O's pitching development program got some props from Baseball America

At a time when the Orioles organization has gotten a lot of props for their farm system, a lot of those props came due to position players/hitters that have already arrived like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson, plus a few on the way like Jackson Holliday, Samuel Basallo and Coby Mayo.

On the O’s farm, the hitters are higher ranked than the pitchers. On MLBPipeline.com's O’s top 30 right now, there are just two pitchers ranked in the top 11: Chayce McDermott at No. 10 and Cade Povich at No. 11.

But despite that, there are also some reasons to be encouraged about the O’s pitching development program.

It recently got some props and scored quite well in Baseball America’s Farm System Statcast Pitching Rankings, co-authored by Geoff Pontes and Dylan White. It was a deep dive into minor league pitchers, aggregating full-season pitching data, metrics and stats for hurlers between ages 17 and 26.

The goal was “to more accurately understand which organizations have the highest quality of overall pitching talent.” And they were attempting to “view the developing pitching talent in each organization, not the team’s ability to stock quality MiLB free agents into Triple-A bullpens.”

In their overall Stuff+ rating, the O’s tied for third with the Yankees, behind only the Rays at No. 1 and the Dodgers at No. 2.

The O’s left-handers ranked No. 1 in the minors, and the O’s were sixth at In-Zone Whiff Percentage and scored very high in Baseball America’s data via two and four-seam fastballs.  

During the recent Winter Meetings, O’s executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias might have actually been referencing the Baseball America article when he noted the O’s pitching development has gotten some recent praise and is improving.

“Better and better,” said Elias in Nashville. “Matt Blood and his group and Chris Holt, and our (minor league) pitching coordinator Mitch Plassmeyer and everyone on the strength and conditioning side, we have slowly and quietly and steadily kind of built out a really first-rate pitching department. We’ve got the (pitching) lab (in Bel Air). We’ve got all the resources of a large market team as it pertains to pitching development. We are starting to get some external recognition and some objective recognition for the gains that we are making on the farm with our pitchers.

“And this is with almost negligible draft investment and no international program until a few years ago. So they are doing a lot with some really raw clay and it’s been nice. It’s a big importance to us.”

Earlier in an article you can access here, I wrote a blog with Pontes about the Baseball America article, its findings and how the O’s scored well.

“When we look at the top here, it’s all organizations that invest in player development,” Pontes said. “I think that’s the bigger thing. Analytics gets tossed around. But it’s how are those numbers utilized to identify players on the amateur side and then say these are the guys that have the particular traits they are looking for. And then their player development knows how to accentuate these good traits and get the most out of these profiles. That might be guys that go in the 13^th round, third round or first round. Historically, first- and second-round picks – little easier to figure out who is going there. The real magic can be who is identifying players after the first and second rounds. I think Baltimore has done that. The Mariners have done that in recent years.”

One reason the O’s scored well with lefties is the underlying stats that Povich produced, despite an overall mark of 8-10 and 5.04 ERA between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk in 2023. He’s a pitcher throwing in the low 90s that touches 95 and 96 mph with solid secondaries led by a plus changeup and solid slider.

“He got a lot of swings and misses this year and in divisions that are tough sledding,” said Pontes. “I think the Eastern League is about as good of a level and league you can see in quality from team-to-team. Double-A in general is like that. Plenty of prospects.

“I think his ERA is what it is. But (he had) a .341 batting average on balls in play, which is pretty high. The underlying numbers like FIP and xFIP (expected FIP at Double-A), he had a 3.80 FIP and I think people like xFIP, he had a 3.10 xFIP. Some of it was he pitches around the zone a lot. It’s not like bad command, but he is someone that tries to get chase swings. Doesn’t necessarily always get calls and sometimes his defense let him down. His performance with swing-and-miss stuff was there and he threw a lot of innings.”

Povich averaged 12.15 strikeouts per every nine innings and that mark was 13.1 in Double-A.

“I think there are still some command concerns. But there not too many guys that go through Double-A with a 13 K rate. Those swing-and-miss skills are fairly important,” said Pontes.

I asked about O’s farm pitchers scoring well in fastballs as measured by the stats produced in xwOBA, which is expected weighted on-base average.

“I think a lot of it is they’ve gone after guys that throw hard or have certain movement profiles," said Pontes. "And the stuff they have trained on internally has accentuated some of those traits. I think they have a knack for going after guys that have good underlying traits – it’s not always about the numbers – but guys that can develop into something better. They have consistently done that to have success.”

Pitchers like Povich and McDermott (the winner of the 2023 Jim Palmer Award) might help the Orioles during the upcoming season, although Elias indicated in Nashville that does not appear imminent.

“I think our plan with McDermott and Povich – hopefully we can bring enough in on the major league side so we can prioritize their development (in 2024) rather than an emergency major league need or something like that," said Elias. "They both got to Triple-A, but I don’t think their work there is done, at least from what we have seen so far. But they are in really good spots and they’re two of the better pitching prospects that we have right now."