Bad Pitching

You know who doesn’t get discussed when talking about arguably baseball’s strongest division, the NL East? Yeah, that would be the Orioles. Far from the days of Mussina, Key and Erickson, I’m going to easily make the case that this team has the worst pitching staff in all of baseball this year. And in doing so, hopefully scare you off from even considering placing a dime on them. Because shaky pitchers can be murder on baseball betting lines – Vegas or between gentleman.

Here’s who we’re looking at, and as I said, it ain’t pretty.

Jeremy Guthrie, who despite what some fans might want to believe, has not proven himself as either reliable or a starting pitcher.

Koji Uehera may have only given up one run this spring training against guys who’ll be back with him in the minor leagues come June, but I question his velocity and ability to go deep in the game. He might find a better niche in the Orioles bullpen.

Chris Waters, Rich Hill and Adam Eaton round out, for now, the starting five. What you have in those three is a couple no names and a “he’s got potential” tag in Hill.

When it comes down to it, Guthrie, penciled in right now as the best of the bunch, wouldn’t even make the rotation on most other teams. He’s been almost painful to watch pitch if you’ve seen him recently. The rotation is exceptionally weak.

OK, but Baltimore will have competition at the bottom of the barrel here. The Pirates and Nationals both have terrible pitching, and unlike Baltimore, Pittsburgh seems stuck with what they have – there’s no help on the way in the farm system in terms of quality pitchers. At least the Orioles have Arrieta, Matusz and Tillman to look forward to. The Nats do have Zimmerman, but…

So hope may be on the horizon for the Orioles, but I wouldn’t put any money on this bunch all year long. Every so often you get more than what you pay for in pitching, and as Baltimore fans know they didn’t pay much this off-season, but this isn’t one of those instances. In fact, forget the pitching…after realizing the lineup and given they have to face every other NL east team in their division alone 19 times each, the Orioles might just compete for worst overall record in the league.

Baseball

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.