A few stats, thoughts and opinions as the first-place Orioles, a team that has not lost an AL East series since April 9, gets ready to host third-place Toronto tonight. For the O’s it is the start of a nine-game homestand against the Jays, Rockies and White Sox.

* The O’s pitching has been pretty darn good for well over 40 games now. After allowing just one run on Sunday, the O’s team ERA is 3.62 since July 1. And they are 29-15 (.659) in 44 games in that time.

As of Sunday, that was the fourth-best ERA in the AL in that stretch and sixth-best in MLB. And the O’s starters had thrown the third-most innings of any team in that span.

So yeah, pretty good.

And while the team ERA for the year is 4.08 to rank eighth in the AL, it’s much better in this span of games which is over a month and not just a good series or a good few weeks. It’s the kind of pitching they would probably need to win October games and the kind they got in the last two games at Seattle where they beat a hot team 1-0 and 5-3 back-to-back in ten innings.

With the trade deadline set for next Tuesday, the Orioles are no doubt checking in on the pitching market. For what it is worth, the pitching staff may be in better shape than some think and yet as they say, you can never have enough pitching.

But for a team that plays .750 ball this year when it gets a quality start, it has been happening with much greater frequency since early June for the Orioles.

In the team’s first 62 games this year, the Orioles got a quality start just 29.0 percent of the time, going 18-for-62 with a rotation ERA of 4.86 in the 62 games.

In the last 40 games, even after Kyle Bradish allowed five runs Wednesday, the Orioles have gotten a QS 55.0 percent, going 22-for-40 with a rotation ERA of 4.02.

It is a nice trend up and again the Orioles are 30-10 this year in their 40 quality starts. Where once the O’s were in the bottom third of the AL in quality starts, now just five teams have more.

A couple of quick thoughts as the Orioles hit the home stretch of spring training. They have seven spring games remaining over the next seven days and this time next week the spring games will be over.

I have no stats to compare this to past years, but the O’s spring roster for their game versus Philadelphia on Monday was at 51 with 36 from the 40-man and 15 non-roster invitees still officially on the camp roster. That seems like a lot on the roster this late in camp. The Orioles last made spring roster cuts last Tuesday after their game in Bradenton versus the Pirates. (And they did make some cuts late Monday afternoon).

It is interesting that this late in camp, three young prospects, there via non-roster invites, are all still officially on the roster and I speak of Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad.

All have been impressive in this camp and all three could impact the O’s roster during the 2023 season. None is likely to be there on Opening Day but the fact the club has kept them around so long I think shows us how they feel about this group of three and that they realize all three could be back later in the year.

Kjerstad has been hitting the entire camp. On Feb. 25, in the first spring game, he homered twice at Ed Smith Stadium just missing a third homer. He went 3-for-3 and now he is 4-for-9 with a homer his last three games. He just keeps hitting the ball hard and with authority.

Though there’s been a bit of movement on the free agent market elsewhere, we’re still in the preliminary stages of the offseason around here. The Nationals have yet to add anybody to the fold, focusing instead on which players to add to their 40-man roster and which players to remove from the equation.

But now that they’ve completed those tasks, it’s fair to wonder when they’ll start moving onto free agency and addressing a handful of significant needs. (It’s also fair to wonder if they’ll be able to address any of those needs while the club is still for sale, but we’ve already raised that question and there’s not much more to say about that for now.)

So let’s proceed as if Mark Lerner has given Mike Rizzo the green light to spend some money this winter. Not gobs of money, but enough money to fill roster holes with actual free agents, not just bargain-basement pickups.

The Nationals have multiple needs. We’ll focus today on a particularly important one: starting pitching.

The 2022 rotation ranked dead-last in the majors in ERA (5.97) by a longshot, last in WHIP (1.563), last in walks per nine innings (3.76), last in strikeouts per walk (1.97), last in homers allowed (161). It’s hard to believe they finished with the majors’ worst record as well, isn’t it?

CHICAGO – There’s plenty for Davey Martinez to be concerned about these days, amid a five-game losing streak that has seen his Nationals get blown out multiple times, all while fielding a roster that looks nothing like the one he was used to only a year ago.

But nothing stands out more to Martinez right now, and rightfully so, than a rotation that hasn’t come close to holding its own during this stretch.

Entering tonight’s series opener against the Cubs, Nationals starters have averaged a scant 3.3 innings over the last five games. They haven’t had anybody complete five innings since Cory Abbott tossed five scoreless frames Aug. 2 against the Mets, hours after Juan Soto and Josh Bell were traded to the Padres.

The domino effect on the bullpen has been dramatic, with several relievers unavailable on a given night because they pitched too much the previous one.

“It’s been tough,” Martinez said. “Trying to space these guys out, trying not to use them too much. Keeping guys fresh as much as we can. Hopefully today, Aníbal’s pitching and he can give us a good 5-6 innings and then we can go from there.”

Davey Martinez’s last season as a big league player came in 2001, when he hit .287 for the Braves. Atlanta’s rotation, the backbone of a team that won 88 games to capture a division title, averaged 6.2 innings per start, tops in the National League. Even the worst rotation in the league that year, the Reds, averaged 5.4 innings per start.

On Tuesday night, Martinez watched Joan Adon become the first member of the Nationals rotation to complete six innings this season, then even record an out in the seventh before he was pulled. Not that they were alone in that regard: Ten other major league clubs had yet to get a six-inning start in 2022 as of Tuesday.

“The game has definitely changed,” Martinez said. “I look around at what’s going around the league. There’s only been like 10 or 11 games where starters have gone six innings. For someone that’s been doing this for three decades, the game has changed a lot.”

There are valid reasons for this. The condensed, three-week spring training is chief among them. Pitchers simply didn’t have the usual amount of time to build their arms up like they would during a camp that normally would’ve been twice as long.

But this is also a reflection of Major League Baseball in 2022, where length from starters simply isn’t viewed as the priority it once was. With teams having seen the data on starters facing a lineup three times a night, and with most bullpens featuring a bounty of big arms, front offices and field managers simply don’t believe it’s prudent to push most starters the way they used to.