Hello! It’s been forever since I’ve written about baseball, but then again, there wasn’t baseball for four months due to, well, reasons we all know. I thought I’d get a quick word in about a topic that’s near and dear to my heart: the Baltimore Orioles.
When I first heard about a 60-game season, this is what went through my head:
Look, I’m not an idiot, the Orioles are a true-talent bad team. But when you reduce the sample size of something like, say, baseball games, you increase the odds of an outlier outcome. Such as, a really bad baseball team making the playoffs or, dare I type it, winning the World Series.
My hopes only increased right before the season when the league announced an expanded playoffs for this year.
And while Opening Day was a shitshow, the prognosis since then has been decidedly non-shitty. So much so that, coming off a three-game sweep of the Rays last weekend, Will Leitch took note of all things Orioles Magic.
But here’s my question: are the players putting together this run actually any good? Or are they just performing well at the right times?
So I decided to quickly take a look at the team’s outcomes vs. the processes driving those outcomes. I won’t go into too much depth; I just want to get a sense of whether this success is likely to continue. And look, “success” for this team doesn’t need to be a playoff berth. It could be a .500 record or even something approaching mediocrity. After back-to-back seasons of 100+ losses and while buried in the early stages of a rebuild in a division with the Yankees and Rays, “less terrible” is a good enough goal to shoot for — even if it’s for 37% of a full season that contains weird layoffs and pauses due to a pandemic.
All stats are through Monday, August 3rd.
Win-Loss Record
The Orioles are 5-3 so far, a .625 winning percentage. However they’ve scored 41 runs and allowed 44, which by the Pythagorean formula is a .465 winning percentage. Rounded to the nearest win that’s 4-4 or a .500 season.
BaseRuns agrees. Based on how often the team is getting on base and scoring runs (and preventing their opponents from doing the same) it thinks they should have a .529 winning percentage which is again close to 4 wins, after you round to the nearest win.
It’s safe to say the Orioles “deserve” their record, in the sense they haven’t been incredibly lucky like in previous years. A one-game difference isn’t anything off-the-wall. But look, it’s only been eight games.
Offense
Let’s look at the Orioles’ top three hitters and see if their performances are real. For batters I look at stats like barrel rate, xWOBA vs. wOBA, as well as things like walk and strikeout rates. Thankfully the latter stats won’t matter for two of the Orioles’ best hitters, as they rely on contact and rarely walk.
Jose Iglesias
Iglesias was the team’s “big” free-agent signing this offseason and he’s rewarding GM Mike Elias with a 274 wRC+. He hasn’t played enough to qualify for the batting title but if you drop the threshold to 10 PA, this output ranks 4th in the sport. He’s a high-contact hitter who strikes out much less than the average hitter and who hasn’t drawn a single walk yet.
While he hasn’t gone yard this season, he does have five doubles which, combined with his five singles, gives him a stellar wOBA of .565. It’s not all a mirage — his crazy-high BABIP of .625 immediately screams “lucky”, but his xWOBA of .420 is still at the 97th percentile. His exit velocity, sweet-spot rate, and hard-hit rate are all much higher than in previous years.
Almost all of those improvements are coming against fastballs, however:
If he continues showing he can square up a heater, pitchers will start giving him more offspeed and breaking stuff. Iglesias will have to counter-adjust in order to keep these improvements up.
But he’s making more solid contact than ever before, and it’s why I’m optimistic about his on-field results.
Hanser Alberto
Hanser has played in all 8 games and is 7th in the majors with a 223 wRC+. Equally absurd is his BABIP of .433 that is keeping his wOBA of .491 afloat. Unlike Iglesias, he’s sent two pitches over the fence in addition to three doubles.
I’m more skeptical of Alberto’s performance than Iglesias’. Hanser’s xWOBA is a just-okay .300, which ranks in the 37th percentile. His hard-hit and sweet-spot rates are up a tick but his average exit velocity is down to 85.7 MPH. He’s hitting way over his head.
Rio Ruiz
Chance Sisco has the third-highest wRC+ on the team but he’s played in just four games, so I’ll talk about Ruiz next. He’s flashed power before, hitting 35 dingers last year. So far this year he has three, which account for his entire extra-base output en route to a 190 wRC+.
Unlike Iglesias and Alberto, Ruiz legitimately hits the ball hard — his barrel rate of 18.8% ranks in the top 9% of the league. He’s pretty slow though (8th percentile Sprint Speed) which suppresses his batting average and results in a more realistic-looking BABIP of.308.
Also unlike Iglesias and Alberto, Ruiz knows how to take a walk. His 11.8% rate is comfortably above average. This means his on-base skills don’t rely solely on his bat. So while he’s still hitting over his head (xWOBA .339 vs an actual wOBA of .429) it doesn’t matter as much. He has another tool in his on-base arsenal.
Pitching
My go-to stat for quickly analyzing pitchers is strikeout rate minus walk rate (K-BB%). It tells you a lot about how well the pitcher controls the strike zone and fools batters. I’m not sure how well it stacks up against the Statcast metrics but it’ll do for my purposes here.
Tommy Milone
After getting shelled on Opening Day, Milone put together a hell of a start his next time out: eight K’s and no walks against a Rays lineup that went to the playoffs last year and is expected to do so again this year. Overall his K-BB% is a healthy 27.8%. Compared to the league average of around 17%, that’s quite good.
Don’t let the 5+ ERA fool you. Milone has more to prove, but his control of the strike zone shows he’s not simply a mirage.
Alex Cobb
Cobb’s statistics point me to the opposite conclusion. His K-BB% is a more dismal 12.2%. His walk rate is okay but his strikeout rate is a poor 19.5%. So Cobb’s 2.89 ERA belies a reliance on batted balls that Milone, to this point anyway, hasn’t needed.
Miguel Castro
I’m always amazed at how this rail-thin guy (he’s 6’7″ and weighs 205 lbs) can throw an easy 98 MPH sinker over and over again. Castro’s been on the team for a few seasons now but has never found a groove. In three seasons with the Birds, his K-BB% hasn’t topped an ugly 9.4%.
In 2020 though a glimmer of success is showing itself. His K-BB% this year is a robust 25.5% and batters have just managed four hits against him. Count me as optimistic about Castro’s performance continuing.
“Why Not?”
Baseball analysts typically talk about something being “unsustainable” or not, but I don’t know what that means this year. Can Alex Cobb works around a poor strikeout rate and keep his ERA under 3.00 for another ten starts? It doesn’t seem likely to me but then again I’m used to thinking of a 162-game season. I would be surprised if he did, but not as surprised as if he did it over another 25 starts.
Similarly, I don’t think Iglesias can run a .625 BABIP all year. But wait, — “all year” is probably a month and a half of crazy-good performance. When I think about it that way, that high BABIP seems more likely. After all, 26 guys have hit .400 or better in a 60-game span at some point. Iglesias runs okay and Statcast shows he’s hitting the ball hard. Why not?
What I do know is the following:
- Some members of the team show legitimate improvements
- The team’s W-L record is about what you’d expect for a team that gets runners on base, and prevents runs, at the rates that they do
- The Orioles are in second place in the AL East with 42 games left to play (assuming all the games are played, which isn’t a given)
- The playoffs are expanded to 8 teams in the AL
I’m obviously biased but to me this all adds up to feeling good about Leitch’s reference to the 1989 “Why Not?” Orioles. The 2020 team still has a long (weird) way to go but eyebrows are raised all across baseball, especially in Baltimore.