The Baltimore Orioles are one of the best teams in baseball in 2023. If you have been paying attention, this isn’t new information, but it’s still quite remarkable upon reflection. The Orioles hold a three-game lead on of the Rays in the toughest division in baseball and potentially look primed to win their first division title since 2014. It still doesn’t feel real in some respects. Two years ago, the team suffered their third one-hundred-loss season and second under Mike Elias; after four straight years of losing, many questioned if they could transition to a competitive team.
Sure, they had an amazing farm system, but how does that translate to the big leagues?
The answer is that it has translated beautifully, and this team continues to raise the expectations we should have for them going forward. The last two years have been nothing short of amazing. From going to a team that was lucky to win 70 games playing out of their mind in 2022 and this year, where experts expected a ton of regression, only to be in first place in August, is something special.
Obviously, Elias and Brandon Hyde deserve a ton of credit for this turnaround, as well as the guys like Matt Blood, who has been able to turn the Orioles into a Player Development machine, and Brad Ciolek for being able to conquer one of the most complex processes in sports, the MLB Draft.
A lot of dirty work goes into the team’s success, but one part doesn’t get the credit it deserves, and it is the part that has haunted this organization for nearly thirty years.
The job that the Orioles’ pitching coach, Chris Holt, has done with this staff has been severely underappreciated, and today we are giving Holt and the Orioles’ pitching development their flowers.
On the surface, it might seem weird to give them credit when to some, it isn’t due. The Orioles don’t rank that highly in most metrics this year. For example, they are currently 19th in ERA (4.09). On the other hand, they have a very low FIP at 4.08, ranking as the 8th best. FIP is one of the best stats for a pitcher because it takes out things like how a defense might affect things. Read more about it here.
Even when the staff has put up good enough numbers, it still isn’t enough to garner national praise. That’s a bit expected, but how about locally? Almost nobody has even mentioned Holt’s performance, even though he wasn’t given a lot of talent. The majority of the key pieces in the staff are guys who were cast-offs from other organizations. Yet Holt has built a stable rotation and a dominant bullpen with those same castoffs.
Let’s flash back to Spring Training 2022 for a second. Going into camp, the Orioles made a move that didn’t get much fanfare but would positively affect how we viewed this team going forward. They switched the spots of Tyler Wells and Jorge Lopez. Wells was a Rule V pick who was a reliever in 2021, and Lopez was a starter who was claimed on Waivers in 2020. Lopez had one issue in 2021: being unable to go deep into games. So the team made the switch, and it ended up paying dividends. Wells was the Orioles’ best starter in the first half of 2022, and Lopez was an All-Star closer.
Lopez’s time with the O’s was cut short when the team realized that his value would never be higher than it was at the 2022 deadline and traded him to the Twins for a package that we will get to in a bit.
2022 was full of stories like this. How about the bullpen being made up of only guys off the street and failed prospects? Holt managed to get the most out of Cionel Perez (waiver claim), Dillon Tate (former prospect with dropping stock), Felix Bautista (relative unknown), and Jorge Lopez (aaiver claim).
Even in the rotation, there were a ton of success stories. In addition to Rule V pick Wells, they managed to get the most out of Austin Voth, a pitcher who was awful with the Washington Nationals, by recognizing how good his curveball was.
This is only really scratching the surface of the work that was done in 2022, but Holt again got no praise for his job, and the team went into 2023 with a question: can Holt repeat this magic? The answer is yes.
While pieces like Perez and Voth regressed severely, the other success stories make up for that. Wells took another big step forward this year before running out of gas. They signed Kyle Gibson because of his ability to get a ton of ground balls and his wicked-breaking ball. Bautista has turned into the best closer in the game.
From the Bullpen side, the O’s have gotten all they could have asked for from guys like Yennier Cano and Danny Coulombe. Coulombe was acquired by trade in the last couple of days of Spring Training, and Cano came over in the Lopez trade. So yes, the Orioles traded an All-star closer who never reached those heights with the Twins for a reliever who made the All-Star game this year.
All of this is great, but other teams like the Rays and Dodgers build their bullpens like this all the time. Where do the starters fit into this equation?
Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez.
Bradish was called up last year and struggled his first couple of starts. He then turned that around and put together a great second half. He has carried that success over to this year and has given the team a boost when they needed it most. The staff has turned Bradish into a top-of-the-rotation arm, yet he mostly flies under the radar, as does the great work Holt & Co. have done.
Rodriguez, like Bradish, struggled badly in his first couple of starts and had to be sent down to the minors. Since his recall, he has been great. He does have issues going deep into games, but you take a couple of good five to six-inning starts by a 23- year-old.
Not everything has been perfect this year; Dean Kremer has taken a step back, Wells regressing in the second half for the second straight year doesn’t help, and Rodriguez’s first couple of starts hurt the overall numbers of the rotation. Perez and Voth’s regressing has also hurt the team at times. Add some inconsistent arms in the bullpen like Bryan Baker and some tired arms affecting guys like Cano, and not everything has been sunshine and rainbows.
The pitching staff has issues, no doubt, but Chris Holt and the Orioles’ pitching development have done a great job these past two years of getting everything out of their players. They have built a bullpen out of guys who were cast-offs and turned guys like Voth and Wells into contributors. This all while turning Bradish into a top of the Rotation arm and getting Rodriguez to improve drastically.
No, ESPN, Walltimore isn’t the only reason why this is happening. There is actual pitching development, and nobody brings it up or blames the wall for their success.
The front office is also starting to build a ton of pitching depth in the minors as well with trades, international signings, and draft picks.
Holt and the Orioles’ Pitching Development have done an underrated job getting the most out of the guys they have, and they deserve much more respect than they are given.
