I briefly listened to a couple local sports talk radio personalities glance at the number of complete games Jim Palmer pitched in his career. It’s astounding, 211 in case you were wondering. These two went on to ask why the current Orioles rotation couldn’t pitch as deep into games as the Hall of Famer did during his career.
This blog post into the place to answer that question, I need hundreds of words to explain the difference between baseball in 2013 and how it’s changed from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Not that my answer would really matter.
After watching yet another bad starting pitching performance from my seats at Camden Yards, I was pleasantly surprised to hear about Kevin Gausman‘s outing at Trenton. The O’s prospect went six innings, surrendering four hits, an earned run, walking one and striking out a career high ten batters.
After an outing in which he only pitched 4 2/3 innings, it was a relief to see Gausman at least pitch six frames. Prior to that, the righty pitched 7 2/3 and seven innings.
The Baysox limited Gausman to 90 pitches and 60 were thrown for strikes. As we’ve discussed before, the Orioles are working with Gausman on when to throw pitches outside of the zone. He walked three batters in his last outing and has four over his last two starts after issuing just one free pass in his six prior.
On our podcast this week, Steve Melewski told us that he doesn’t think the Orioles timetable for Gausman has changed due to their continuously shuffling rotation at the big league level. Hopefully Gausman continues to put pressure on Dan Duquette and Buck Showalter and can provide that rotation help they’ll be looking for later in the season.
There were comments between Palmer and Hunter yesterday about how pitchers today do more weight training than running and discussion about the impact of each. Very interesting.
Right now, the only fairly consistent starter they have is Tillman. Hopefully Chen is not out for an extended period of time and maybe Jurrjens provides a glimmer of hope today. They have to stem this tide until Gonzalez and Chen return.
It was at this point last year that they stumbled a bit. They were 13 games over .500 on May 19 and then lost 10 of their next 13 games. They would struggle though June and July before making a sharp turn on July 29 and going 41-20 the rest of the way.
As I said before , they need a number one pitcher real bad if they want to be serious contenders,,,,,,,,,,a,true number one is also a stopper when these little losing streaks happen………..someone needs to get to Angelos so the fans can enjoy the O’s in a world series,,,,,,as I see it , a number one pitcher and a decent second sacker will get them there……………….
Make a trade and look to call up Gausman within the next couple of weeks. That trade needs to be for someone like Cliff Lee (if the Phils begin to spiral out of it). This is too good a lineup and pen for this team to be sitting on its hands. I think Hammel would likely work out his current issues if the pressure of ace were taken off of his shoulders. Chen is a great 2 or 3 and Tillman at 3 or 4. A stronger rotation takes some of the pressure off the pen and will help eliminate the blow ups we’ve seen from JJ this week.
I couldn’t help but notice that you were at Camden Yards yesterday celebrating your GrandDads 87th birthday while I was not…see anything wrong with this picture?
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