Are The Orioles Bad Or Unlucky With Their Young Pitching?

By Grant Brisbee - Editor

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Feb 16, 2012 - Last year, because I'm a moron, I actually had somewhat high hopes for the Orioles. I didn't think they'd finish any higher than fourth, mind you, but I thought they could make some sort of surprise run if everything broke right. That's weasel language -- "If everything breaks right, I could totally win a Senate seat!" -- but there were reasons for optimism. They had interesting young hitters, and they were complemented with aging-but-cost-effective veterans of note.

And they had young pitching. Oodles of young pitchers. They were all going to scamper around and do young-pitcher things, and sometimes that can be a good thing. Dynasties are built on surpluses of young pitching, but breaking and disintegrating are also young-pitcher things. For the Orioles, the young-pitcher things meant that they broke and/or disintegrated. Teenager things include "winning the National Merit scholarship" and "getting caught with drugs in the parking lot of an Applebee's." Young pitchers aren't much different.

Brian Matusz had one of the worst seasons in history of any pitcher to start more than ten games. Jake Arrieta's control didn't improve. Chris Tillman posted his third straight over-5.00 ERA, and struggled upon a demotion to triple-A. Zach Britton turned a fast start into a disastrous finish, and now his shoulder injury is lingering. It was 60 to 0 in an impressively short time for the stockpile of young pitchers.

Now comes the big question: Are Orioles pitchers breaking because young pitchers are like baby sea turtles frantically racing from egg to ocean before being eaten, or are the Orioles an especially incompetent organization when it comes to developing young pitchers and keeping them healthy? Looks like the Orioles have the same question under new GM Dan Duquette. From FanGraphs:

But if you believe that the Orioles’ pitching problem has been the result of an organizational philosophy, then Duquette’s most important move of the off-season was in hiring Rick Peterson and Chris Correnti. Peterson has worked as the pitching coach for a number of major-league teams, and he’s a big proponent of using psychology and biomechanics to help pitchers stay healthy. He’s been given the role of overseeing the Orioles’ minor-league pitchers and helping them develop properly.

It's that chicken/egg question that makes it hard to evaluate exactly what's going on with the Orioles. Getting Blanked has a great rundown of the Orioles' first-round picks, and it's about as depressing as you'd expect. But a lot of first-round picks don't pan out for anyone -- even the picks in the top ten. Would Pedro Beato have been a rotation stalwart if the Yankees had drafted him? If the Rays developed Wade Townsend, would he have broken the Rice Curse before Jeff Niemann (sort of) did? Maybe. Maybe not.

The worst part is that we'll never know. Even if you knew every member of the Orioles' front office and coaching staff over the last decade -- even if you watched every moment of every day that they worked for the Orioles and gave them exit interviews when they left -- you'd still likely end up shrugging your shoulders and muttering something about young pitching under your breath.

Between Matt Williams and Pablo Sandoval, the Giants' best homegrown hitter was Marvin Benard. The Pirates have had an unbelievable run of first-round pitching flameouts. In both cases, your first instinct is to blame the organization -- the Giants haven't been especially adept with how they evaluate hitters, and, to use an analogy, the Pittsburgh Pirates have been the Pittsburgh Pirates of baseball over the past couple of decades.

But that can be a bit of a tautology. Teams bad at developing a certain part of their farm generally aren't good at getting help at the major-league level in that area. If scouting is such an inexact science that every team can pass on Albert Pujols nine different times, maybe it's possible that some teams are unluckier than others.

It gets harder to explain away like that after a decade or two, but the names and faces change. Different prospects and coaches amble through under different management. The results are still the same. It almost makes the idea of a cursed franchise seem plausible.

So are the Orioles cursed or bad? Maybe. The answer is maybe. If there's any consolation for the Orioles, it's that one of the four pitchers on the list of all-time pitching disasters was Roy Halladay, who paired with an awful Chris Carpenter to keep the 2000 Blue Jays away from the playoffs. Broken young pitchers don't always stay broken. But no matter what happens with the current crop, we'll never have a great idea if the Orioles are getting pitchers who were damaged during the shipping process, or if they're shaking the box too hard before opening it.

Read More: Brian Matusz (P - BAL), Jake Arrieta (P - BAL), Baltimore Orioles

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