The Orioles have won 23 games this season, just 2 games behind this point last season when they won 25 of their first 39 games. Unlike last year though, the 23 wins they’ve accumulated this season aren’t looked at as a fluke, or at least not nearly as big of one. The reason? The O’s solid runs scored / runs allowed ratio suggests that their win total is right on the money.
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This is undoubtedly good news, but there’s certainly always room for improvement. For example, the O’s rank 11th in MLB in wRC+ with a perfectly pedestrian 100. Pitching isn’t any prettier, where the staff 3.93 ERA ranks them 15th in Major League Baseball. The even worse news is that the O’s 4.42 FIP suggests that their pitching SHOULD be the 4th worst staff in MLB.
This post isn’t about that though. It’s about the Day/Night splits for the team, specifically the batters. O’s pitchers have posted the following stats which are fairly close though relatively uninspiring:
Day: 4.01 ERA, 1.86 K/BB, 1.273 WHIP in 128 IP
Night: 3.89 ERA, 2.10 K/BB, 1.286 WHIP in 220 IP
As you can see, those numbers are fairly close, and will likely trend that way though the rest of the season. Last season in fact, the numbers trended very closely together for the duration of the year as you can see here at Baseball-Reference.
The O’s hitters on the other hand, haven’t been so consistent regardless of start time. Just check out these triple slash lines:
Day: .285/.344/.500 in 558 PA
Night: .249/.310/.383 in 934 PA
Let’s put those numbers in perspective really quickly by comparing them to overall OPS output for other teams this season. If every game the O’s played was a day game, their .844 OPS would put them well ahead of the Tigers who currently lead MLB with a .786 team OPS. On the other hand, the .693 OPS in night games would land the Orioles in 24th, 1 spot behind the offensive juggernaut Astros.
If you’re curious, you can check out the team’s 2012 performance at Baseball-Reference, where despite fairly disparate batting averages, the OPS for the team in both types of games comes out pretty even.
So how does this shake out. You can check out a full table here, but I’ll highlight some of the interesting examples. Some of the worst offenders in night games are:
Nolan Reimold: 60 tOPS+
Nate McLouth: 57 tOPS+
Adam Jones: 52 tOPS+
JJ Hardy: 46 tOPS+
In this case, tOPS+ is a measure of how their performance in night games compares to what we would expect based on their career splits. Hardy and Reimold have been down offensively all year which pushes their tOPS+ down here, but interesting that these guys make up 3 very regular players in the O’s lineup.
Ironically, those 4 guys are also the 4 top performers in day games! Here are their tOPS+ scores for day games, with a full table available here:
JJ Hardy: 188 tOPS+
Adam Jones: 184 tOPS+
Nate McLouth: 174 tOPS+
Nolan Reimold: 162 tOPS+
Based on this you might think that as these players see their splits even out over the season, the team itself will come back to even. This, while true, doesn’t fully explain this interesting split.
In day games, only 5 Orioles are performing worse than you would expect, with 8 players out-performing their career marks. In night games on the other hand, 7 players are under-performing their career lines, with just 6 players exceeding expectations.
Is this something to be concerned about? Maybe. On one hand, there are obviously going to be more night games than day games over the course of a season. On the other hand, these extreme splits are likely to come back to the middle over the season. Should the O’s go out and start looking for hitters that hit really well in night games? Of course not. It is however, something to keep an eye on as the season progresses.
One final set of stats to leave you with:
Day: 14 games, 9-5 record
Night: 25 games, 14-11 record
Jeff was the owner of the Orioles blog Warehouse Worthy, which focused on making advanced statistics a part of the conversation for the average fan. Outside of baseball, Jeff is a graduate of Loyola University where he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Business Administration. The Maryland native currently works for an Advertising Agency in downtown Baltimore. Previously a contributor to Beyond the Boxscore, he joined Baseball Prospectus in September 2014. You can reach him at jeff.long@baltimoresportsandlife.com.