the Ortiz level of plate discipline.

He doesn't fare too well against fellow lefties. 

Last offseason, after the Pirates non-tendered him, the Orioles reeled in Pedro Alvarez on a one-year deal. Though Alvarez threw right-handed, as virtually all nominal third basemen do, he hit from the left side of the plate. This meant he'd perform poorly when facing left-handed pitching — to such an extent that he'd be virtually unplayable against southpaws. Understanding this, Baltimore deployed Alvarez accordingly: He received only 42 plate appearances versus a left-hander last year, compared to 334 versus right-handers.

Smith, too, hits left-handed (although he also throws left-handed, which thankfully prevents him from manning third base and doing this). And like Alvarez, he's always come up short against same-handed opponents:

Handedness	PA	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+
L	558	9.3%	22.9%	.109	.251	.202	.282	.312	60
R	3153	10.9%	18.7%	.200	.309	.272	.355	.472	121

Smith's wRC+ against righties puts him 28th among 101 hitters with at least 3,000 plate appearances; he's tied with Evan Longoria and slightly ahead of Nelson Cruz. Meanwhile, his wRC+ against lefties ranks 322nd, in a sample of...327 hitters. So he does pretty well for himself when the pitcher throws with his right hand, and pretty terribly otherwise.

The BABIP and ISO troubles don't stem from an altered batted-ball distribution — Smith has an identical ground ball rate against righties and lefties. But he's made hard contact much more often off the former (33.5 percent) than the latter (24.4 percent). As with many platoon-hindered hitters, that's probably due to the location patterns he encounters:

Righties give Smith more pitches to hit, which he obviously capitalizes on. Lefties stay far, far away from him, thus preventing him from doing damage.

As with Alvarez, Smith's platoon split is most likely set in stone at this point — having turned 34 in September, Smith is what he is. With their new outfielder in the fold, the Orioles will likely have no need for Alvarez's services going forward; Smith will presumably team up with Joey Rickard in a corner outfield spot. If both players can maintain their solid production against opposite-handed pitching (Rickard had a 131 wRC+ off southpaws as a rookie), Baltimore will have a reliable platoon supporting its lineup.

He excelled in the first half of 2016, then struggled in the second half. 

Like another former Oriole and current free agent, Smith started 2016 off on the right foot. He sailed to a .298/.423/.544 batting line and 166 wRC+ in April, and although he couldn't match that in the subsequent months, he still entered the All-Star Break with a .277/.366/.450 triple-slash and 127 wRC+ to his name. When he came back, though, things took a turn for the worse: Smith limped his way to a .202/.306/.361 line in the second half, good for a measly 85 wRC+.

Smith's decline in the later months of 2016 wasn't really because of plate discipline — while his strikeout rate rose from 19.4 percent to 21.8 percent, his walk rate also went up from 10.8 to 11.2 percent. He appeared to fall off thanks to his ISO, which sunk from .173 to .156, and his BABIP, which plummeted from .310 to .236. Without his power and average, no amount of plate discipline could save Smith.

Did Smith stand any chance of sustaining his first-half numbers, or was the decline destined to happen? His ground ball rate didn't change much from before the All-Star Break (48.1 percent) to afterward (47.7 percent), nor did he lose a great deal of hard contact (34.6 percent first half, 32.4 percent second half). But he did undergo a massive change in one regard: His popup rate doubled, from 2.8 percent to 5.4 percent after the Midsummer Classic. Infield fly balls almost always turn into outs, so that obviously put a damper on Smith's season.

Smith's second-half struggles were in large part unlucky. It's plausible he puts them behind him and returns to his first-half level of play, thus breaking out in 2017 (although we saw how well that thinking worked out in 2014). On the flipside, the popup problem could remain in place, which would continue to depress Smith's BABIP and ISO. The hard contact and ground ball consistency should help his cause, but if he can't hit his air balls out of the infield, he'll be stuck as a mediocre hitter.

His defense fell off a cliff in 2016.

From 2012 — his first year outside Colorado, which some evidence suggests may skew defensive metrics — to 2015, Smith compiled 2,794.1 innings in the outfield. In that time, he earned 6 Defensive Runs Saved and 6.2 Ultimate Zone Rating runs, which averaged out to 2.8 DRS/1300 and 2.9 UZR/1300 (about a full year's worth of innings). In other words, he was a modestly above-average corner outfielder, which coupled with his talent at the plate to make him a decent player.

That success didn't carry over into 2016, though. Last season, despite spending only 730.0 innings in the outfield, he cost the Mariners 7 DRS and 7.9 UZR, translating to 12.5 DRS/1300 and 14.1 UZR/1300. On a rate basis, Smith dropped off by more than a win and a half, which despite the small-sample caveats that come with defensive metrics is cause for concern.

How does FanGraphs' Inside Edge data appraise his decline? (As a primer: Inside Edge scouts put each play into one of six buckets, based on how often an average fielder would make it, then evaluate how often the defender in question succeeds on such plays. It's simpler than it sounds, trust me.) Let's look at his results from 2012 through 2015, and from 2016:

Year(s)	0%	1-10%	10-40%	40-60%	60-90%	90-100%
2012-15	0.0%	5.0%	16.7%	25.0%	92.0%	99.8%
2016	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	12.5%	100.0%	99.3%

The plays in the 90-100 percent bucket — referred to as "routine" — make up the majority of all plays a fielder will encounter, so even the smallest change there can portend a larger shift in overall output. This might not be the case for Smith, though, as he failed to make just one of the 150 "routine" plays he faced last year.

Rather, the more difficult plays seem to have caused Smith's problems in 2016. He couldn't field anything in the 1-10 percent bucket ("remote") or the 10-40 percent bucket ("unlikely"), and his clip of 40-60 percent successes ("even") was cut in half. This trend points to an unsettling culprit: Father Time. Smith still knows how to position himself to handle the easy plays, but as he enters his mid-30s he may be losing the speed and instincts necessary for the tougher ones.

This may not be the sole cause. While Smith's generally kept himself healthy, he dealt with a groin injury earlier in the season, which might have hampered his performance in the outfield. Convalescing from that, with a full offseason to rest and rehab, might allow him to return to the field an above-average defender again. And, of course, this did all happen in a mere 730.0 innings; perhaps the Inside Edge scouts misjudged a few plays and screwed up Smith's numbers. From what we know about defensive aging curves, though, we shouldn't be too optimistic about Smith's glove going forward.

***

Let's wrap up with some glass-half-full analysis. Smith is a satisfactory outfielder: He can take a walk (and won't strike out too often), he hits righties well, and he might have some upside if he can rediscover his early-2016 magic, which will hopefully compensate for a possible defensive decline. With the $4 million they'll save this year, maybe the O's can bring in a fifth starter to shore up their rotation, or a right-handed outfielder to pair with Hyun Soo Kim. With just one trade, Dan Duquette partially filled a gaping hole on his roster and got rid of an albatross — I guess it was worth the wait.

What To Know About Welington Castillo

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Remember Matt Wieters? That's all we'll be able to do, now that the Orioles have bid him goodbye. With the acquisition of former Diamondbacks catcher Welington Castillo yesterday, Baltimore seems to have found a starter behind the plate for 2017, meaning the former fifth overall pick — the man of the incredible facts, the assassin of playoff base stealers, the returner from Tommy John surgery, the recipient of the last illicit pie, and the visitor of my alma mater — will no longer don the orange and black.

But enough about Wieters. He's old news! Castillo's taken his place now. The righty, who will turn 30 in April, has a career triple-slash of .255/.318/.416, translating to a 98 wRC+. He's accrued 9.7 fWAR over 1,904 plate appearances — although BP's WARP sees him as a 2.0-win player, for reasons the last item in this listicle will elucidate — and, like him or not, he's the probable 2017 starting Orioles catcher. With that in mind, let's break down what the brand-new Birds backstop brings to the ballclub. (Spoiler: not a whole lot.)

He doesn't have much plate discipline. 

If the Orioles offense has one weakness, it's the strikeout: The club went down on strikes in 21.7 percent of its plate appearances this year, the ninth-highest level in baseball. They also didn't walk too often, with the 11th-lowest free pass rate at 7.7 percent. Castillo, you could say, is the quintessential Oriole — which isn't a particularly good thing.

Since he became a regular-ish player in 2012, Castillo has come to the dish 1,870 times. He's struck out in 24.8 percent of those and walked in 7.2 percent; the former is the 31st-highest* in the majors, the latter the 89th-lowest. In terms of bases on balls, he's not as bad as Jonathan Schoop or Adam Jones, and pitchers won't fan him as often as they will Chris Davis. Castillo's subpar production in both regards is nevertheless discouraging, reinforcing one of the more unsightly Orioles trends.

*Out of 241 players with at least 1,500 plate appearances.

As we'd suspect, this stems from a basic failure with pitch judgment. He's chased only 28.8 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, a respectable rate that's 102nd-lowest in that sample. The issue is that he's offered at only 60.0 percent of pitches inside the strike zone, which puts him 59th from the bottom. And to compound the issues, he places 77th from the top with a 10.1 percent swinging-strike rate.

Castillo has what appears to be a fairly common problem for hitters of his mold — he's a little too patient on outside pitches, for better or for worse:

When an adversary deals in the outer third of the strike zone, Castillo offers 59.4 percent of the time. On the area outside the strike zone, he swings at 31.4 percent of the pitches he sees. Plus, a whole ton of his whiffs are on pitches down and away, which is where a disproportionate amount of his pitches end up going. Unless he learns to judge these offerings a little better, Castillo will probably maintain his Oriole-esque strikeout and walk numbers, to the detriment of his new employer.

He hits the ball hard, but doesn't get much out of it — which could change. 

Here's an interesting comparison. Recall that, since 2012, Castillo has a 7.2 percent walk rate and 24.7 percent strikeout rate. In that same span, Mark Trumbo did exactly as well in terms of free passes (7.2 percent), and slightly worse in terms of punchouts (25.7 percent). As the table below lays out, both hitters have very similar quality of contact numbers as well. Yet one of them has a superior ISO, which gives him the wRC+ edge:

Player	Soft%	Hard%	ISO	BABIP	wRC+
Castillo	15.6%	36.0%	.161	.314	98
Trumbo	16.8%	36.1%	.222	.291	112

So why don't their results match up? Why did Castillo sign for a maximum of $13 million over two years while Trumbo looks for $70 million over four? Well, putting aside defensive value — which I'll cover below — Castillo just seems to have gotten unlucky.

No, seriously! From 2012 to 2016, Trumbo hit 43.2 percent of his balls on the ground and 56.8 percent in the air; Castillo had a ground ball rate of 42.5 percent, and a fly ball/line drive rate of 57.5 percent. Trumbo made hard contact on 45.4 percent of those air balls; Castillo, on 44.2 percent. Trumbo pulled them to left field 28.4 percent of the time; Castillo, 28.1 percent. Yet Trumbo has a 272 wRC+ when he goes airborne (31st in the majors**), while Castillo languishes at 240 (82nd in the majors, and much closer to the MLB average of 210).

**Out of 273 players with at least 500 air balls.

It's not like Castillo played in ballparks that heavily favored pitchers. Chase Field is a bandbox, and Wrigley tends to play fairly neutral, particularly during the years Castillo spent there. The answer might just be, as mentioned, dumb luck — Castillo hasn't received all that much playing time, so the sample here isn't too big. If he can continue to get good wood, maybe he'll start to see his mediocre BABIP and ISO rise, and his shoddy plate discipline won't matter as much. Hey, it worked out pretty well for Trumbo!

He took the heat in 2016, but not the soft stuff. 

In the same division as Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel, Orioles hitters need to be able to keep up with fastballs. The fear surrounding Hyun Soo Kim before the season was that he'd flounder against MLB's harder offerings, but as my colleague Matt Kremnitzer noted, he actually fared fine on fastballs while struggling against breaking and offspeed pitches. Based on Castillo's 2016 results, it looks like he might share that trait:

Year	Hard Runs	Breaking Runs	Offspeed Runs
2012	4.1	-4.0	2.2
2013	8.3	-3.0	-2.7
2014	-1.8	-0.7	0.1
2015	-0.8	-3.3	3.5
2016	14.3	-9.3	-3.9

Data via FanGraphs' Pitch Type Linear Weights

Brooks gives us even more clarity on this disparity. In 238 at-bats ending with a fastball this season, Castillo hit .332 and slugged .550. By contrast, he had a sickly .175 average and .254 slugging percentage in the 177 at-bats ending with a slower offering. And the difference goes down to plate discipline, too. Castillo struck out 52 times and walked 27 times against fastballs; versus offspeed and breaking pitches, he racked up 69 Ks (nice) to a meager three BBs.

The issue seems to stem from Castillo's approach. When pitchers serve him a heater, he's more inclined to swing if it's up in the zone...

...whereas with slower pitches, he'll offer more frequently when they're lower:

As a power-ish hitter, Castillo does most of his damage up in the zone, where he can elevate the ball. That's the area where a good amount of fastballs head...and also the area that pretty much all breaking balls/offspeed pitches avoid.

Hitting hard pitches obviously has value — not many players can replicate that .332/.550 line. It won't make him a great hitter alone, though, and after a while, that hole will start to grow bigger as opponents exploit it. Back in April, Castillo told the Arizona Republic's Nick Piecoro he was "having rough moments recognizing the breaking pitch," which was evidently something pitchers started to pick up on:

So if Chapman decides to bust out his slider, or Kimbrel reaches back for a two-strike curveball, don't expect Castillo to accomplish much.

He really, really can't frame. 

Why did we expend so many words in this post on Castillo's offense? Primarily because it's a lot more interesting than his defense. Earlier this month, Dan Duquette swore the Orioles would take pitch framing into account when selecting their catcher, yet they settled on this guy to replace Wieters:

During his five full seasons and 3,947.2 innings behind the dish, Castillo has cost his teams 62.1 runs via poor framing; on a rate basis, he's been worth -15.7 runs per 1,000 frames (i.e. innings). That makes him roughly the polar opposite of Caleb Joseph, who over the past three years has saved the O's 29.5 framing runs in 1,854.1 innings, averaging out to 15.9 per 1,000. As Jeff Sullivan explained at FanGraphs yesterday, Castillo's offensive respectability can't compensate for his defensive ineptitude, and Joseph's probably the better option going forward.

Really, I don't feel like dwelling on Castillo's defense. The Diamondbacks sure didn't — that's why they non-tendered him in favor of Jeff freaking Mathis. We know the O's will give him the lion's share of starts instead of Joseph; we know his deficiencies will mean Kevin Gausman, Dylan Bundy and co. will have a harder time snagging strikes. The farm system doesn't offer much hope for replacement receivers, so it looks like Baltimore will be stuck with a lot of strikes-turned-balls in 2017.

***

While there's some other stuff I haven't touched on here — Castillo has a significant platoon split, and he does a decent job at throwing out runners — this sums up his profile pretty well. For $6 million, the Orioles got themselves a possibly heavy-hitting, free-ish-swinging, slow-pitch-missing, non-framing catcher. Would they have been better served making  Joseph and/or Francisco Pena the substitute for Wieters? Probably! They decided to take this route, though, so here we find ourselves.

Blueprint For The 2017 Orioles (Option 6): The Reasonable Retool

I'll preface my plan by saying the word that many Orioles fans have pushed to the backs of their brains, ignoring in the hopes that it will go away: rebuild. At some point, this team's run will end — a small-ish market club like the O's can't move up to a $200 million payroll, and the farm system looks astonishingly barren. With that said, Baltimore still has some great players on its roster, and a solid supporting cast as well. A few minor moves, and this club could make some noise in 2017. It won't eliminate the need for an eventual teardown, but at this point, we'd all be fine with kicking the can down the road for another year.

Let's start with the basics. The current salary commitments for the 2017 Orioles stand at $95.9 million, according to BP's compensation data; along with the $50.1 million in arbitration projections from MLB Trade Rumors, that brings the probable payroll to $146 million at a minimum, plus an additional $5 million or so for the minimum-salary guys (Mychal Givens, Joey Rickard, and the like). With a cap at $160 million for 2017 — a modest increase from 2016's payroll of $147.7 million — that gives us $9 million to play around with. Can we make this club a contender? Let's find out!

Qualifying Offers

The Orioles, as you probably know, have three free agents of note: Mark Trumbo, Matt Wieters, and Pedro Alvarez. The latter two clearly don't warrant a QO — Wieters accepted his last offseason before declining in 2016, while Alvarez remains a one-dimensional player whose one dimension (hitting righties) isn't all that noteworthy. Each of them will sign elsewhere for less than the $17.2 million a QO would net them.

Trumbo, by contrast, presents a dilemma. Had he become a free agent at the All-Star Break, we'd obviously stick a QO on him — the first-half version of Trumbo earned 2.1 fWAR and was on his way to a breakout year. But then the second half happened, and Trumbo ended the campaign with just 2.2 fWAR to his name. Assuming his true talent lies somewhere between his first-half wRC+ of 143 and his second-half wRC+ of 98, we'll tender him a QO, in the hopes that he'll get greedy and try his fortunes elsewhere. If he takes it, that pretty much seals our fate for 2017; to have any shot at contending beyond next year, though, we need draft picks, which means we need declined QOs.

Non-tenders and trades

Let's dive into that $50.1 million in projected arbitration contracts. Can we shave that down at all? For starters, letting Vance Worley, Ryan Flaherty, and T.J. McFarland walk would cut $5.7 million off. Worley bluffed his way to a 3.53 ERA in 86.2 innings; underneath that, he had some of the most underwhelming peripherals in the majors. Flaherty and McFarland don't add much beyond competence at shortstop and a questionable ability to retire lefties, respectively. These guys wouldn't do much for the 2017 squad as members of it; with them gone, we up our budget to $14.7 million.

And although our benevolent overlord Jon doesn't permit it in this scenario, we should try — for the second straight year — to trade Zach Britton and his $11.4 million projected salary. As phenomenal as he pitched in 2016, that probably represents his ceiling, which means he'll never have more value than right now. In Brad Brach, they already have a dominant reliever they can make their closer, while Mychal Givens and Darren O'Day should be able to hold down the middle innings. And plenty of teams, such as the Rangers and Giants, will (a) want to contend in 2017, (b) need an upgrade to their bullpen to contend, and (c) thus be willing to pay a pretty penny for a lights-out closer. Getting a swingman, a bench bat, and a few prospects in return for two years of Britton would save the O's a lot of money, which they could re-invest in an area of greater need.

Infield

Here, the Orioles are pretty much set — in terms of starters, at least. Chris Davis, Jonathan Schoop, J.J. Hardy, and Manny Machado combine to form one of the best infields in baseball, and all will return for 2017. But what about depth? Without Flaherty returning, who will step up if a member of that foursome hits the DL.

While the best option would probably be re-signing Steve Pearce, he'll likely demand a multi-year deal that Baltimore can't afford. Instead, I have a less sexy yet still satisfying alternative: Erick Aybar. Jon expects Aybar to receive a two-year, $21 million contract, but I can't imagine his market will be that sunny after a -1.2-fWAR 2016. I think he'll come to the Orioles for one year and $6 million, hoping to rebuild his career and cash in next offseason.

If Aybar flopped in 2016, why would the Orioles want him? Well, he probably won't get any worse than that. His strikeout rate spiked to a full-season career high last year, and if that regresses toward his career norm, he'll improve upon his ghastly 65 wRC+. Although he's never hit for power or taken walks, with a clean bill of health, he has reasonable speed and thus a good BABIP. Combine that with his ability to play any infield position, and he's the best free-agent fit for the O's.

Nor will Aybar occupy the bench alone. The Orioles have a pair of Quad-A players who could contribute in limited 2017 roles: Trey Mancini and Christian Walker. Each can play first base, and both should succeed against lefties, at the very least. Hopefully for the team, none of these three will see significant playing time; if they do, however, it won't doom the club.

And with regards to catchers: Despite his horrendous 2016 showing, I still believe in Caleb Joseph. Why? He doesn't need to hit very well to earn his keep, because he consistently ranks as one of the best pitch framers in baseball. Over 2014 and 2015, he posted a wRC+ of 80 in 630 plate appearances, yet thanks to his receiving ability, he earned 4.0 WARP in that span. A Joseph-Francisco Pena tandem won't win any awards, but a rebound from the former will give the Orioles a dependable defensive backstop.

Outfield

Where the infield has certainty, the outfield has uncertainty, and a lot of it. While Hyun Soo Kim and Adam Jones are under contract for 2017, the former might need to stay in a platoon, and the latter struggled with injuries and slumps this year. Even if we count on both of them to start for the entire year — which this cash-strapped club will have to do — what do we do about the yawning chasm in right field?

The answer: Ink Carlos Gomez. Jon's model predicts a frigid market for the former Ranger, pinning his value at two years and $25 million. For a player who excelled with his new employer and can play quasi-average defense at any outfield spot, he's a decent gamble. If he continues to hit the ball hard and wields an above-average stick, then he becomes a two- to three-win outfielder again, pairing nicely with Jones in center and Kim in left.

For the outfield bench, we'll rely on Joey Rickard to fill in (and possibly platoon with Kim if needed). Nolan Reimold doesn't have much left in the tank, so we'll replace him with Walker, who could man a corner in a real pinch. As with the infield, we'll pray for a clean bill of health with the outfield; although this group has a lot less certainty, the presence of Gomez should shore things up a bit.

Pitching

With Aybar and Gomez, the Orioles have filled out their roster for 2016. What does that mean for the pitchers? Even if the position players hit enough to keep the team in games, will the hurlers just give the lead away? We'll hope that the O's can trot out an average staff, which isn't out of the question — after all, they ranked 14th in fWAR and 11th in RA9-WAR this year. Simply maintaining that would put them on the right track.

For the rotation, we'll lean on the following five men, in order: Kevin Gausman, Chris Tillman, Ubaldo Jimenez, Wade Miley, and Dylan Bundy. This set of hurlers could pay off, so long as Gausman continues to strand runners, Tillman stays healthy, Jimenez maintains whatever black magic carried him through September, Miley stops underperforming his peripherals, and Bundy doesn't blow his arm out again and/or tire. That's a whole lot of hypotheticals — but as mentioned earlier, this team doesn't have many guarantees for 2017. The rotation, while unimpressive, doesn't have any pressing needs like the outfield and bench do. Should all this break right, the O's could even have an average group of starters.

And the bullpen should be anything but average. Even if Britton does depart, the core of Brach, Givens, and O'Day will blow past opposing hitters. Donnie Hart showed an ability to retire lefties and slot in as the LOOGY of the group, and Oliver Drake's splitter gives him some intriguing upside. Meanwhile, Yovani Gallardo, Mike Wright, and/or Tyler Wilson can serve as the fireman/spot starter when needed, although none of them deserves a regular place in the rotation. All together, the pitching staff should at least not be a liability for the 2017 Orioles — and, possibly, it could develop into an asset again.

Conclusion

Over the past five years, among AL teams, the Orioles rank:

• sixth in hitter fWAR;
• seventh in pitcher fWAR;
• third in pitcher RA9-WAR; and
• first in wins

The former three accomplishments don't inspire us; they certainly don't testify to the team's odds in 2017. The latter, though, gives us a glimmer of hope for the future. With Erick Aybar for one year and $6 million, and Carlos Gomez for two years and $25 million, the club should remain respectable for another season. Give them a little luck, and who knows? Maybe another Wild Card berth — or better — is in the works.

Camden Depot Contributing To MASNsports.com In 2016

Camden Depot has again been asked to write weekly Orioles-related posts for MASNsports.com. This season, Ryan Romano will be the contributing writer.

Ryan's posts will run every Tuesday during the season, so make sure to check them out. His first post, which ran earlier in the week, discussed the projected production of the Orioles' offense and how new additions Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez (and Joey Rickard!) will affect the team's overall numbers.

You can find those MASN posts on the Orioles Buzz blog along with articles from other contributing bloggers. You can also find links to those posts and more by following @masnOrioles. Links to Depot articles and more can be found on our Twitter account: @CamdenDepot.

Thanks for reading.

Does Miguel Gonzalez's Orioles Career End Here?

With the regular season only a few days away, major-league teams must make the final moves to prepare their rosters for the 162-game haul. Some clubs must decide who will serve as the fourth outfielder; others will choose the backups for the starting catcher and infielders. And for teams like the Orioles, it means they must conclusively determine their starting pitching situation.

Baltimore knows that Chris Tillman, Ubaldo Jimenez, Yovani Gallardo, and Kevin Gausman will (in some order) occupy the 2016 rotation. Tillman rebounded somewhat in the second half of 2015, and his solid work prior has earned him the Opening Day start for the third straight year. Jimemez and Gallardo have solid resumes and pricey contracts, both of which will grant them some job security, deserved or not. And once Kevin Gausman returns from his shoulder injury, his flame-throwing arm will allow him to take the hill every fifth day.

The doubt comes beyond that. Mike Wright and Tyler Wilson each started some games last season, but neither has really impressed to this point. While Vance Worley has some talent, the fact that the Pirates put him on waivers tells you about his potential. Yet each of these three apparently has more potential than Miguel Gonzalez, with whom the Orioles have decided to part ways. After a solid run for the Birds, it looks as though Gonzalez has reached the end of the road.

Out of the many pitching prospects that Rick Peterson has tampered with developed, Gonzalez stands out as perhaps the biggest success. Before the Orioles signed him in the 2011 offseason, he was an oft-injured 27-year-old farmhand with 5.0 innings in Triple-A and zero innings in the majors. Then he broke out in 2012, twirling a 3.25 ERA over 105.1 innings to support the team's Cinderella run. That kicked off a three-year stretch of solid starting pitching, in which Gonzalez posted a 3.45 ERA in 75 games (69 starts — nice) and 435.2 innings. Dan Duquette and Co. seemed to have found a diamond in the massive minor-league free agent rough.

Then the wheels came off in 2015. Gonzalez deflated to a 4.91 ERA over 144.2 frames. It could have been a fluke, but since he'd outperformed his FIP in the prior years (more on that in a moment), this appeared to indicate that his luck had run out. He sealed his fate with a ghastly stint in Sarasota, stumbling his way to a 9.78 ERA in 19.1 spring training innings. That takes us to where we are now: Gonzalez on waivers and the Orioles looking elsewhere to round out their rotation.

In retrospect, we should note that Gonzalez's decline happened not in 2015, but in 2014. Over the first two years of his career, Gonzalez allowed 3.87 runs per nine innings and tallied a 3.64 DRA, both above-average marks. DRA reflected some of the more advanced areas in which Gonzalez excelled — chiefly, his ability to limit production at the plate. Despite facing difficult competition (he had an opponent TAv of .265 over those two seasons), Gonzalez held hitters to a combined TAv of just .254*. Because DRA focuses so much on plate appearance outcomes, this helped Gonzalez's case immensely.

*TAv is scaled so that the MLB average is .260.

When the success at the plate went away, Gonzalez should have given up more runs. In 2014, batters knocked Gonzalez around to the tune of a .278 TAv, driving his DRA up to 4.91. He didn't have quite as low a BABIP in that year as he did in the preceding ones, and home runs plagued him like never before. But Gonzalez got lucky: He allowed just 3.45 runs per nine innings and cruised through the season (when healthy). Gonzalez had the same problems in 2015 that he had in 2014 — too many hits and long balls leading to an inflated TAv — except his good fortune vanished. His 5.04 RA matched his 4.80 DRA and doomed him to the waiver wire.

For two or three years, depending on your preference of peripherals or results, Gonzalez was a respectable, major league-caliber starting pitcher. That's a phenomenal feat for someone who endured as many hurdles — a recurring knee ailment, Tommy John surgery, numerous trips up and down the minor leagues, and the premature death of his close friend — as he did. Still, 31-year-old pitchers who lose their touch usually won't get it back. While the memories he gave us during the 2012 and 2014 runs make this a painful decision, ultimately it'll benefit the team to run out someone such as Worley or Wright.

What To Know About Odrisamer Despaigne

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Because the Orioles just don't have enough fringe pitching, they added another arm to their staff yesterday. Odrisamer Despaigne, who came from the Padres in exchange for Aberdeen's Jean Cosme, doesn't have much on his resume. With a career RA of 5.11 and DRA of 4.89 — both of which have primarily come in a park that favors pitchers — he hasn't accomplished anything yet at the major-league level. Nevertheless, a few facets of his profile warrant a deeper look, so we'll put him under the microscope.

He has a lot of pitches, none of which really stand out.

I mean, just look at this list:

Over his two seasons of major-league playing time, Despaigne has used seven different pitches. Three fastballs, two curveballs, plus a changeup and a slider in a pear tree, makes for one hell of an arsenal.

In theory, at least. In practice, well, those pitches don't amount to much. Using the PITCHf/x leaderboards on Baseball Prospectus, I found the average whiff rates for six of Despaigne's seven offerings (annoyingly, there's no ranking for slow curves). By this metric, he trails the major-league mean in every regard:

Pitch	Despaigne Whiff%	MLB Whiff%
Fourseam	6.8%	8.6%
Sinker	5.3%	5.8%
Change	10.6%	16.7%
Slider	6.0%	17.3%
Curve	11.3%	13.5%
Cutter	5.9%	10.8%

Averages out of pitchers with at least 200 of each pitch in 2015.

The absence of swinging strikes has kept Despaigne from racking up strikeouts, which he's inflicted upon only 14.1 percent of opponents. That, in turn, is the largest reason why he's posted such mediocre results.

So why haven't these pitches deceived opponents? Two factors seem to be behind it. First and foremost, we should note Despaigne's location tendencies:

As a pitcher who focuses on getting ground balls — and successfully, to the tune of a 51.1 percent lifetime grounder rate — Despaigne has consistently placed the ball down in the zone. Like many hurlers, he's fooled the opposition when he targets them higher; the fact that he's strayed from that approach hasn't helped his case.

Location doesn't account for everything, though. The absence of whiffs has ultimately stemmed from Despaigne's repertoire, which just isn't up to snuff — or, rather, up to stuff. He possesses average-ish velocity, but his movement lags behind. Looking at the three hard offerings, we see a lot of straight pitches:

Pitch Type	Despaigne Velo	MLB Velo	Despaigne HMov	MLB HMov	Despaigne VMov	MLB VMov
Fourseam	91.6	93.3	1.8	4.9	6.9	9.2
Sinker	91.6	92.2	8.0	8.5	4.3	5.8
Cutter	88.2	88.5	0.6	1.4	4.8	5.3

Averages out of pitchers with at least 200 of each pitch in 2015.

To differing extents, Despaigne can throw a hard four-seamer, sinker, and cutter. He just can't make them dance, and that seems to have held him back.

His main offspeed pitch only compounds this problem. You may have heard that Despaigne has a weird changeup. Its velocity (76.7 MPH) falls more than seven ticks below the major-league average of 84.0 MPH. At the same time, it pairs a little less horizontal movement (4.2 inches, compared to the MLB average of 7.8) with a little more vertical movement (6.4 inches, compared to the MLB average of 4.6) than expected. All in all, it should be a pretty effective pitch.

Yet it isn't — in fact, it's really struggled. We know that a large fastball-changeup velocity gap helps the pitcher, so the power isn't the problem. The issue arises from, unsurprisingly, the pitch's movement:

In terms of bite, Despaigne's changeup resembles his hard pitches, which doesn't seem to bode well. Usually, a pitcher wants to keep the hitters on their toes, by bombarding them with pitches that move in unique directions. Because Despaigne lacks that variety (aside from his curveballs), he hasn't been able to net many swinging strikes.

Most pitchers will carry three or four arrows in their quiver, which makes Despaigne stand out. But all the quantity in the world doesn't count for anything without quality. Despaigne will have to change his strategy or add some distinct movement to his pitches if he wants to take the next step.

He's done an excellent job of limiting strong contact.

Despaigne does have some positives — if he didn't, the Orioles wouldn't have bothered with him in the first place. His biggest strength has to do with those ground balls, which have generally turned into outs. A career BABIP of .285 has allowed him to survive without those strikeouts, and if he can keep that up in Baltimore, he may find himself in a regular role.

His peripherals add some credibility to his case. Batters have hit the ball hard 26.3 percent of the time against Despaigne — nearly three percentage points below the average rate. He's paired that with an above-average soft contact rate of 19.9 percent to keep opponents off the board, to a degree. Nor has he received much assistance from his fielders, who rank 15th in DRS over the past two seasons. In front of a hopefully strong Orioles defense, Despaigne could see his BABIP fall even further.

A glance toward his PITCHf/x profile helps us understand how he's attained these results. During 2014 and 2015, major-league hitters made contact on 62.9 percent of their swings outside the zone and 87.3 percent of their swings inside the zone. Despaigne, meanwhile, had an O-Contact rate of 74.4 percent and a Z-Contact rate of 89.8 percent. Balls outside the zone that enter into play will usually become outs, which explains why this combination — lots of contact on bad pitches, without a lot of contact on good ones — has worked in Despaigne's favor.

To a certain degree, this element of Despaigne's performance goes against the grain. Research suggests that ground ball pitchers can't manage contact that well, meaning we'd expect them to run higher BABIPs. Indeed, of the 23 pitchers with 1,000 career innings and a ground ball rate above 50 percent, 15 have BABIPs above .290, with an average of .296. With that said, the pitchers who have avoided hits — the Tim Hudsons and Mike Leakes of the world — have done so with a low-strikeout, low-walk combination, as Despaigne has.

All in all, it's safe to bet on some regression for Despaigne's BABIP, simply because of that metric's volatility. If you have to pick an over/under, though, take the latter. The approach he takes and the tools he uses could help him sustain this

He's really struggled with runners on base, but that probably won't continue. 

Across the past two seasons, 134 pitchers have worked at least 200 innings. With the exception of Clay Buchholz, no one has left fewer runners on base than Despaigne has. He's done a fairly good job of holding runners in place: During that span, opponents have tried to steal 20 times in 331 opportunities, which is around the major-league average. Instead, a complete meltdown at the plate — his .292 wOBA with the bases empty has risen to .365 with runners on — has caused that hardship.

As we'd predict, Despaigne has struck out fewer batters and walked more batters under pressure. Neither of these, however, have prevented him from escaping trouble. A greater BABIP and more home runs bears the blame for that.

Situation	BABIP	HR%
BE	0.262	2.0%
MoB	0.318	3.0%

This means Despaigne has allowed more solid contact with runners on, right? Actually, he hasn't — his hard-hit rate after someone has reached is 26.0 percent, below his overall mark. He's also netted just as many weak hits in those scenarios, with a 20.1 percent soft-hit rate. Based on his situational heatmap, this makes sense:

For better or for worse, Despaigne has expanded the zone in important situations. This should, theoretically, have granted him a reduced BABIP and home run rate (or at least equal ones). He just seems to have had bad luck, which will presumably regress to normal in 2016 and beyond.

Simply leaving runners on base won't turn Despaigne into a competent starter. With that said, it's definitely a solid first step. If he can combine it with his BABIP tendencies, he could become another Baltimore overperformer (in the style of, say, Miguel Gonzalez). A higher strand rate can work wonders for a pitcher; let's hope Despaigne gets to witness that firsthand.

***

Despaigne will not be a good pitcher for the Orioles; he'll probably struggle to stay afloat. His pitch variety notwithstanding, the lack of movement could doom him to irrelevance. But he has some things going for him — if he can maintain his low BABIP and begin to strand some more runners, he may survive. As with many areas of the coming season, we'll have to hope for the best.