.210/.273/.324
.222/.272/.323
Those are the triple slash stats for the Orioles against Justin Verlander and David Price respectively. Those are without a doubt, pretty dismal numbers. Of course, Verlander and Price are two of the top pitchers in baseball, so many teams struggle to put up decent numbers against them. Those triple slash lines however are the 2nd-worst (among teams with 5 plus games against him) for any team against Verlander and 3rd-worst for any team against David Price.
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The O’s have posted an 83 tOPS+ against Verlander in 11 starts. That means that their performance has been 17% worse than league average against him, resulting in the numbers above.
Of course, their 82 tOPS+ against Price in 14 starts is even worse, and puts them 18% league average against Tampa Bay’s ace.
Verlander and Price have more in common than just being the top guys of their respective staffs. Both are power pitchers* who rely on mid to high-90s fastballs to get batters out. Their primary focus is typically striking out hitters, and use their top-line stuff to get swings and misses. As you might suspect, power pitchers are generally more successful than their finesse-focused counterparts. The table below shows how Major Hitters fare against pitchers of every type; click to enlarge the table and make it legible:
As you can see, the OPS increases as we go from power pitchers to finesse pitchers, which seems somewhat intuitive since many of the best pitchers in baseball are strikeout artists.
The Orioles have, as I alluded to above, struggled mightily against power pitchers. As you can see below, the O’s have an 85 sOPS+ which ranks the team compared to the other teams in MLB. That ranks them 21st, just ahead of Seattle and behind Kansas City.
To put that into perspective, the club has an sOPS+ of 128 against average power/finesse pitchers and a 108 sOPS+ against finesse pitchers. Those numbers are in comparison to the rest of the league, and can be understood as this:
Power pitchers – 15% worse than average compared to the rest of MLB.
Average Power/Finesse – 28% better than average compared to the rest of MLB.
Finesse pitchers – 8% better than average compared to the rest of MLB.
The birds are 3rd-best in MLB against average pitchers, trailing only Cleveland and Texas so far this season. Against finesse pitchers the O’s are 6th-best in MLB just behind the Yankees. Ironically, that’s only good for 4th in the division as the Red Sox and Rays happen to be 1st and 3rd respectively when it comes to facing finesse pitchers.
For more detail, click on the below image to enlarge it.
While the BABIP numbers suggest that some of this is luck, and that these numbers might revert back to league average over the season, I think that the O’s are likely to continue to struggle against power pitchers. Many regulars struggle with strikeouts, which favors power pitchers. Additionally, many O’s regulars (some of the same as those described above) struggle with taking walks, meaning that power pitchers won’t be punished for their command issues.
The Orioles’ performance against power pitchers has been pulled down by atrocious seasons from Nick Markakis, Nolan Reimold, JJ Hardy, Matt Wieters, and Nate McLouth against power pitchers. Unfortunately, this spoils the performances of Adam Jones and Chris Davis who are both OPSing over .980 against these pitchers.
On the other hand, the only 2 players to play in more than 10 games against average pitchers without posting an sOPS+ that’s above league average were Ryan Flaherty and Matt Wieters. The next lowest guy is Adam Jones whose performance is 3% better than league average. The club is paced by Chris Davis who is posting an absurd 225 sOPS+ against average Finesse/Power pitchers in 41 at-bats so far this season.
The 2012 Orioles can be viewed here, and that might help give some perspective on how the 2013 roster compares to last year’s.
*disclaimer from Baseball-Reference re: classification of pitchers: “Power pitchers are in the top third of the league in strikeouts plus walks. Finesse are in the bottom third of the league in strikeouts plus walks. Stats are based on the three years before and after (when available), and the season for when the split is computed. A split in 1994 would consider years 1991-1997 when classifying a pitcher.”
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.