Ryan Romano: Should Gallardo keep Wright and Wilson out of the rotation?

What words come to mind when you think of the 2016 Orioles rotation? For me, the first few are ones that I can't print here. After that though, "fluid" arises as the most apt euphemism. Chris Tillman and Kevin Gausman have stuck around and pitched well, but beyond them the waters get murky. Dylan Bundy is currently a starter after beginning the campaign as a long reliever; the same applies to Vance Worley, for the most part. Ubaldo Jimenez, Mike Wright and Tyler Wilson have each had extended turns through the rotation, which haven't amounted to much.

Throughout all of that turbulence, one player, when healthy, has gotten chance after chance: Yovani Gallardo. Yet over his 12 starts and 62.0 innings, Gallardo has pitched rather poorly, possibly worse than the other starters Baltimore has tried out. With the team going all-in for a playoff run and finding few starters available on the trade market, the Orioles might help their limping rotation by removing its most senior member and swapping in a (relative) youngster.

We'll start with the basic statistic: ERA. After last night's solid effort against the Rockies -- who, for the record, have hit terribly away from Coors Field -- Gallardo has a 5.37 ERA in 2016. That's better than Wright's 6.22 ERA as a starter or Wilson's 5.67 mark. But runs allowed don't tell the whole story. By xFIP, which evaluates a pitcher based on his peripheral metrics, Gallardo has been the worst of the three: His 5.61 xFIP is more than half a run higher than the starting xFIPs of Wright (5.08) and Wilson (5.03). cFIP, a similar advanced statistic, reaches the same conclusion, as Gallardo's 127 cFIP looms over Wright's 113 and Wilson's 119. These are for their 2016 seasons as a whole, as Baseball Prospectus doesn't offer cFIP splits for starters and relievers.

Those metrics can be hard to parse, so let's look at something a little more simple: strikeouts and walks. In his 12 starts this year, Wright has fanned 16.4 percent of opposing hitters and issued a base on balls to 8.5 percent; Wilson has put up figures of 12.1 percent and 5.9 percent, respectively, over 13 starts. By contrast, Gallardo has a 15.6 percent strikeout rate and 12.0 percent walk rate in 2016. The 3.6 percentage-point difference between those -- which, in and of itself, can accurately predict a pitcher's ERA going forward -- is the fourth-worst in the majors. Neither Wright nor Wilson has performed well in this regard, or by xFIP and cFIP, for that matter. But both of them have been far superior to Gallardo.

So why does Gallardo continue to take the mound every fifth day? Perhaps it's because, unlike Wright and Wilson, Gallardo hasn't really had a meltdown -- one of those starts where he exits in the second or third inning after letting the game get out of hand. Gallardo has allowed five runs just once, on April 11 against the Red Sox; he's made it through five innings in all but two starts, and a shoulder injury cut one of those short. In the end though, runs are runs, no matter how the pitcher distributes them. There's no reason to think Gallardo's pseudo-consistency will continue.

Another probable driver is experience. Prior to 2016, Gallardo had established himself as a remarkably consistent starter, with a sub-four ERA in every year save 2013. That Gallardo has come and gone, however. The current iteration, at age 30, doesn't throw nearly as hard and likely won't have the same success. Although Wright and Wilson -- both of whom are 26 -- haven't achieved very much at the major league level, each has shown some talent in the minors. (Plus, the former has pitched well since his demotion to Triple-A, notching a 2.58 ERA over six starts.) They might have more downside than Gallardo, but their upside deserves another opportunity to shine through.

The outlook for the Orioles rotation certainly seems sunnier now than it did a week ago. Tillman and Gausman should continue to do their respective things, and Bundy and Worley could become solid starters as well. While replacing Gallardo with Wright or Wilson wouldn't move the needle much, it could solidify the back end of the rotation and give Baltimore the combination it'll need to go deep in October.

Ryan Romano blogs about the Orioles for Camden Depot. Follow the blog on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. 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.