Word on the Street: Bad Pitching and an Empty Farm in Birdland

The O’s have hit a rough patch, and it all starts with the starting pitching. Press play or read below for more.

With the Orioles mired in a seven-game losing streak, perhaps it’s time to look at why the season is seemingly falling apart.

It can all be traced back to the starting pitching. The Orioles don’t spend the necessary money on top line starting pitching, so they have to depend on their farm system. You can look at the rotation and see products of the farm system such as Dylan Bundy, Kevin Gausman, and even though he was acquired in a trade, we’ll include Chris Tillman because he was a teenager when that trade transpired.

Here’s the catch-22: The Orioles have been a good baseball team, and when you’re a good team, you make trades at the deadline to improve your team to make a championship push. The problem is, you have to trade good players to get good players, players such as Eduardo Rodriguez, Zach Davies, and Ariel Miranda.

Unfortunately, those trades didn’t culminate in a World Series, and now the farm system is depleted and the Orioles championship drought is ongoing. You also have to look at that, because the team has been good, they have been picking later in the draft, therefore their picks are less and less likely to become everyday, quality big leaguers.

Add to that the fact that the team in 2014 forfeited their first- and second-round draft picks to sign Ubaldo Jimenez and Nelson Cruz, and then forfeited their first-round pick in 2016 to sign Yovani Gallardo, and it’s easy to see why they don’t have a stocked farm system.

The unfortunate thing is that none of the signings were worth the picks. Ubaldo has been terrible, and Gallardo, who was terrible, is no longer with the team. Cruz could have been worth it had he propelled the team to the World Series, but they got swept in the ALCS and now he is with Seattle.

So now we have the Orioles as they currently stand: free-falling in the division with a rotation that has thrown the second-least amount of innings in the American League.

Dylan Bundy has been great, but Gausman and Tillman have been mediocre at best, leading to a patchwork rotation that is blowing leads and over-working a bullpen, all of which has a trickle down effect on an offense that feels like no lead is safe, causing the team to push and ultimately fail.