Perhaps most of you know that while I cover Baltimore Orioles happenings for this website, I am based in Minneapolis and in fact cover the Twins for a number of outlets. As a result, the dissonance between writing about the teams has been amazing, considering the 0-7 start for the Twins and the 6-0 run the Orioles started the season on entering Tuesday’s action.
In fact, the Orioles stood alone as far as unbeatens were concerned heading into Tuesday, while the Twins and Braves were the only clubs who hadn’t won yet. Baltimore played a large part in the maladies which have plagued the former, sweeping the three-game series to open the season.
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So earlier Tuesday I penned a column for Today’s Knuckleball entitled “The Anatomy of Slow Start.” That makes the parallelism for this column something of note — at least to me — and quite frankly a bit more fun to write. After writing negative stuff in four of the last five seasons for the Twins, this provides a breath of fresh air. So let’s take a look at what exactly has gone into this scorching start for the Orioles, and whether it’s more surprising than not.
Offense
The offense has been a case of the haves and the have-nots, with the former far outweighing the latter heading into Tuesday’s tilt at Fenway Park. Six players with appreciable playing time for the Orioles have OPS figures in excess of .900; three of the other four are at .500 or worse, with J.J. Hardy — who homered in Tuesday’s game against the Red Sox — checking in at a paltry .590. Nevertheless, sizzling starts across the board from expected contributors like Chris Davis (.983) and Manny Machado (1.394) have been matched by slight surprises from Jonathan Schoop (1.065) and Mark Trumbo (.982) and sheer surprise from Nolan Reimold (.909) and Rule 5 darling Joey Rickard (1.036), who has been fantastic in place of Jones, who has been sitting with a strained rib cage and has appeared in just three games total. It’s all small sample noise at this point, but what it adds up to is a team that is second in batting average, on-base percentage and raw OPS, first in slugging percentage and third in home runs in the American League. And perhaps in a slight disappointment, the team is just fifth in runs scored. In short, the components suggest the offense could be scoring even more runs.
Oh and how is this for a surprise: the Orioles have just one stolen base. Well, that’s maybe not surprising; this is a station-to-station team of mashers. But the one steal? It was Trumbo, who entered the season with 20 stolen bases in 34 career attempts over a career which started in 2010.
Pitching
If the offense has carried the water so far this season, the pitching staff has provided the snacks. Not only are the Orioles first among 15 AL teams in ERA (2.50), but they’ve got a filthy 10.3 K/9 rate and are walking just 2.8 batters per nine innings. The rates are good as well (1.15 WHIP) and it’s not terribly lucky either, as the club had a collective 3.25 FIP coming into Tuesday’s game. Breaking it down, the starters have been solid, ranking sixth in the AL in ERA (3.45) and fifth in strikeout rate (9.7 K/9), have walked virtually no one (2.2 BB/9) and have done so without the benefit of an overwhelmingly stingy defensive effort (.321 BABIP). On the other side of things, the bullpen has been nothing short of breathtaking, with a 1.78 collective ERA (No. 4 in AL) and 11.0 K/9. The only real issue in the bullpen so far has been walks; as a group they’ve permitted 3.6 per nine innings, which still is an acceptable rate when in conjunction with their whiff rate.
The Orioles used just four starters the first time through the rotation — helped in part due to the rain delay in Game 1 against the Twins — and Ubaldo Jimenez and Chris Tillman have been the standouts thus far in their appearances (each have a 1.29 ERA). Vance Worley and Yovani Gallardo were less impressive, but not out-and-out disasters by any means. The bullpen has been made of standouts, as four guys have strikeout rates in excess of a batter per inning, with Mychal Givens and Darren O’Day thus far averaging more than two strikeouts per inning (8.1 innings, 17 strikeouts). Again, it’s all small sample noise, but incredible to see at the same time. Aside from Givens getting touched up a bit by the Twins in the opener, he’s been fantastic.
Other
The Orioles’ most impressive win also featured Givens, taking place Monday night as he recorded four outs all by strikeout. The O’s hung a blown save and a loss on Boston’s Craig Kimbrel, a notoriously difficult reliever to score one run on, let alone three. Kimbrel allowed three earned runs just once before in his entire career — against the Astros on April 29 last season.Let’s re-frame that; Kimbrel has allowed more than two earned runs just twice in 358 career appearances — aka 0.55 percent of the time — with Baltimore’s Monday night effort being one of them. That’s truly incredible. None of this is to say a team that was buried by projections coming into the season is guaranteed to do anything huge this year — it is, after all, a long season — but the early returns have been nothing but encouraging for the local nine.
Orioles Analyst
Warne is a Minnesota Twins beat reporter for 105 The Ticket’s Cold Omaha website as well as a sportswriter for Sportradar U.S. in downtown Minneapolis. He also contributes to FanGraphs / RotoGraphs.