Dillon Atkinson: Is it too early to hit panic button on Gallardo?

If you can recall, less than two months ago, the Orioles and right-handed pitcher Yovani Gallardo agreed upon a restructured two-year, $22 million contract with a third year option. The deal was restructured from its original value of a three-year, $35 million contract with a fourth year option due to concern with Gallardo's shoulder in his physical examination.

Could the Orioles' concern in his shoulder be appearing in his first two regular season outings of 2016? His pitching line looked decent against the Twins on the second game of the season, allowing one earned run over five innings. However, it seemed like he got away with below average stuff and missing his targets up in the zone. Against the Red Sox in Fenway Park on Monday afternoon, he wasn't as fortunate, giving up five runs over five innings.

Heading into the season, the right-hander's strikeout-to-walk rate was already alarming as is, dropping from 3.51 in 2011 to 1.78 in 2015, and so far in 10 innings in 2016, it has dropped to 1.75. But even putting that to the side, he has two other issues that are of concern.

First, BrooksBaseball.net shows that Gallardo has lost velocity on his pitches to start the season, including an average fastball velocity of 88.21 mph, down from 91.8 mph in April of 2015. The rest of his arsenal suffered decreases in velocity as well from last April: his sinker dropped from 91.72 to 88.36 mph, his changeup from 86.61 to 81.93 mph, his slider from 88.6 to 84.6 mph and his curveball from 80.33 to 75.99 mph.

Another area of concern is the amount of pitches Gallardo is leaving up in the zone, which may not be the best idea pitching the majority of his games in hitter's parks such as Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium and Rogers Centre. FanGraphs.com's heatmaps show the high amount of pitches he has thrown so far this season that have been in the middle or up in the zone, which are dangerous places to live as a pitcher. The heatmaps show that in 2015 he was able to keep the ball much lower in the zone, which helped him have success with the Rangers.

Now, what is interesting is that although Gallardo has seen a drastic decrease in his velocity and he's missing dangerously up in the zone, hard contact is not being generated from opposing hitters. Per FanGraphs, despite giving up five earned runs over five innings to the Red Sox on Monday, opposing hitters only had a 5.3 line-drive percentage off him, with only 10.5 percent of the contact being considered hard contact. You could draw a conclusion that Gallardo was a bit unlucky in his outing at Fenway on Monday. In his Orioles' debut against the Twins, he allowed one earned run over five innings, generating a 16.7 line-drive percentage, but only a 7.7 hard-contact percentage.

Going forward throughout the season, it'll be interesting to see if Gallardo continues to generate soft contact. Whether he does or doesn't, we'll have to make sure to keep an eye on his pitch location and velocity, and how those factors are affecting his success in Baltimore. Maybe he's just having a slow start after signing late, maybe he's just an aging pitcher, or maybe - just maybe - this could have something to do with the shoulder the Orioles were concerned about in his physical.

Dillon Atkinson blogs about the Orioles for Orioles Uncensored. Follow him on Twitter: @DAtkinsonOU. 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.