Andrew Stetka: What could have been with the O's and Miguel Gonzalez

While watching the Orioles take on the White Sox this weekend, I started thinking about things that could've been. More specifically, watching Chicago send Miguel Gonzalez to the mound on Friday night made me wonder how we all got here. How is it that the O's decided that Gonzalez wouldn't be a member of the 2016 rotation and went with other options instead?

When looking at this picture, it's important not to focus on Friday night's result in a vacuum, but rather the entire package. Gonzalez may have taken the loss against his former team, but that doesn't change the fact that he's pitched just as well if not better than the majority of those who have made starts for the Birds this year. No one is saying Gonzalez is great, but in comparison, he's another guy that could've been in the fold. He isn't going to win the Cy Young Award anytime soon, but he is actually pitching slightly better than he did last year in Baltimore.

It's also fair to point out that the Orioles didn't really have a guaranteed option to replace Gonzalez upon releasing him. Many say Yovani Gallardo is that person, but he was signed before Gonzalez was let go and was really taking the rotation spot vacated by Wei-Yin Chen's departure. Gonzalez was essentially replaced by a combination of Tyler Wilson and Mike Wright early in the season. Both of them ended up in the rotation after Gallardo suffered an injury.

For a team that has seen its fair share of struggles in the starting pitching department, I feel like it would've been nice to have another bullet in the chamber. Even if Gonzalez wasn't that perfect choice, he still had a minor league option available. If his potential struggles became too unbearable, a trip to Norfolk could've been in order. Instead of paying him $5.1 million this season, the Orioles passed. The move has had a ripple effect that Orioles fans wouldn't have imagined.

There's no guarantee that both Wilson and Wright would've made double-digit starts on this team already. There's also no guarantee that even Ubaldo Jimenez would've made as many starts as he has. Dylan Bundy may still be in the bullpen rather than forced into a rotation in desperate need of a spark. Sure, he's provided that spark, but I don't think that was in the Orioles' plans back in April. The Orioles also may not have gone out and traded for Wade Miley if Gonzalez was still around. Sure, Miley gives the O's something they didn't have before in that he throws with a different arm than anyone else, but if there was another starter hanging around, who knows what direction Dan Duquette might have taken last week.

For what it's worth, Gonzalez appears to be taking a liking to his new team. He's been quoted as being "stress free" in his new environment, which makes me wonder if he wasn't stress free in Baltimore. He's also been using his cutter a lot more, which has led to some success. Again, we aren't talking about Gonzalez being a world-beater of a pitcher here, but seeing that he's used a cutter and found some success with it is also a bit eyebrow-raising. It's a well-known fact that the Orioles "don't like" the cutter. Yet whenever pitchers tend to go elsewhere and use it, they find some degree of success with it. It's more than coincidence at this point.

The move to release Gonzalez wasn't even met positively by players. Many of them wouldn't even really address it when it happened. If the Orioles released a player over money just before the start of the season, they had to be prepared for the fact that it might have bitten them. This move clearly isn't going to bite them like seeing Jake Arrieta win a Cy Young Award might have, but it still leaves me scratching my head.

Andrew Stetka blogs about the Orioles for Eutaw Street Report. Follow him on Twitter: @AStetka. 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.