The Orioles evened their three-game series with the Chicago White Sox at one game apiece thanks to 4-2 victory Wednesday night. Acquired from the Chicago Cubs Tuesday, Buck Showalter wasted little time showcasing new starting pitcher Scott Feldman, giving him the nod against Robin Ventura’s guys. Though the O’s would eventually lose the series two games to one, it’s worth looking at Feldman a bit further.
In 15 games (all starts) for the Cubs this season Feldman had a 7-6 record with a 3.46 ERA and 1.14 WHIP. Opponents had a .234/.289/.367 slash line against him and the 30-year old recorded 67 strikeouts in 91 innings pitched.
He isn’t a big name. He wasn’t the type of splash many O’s fans were hoping for. But Feldman is a quality starting pitcher who should keep the Orioles in the ballgame more often than not and that’s really what you want from a member of your rotation.
What members of the Camden faithful can expect to see from Feldman is plenty of cutters and curveballs. Entering Wednesday the right-hander was second in the majors, using his cut fastball 32.7% of the time with an average velocity of 88.1 mph. Feldman ranked third in use of his curveball at 24.9%. Only A.J. Burnett (32.4%) and Adam Wainwright (26.7%) utilized it more.
Having a Gold Glove shortstop in J.J. Hardy and potential winner in Manny Machado at third base should benefit Baltimore’s newest acquisition well as he’s inducing ground balls at a 50.7% rate in 2013.
Against the White Sox Feldman pitched well enough to earn a victory (ended up with a no-decision) and in a nutshell we probably saw what we can expect the majority of the time from him. In six innings he allowed six hits and two earned runs while striking out six and issuing zero walks. It was his second consecutive six-inning, zero walk outing. He threw 98 pitches, with 60 going for strikes.
This was Feldman’s pitch distribution for the evening.
Not surprisingly, Feldman’s curveball was a real asset for him Wednesday, with 19 of the 28 he threw resulting in strikes and nine of them generating a swing & miss.
Based on pitch location by at-bat result, we can see the Orioles’ newcomer was most effective when working the lower portion of the strike zone. He even went below it for four of his six strikeouts. The three doubles came on pitches largely in the middle while the groundouts, as you would expect, came on pitches located lower.
Here are some of Feldman’s more successful pitches.
When Scott Feldman’s day was complete, and Darren O’Day took over for the seventh inning, I think most Orioles fans were pleased with what they saw from the newest addition to the rotation. He limited damage on a few occasions (stranding 87% of base runners) and the team was in position to pull out a late-inning victory, which they did.
Not a bad way to debut with your new team.
Stats via Baseball Reference, pitch data courtesy of Fan Graphs and Brooks Baseball
