Matt Kremnitzer: Britton working toward dominance

In his first full year exclusively as a reliever in 2014, Zach Britton provided the Orioles with nearly everything they could have asked for. After Tommy Hunter flamed out as the team's closer (and was placed on the disabled list in late May), Britton seized control of the closer's role and never looked back. He posted a 1.65 ERA (and 3.13 FIP) in 76 1/3 innings, finished with a phenomenal groundball percentage of 75.3 (highest among all major league pitchers with at least 20 innings by a wide margin) and saved 37 games in 41 total opportunities. And he did all of that while throwing sinkers 91 percent of the time, according to data from BrooksBaseball.net.

It's easy to forget now, but Britton was a candidate to be traded before the 2014 season because he was out of options. He had underwhelmed as a starting pitcher at the major league level, but he never would have passed through waivers unclaimed. So the Orioles had a decision to make. They weren't able to find a suitable trade - the Mets apparently turned down the O's offer of Britton for first baseman Ike Davis - so the O's held on to Britton, and it's worked out beautifully.

Still, there's always room to improve, and Britton is off to a fast start this season. He's allowed just one run in six appearances (6 1/3 innings of work), and he's aiming to improve his strikeout and walk rates while also keeping his groundball rate sky high. He's accomplishing all of those goals so far, albeit in just a handful of innings. Obviously, there are plenty of games and relief appearances to go.

Increasing his strikeout rate would go a long way toward becoming an even more effective reliever, especially since it's unclear if Britton will be able to maintain his absurdly low batting averages on balls in play (.215 in 2014; .231 early in 2015), even with the talented Orioles infield defense behind him. Ground balls are a great weapon for pitchers, but the combination of strikeouts and ground balls can be lethal. And one way Britton might be able to improve on his strikeouts is throwing more curveballs. Last year, Britton mostly threw sinkers, but he also sprinkled in curveballs about 9 percent of the time. Early this season, he's opted for slightly more curveballs (12 percent) and it's resulted in an uptick in punchouts.

Since the beginning of the 2014 season, Britton has thrown exactly seven pitches (all four-seam fastballs) that weren't classified as either a sinker or a curveball. Most of his pitches were sinkers, and batters swung and missed at 13.5 percent of those offerings. Obviously, that pitch is Britton's weapon of choice to induce ground balls. But on curveballs, which Britton keeps lower in the zone and occasionally throws in the dirt, opposing batters whiffed about 20 percent of the time. Batters (especially left-handed ones) clearly make less contact on that pitch. As a full-time reliever, Britton has yet to allow an opposing batter to collect an extra-base hit off of one of his curveballs (two singles, one hit-by-pitch). Still, Britton isn't going to maintain a strikeout rate close to his current 14.2 mark, but something close to nine or 10 would be a clear improvement.

The Orioles' confidence in Britton is only growing. Buck Showalter relied on Britton for his first four-out save last week and he was up to the challenge. Britton has also focused on the small things, like improving his fielding at his position - a wise decision considering the number of grounders hit against him. Every little bit counts.

This season is Britton's first arbitration-eligible year, and as a Super Two player, he qualifies for four total arbitration years instead of the typical three. So considering his ability to rack up saves and that he's making a bit over $3 million this year, he's going to get expensive in a hurry. Regardless, he's a valuable weapon for the Orioles - and he may not be done improving yet.

Matt Kremnitzer blogs about the Orioles at Camden Depot. Follow him on Twitter: @mattkremnitzer. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.