Orioles rotation, outfield and OPS

Albert Suárez made another start with the Orioles last night. Cole Irvin closes out the Rays series on Sunday and is unlikely to do more bouncing between rotation and bullpen.

A minimum of five starters are needed on a major league staff. The Orioles want to expand it to six but injuries have created an unsettled situation.

Dean Kremer’s right triceps injury is improving but he might go on a brief rehab assignment. John Means and Tyler Wells are undergoing elbow surgeries within the next few days and won’t pitch again in 2024, crushing blows for them and the team.

A six-man rotation? The Orioles have fingers crossed that they can keep their quintet from crumbling.

A knee-jerk response to torn elbow ligaments is to burn up the phone lines and make a trade. The Orioles don’t have immediate plans to do it, though executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias said he’s “in contact” with other teams.

Too many of them are in buyer mode or unsure of their status with three wild cards in baseball’s expanded playoffs. It’s the first day of June and the trade deadline is July 30. Who’s throwing in the towel this early?

Yes, White Sox, we see you in the back.

Kremer’s eventual return obviously factors into Elias’ planning. The right-hander slots nicely with Irvin, Corbin Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez and Kyle Bradish. Suárez can be the sixth if that’s how the Orioles want to play it, but I’ll say again that he’s also valuable as a consumer of innings in the bullpen.

They know it too.

Elias likes how the rotation stacks up with the rest of the division.

“It sure looks pretty solid to me,” he said. “I haven’t recently checked where our starter ERA or any of that stuff ranks, but Corbin Burnes is in the Cy Young hunt, we’ve seen continued steps forward from Grayson and Bradish despite Bradish’s injury, and Kremer and Irvin are doing well, too. So that’s five guys that are above-average starters. That’s a great setup.

“We’re focused on keeping those guys healthy. We’ve got guys like Suárez that know how to step in and compete, and he’s been incredible. We’ve got some good arms, highly ranked prospects that are in Triple-A and they’re performing in Triple-A. So overall I think it’s a very positive situation for us. But as we just saw, you’ve always got to be paranoid about injuries when you’re talking about pitching, and what I just described unfortunately could change really quickly if we get some bad luck.

“We’ll keep scouring, we’ll keep trying to develop the guys we have in-house, but this is a group that, if they stay healthy, this is a group that’s capable of what we need them to do.”

Cade Povich is a pitcher who stands on deck despite last night’s dud, when he allowed six runs in three innings The selection of his contract from Triple-A Norfolk is more “when” than “if.”

The young left-hander could get a crack at the sixth rotation spot if he isn’t here sooner. Kremer is eligible to be reinstated on Wednesday but might go on a short rehab assignment.

Look around baseball and you’ll find teams crammed into the same boat riding in choppy waters. The number of pitching injuries is nauseating. What can be done about it?

Are the Orioles supposed to limit innings and reduce pitch counts while trying to make the playoffs again and win a championship?

The monitoring of both is already done because “it feels like the right thing to do,” Elias said.

“It’s sort of a common sense thing to manage innings and manage pitch counts and manage rest, and if we do a six-man, put in an extra day of rest,” he said.  “But there’s not really a science behind this. You see pitchers get hurt that are handled very, very, very carefully by organizations and they still get hurt. We will continue to do that.

“What I’m saying is it’s to this point probably more art than science and we’re not really sure of the impact that it has, but we’re going to kind of just bring our brains to each case and what we know the guy’s dealing with physically. If he’s got some soreness or something his legs or he just threw 130 pitches or whatever. And we’re just going to try to navigate things as sensibly as we can. But there is not a proven playbook for managing the workloads of any pitchers at any age and improve their odds of avoiding injury, unfortunately.”

* I’ve written this before, but the subject came up again yesterday. Elias isn’t rushing out to trade for or sign an outfielder.

Austin Hays was out of the lineup again last night, but he pinch-hit for Cedric Mullins and delivered a game-tying single. Anthony Santander singled twice. Mullins lined to center field and flied to right before his removal.

Hays is batting .173 with a .445 OPS, Santander .211 with a .712 OPS, and Mullins .185 with a .557 OPS.

Is Elias concerned about these numbers?

“Probably not as concerned as people watching are because we believe in those guys, we’ve seen what they’ve done over the years, we know what their skill level is, we know what baseball’s like, and they’re going to do better than this. And it’s coming,” Elias said.

“That said, we have other players and if somebody’s struggling, if somebody’s working on things behind the scenes, making changes, you may see our lineups evolve on a day-to-day basis, but those guys got us here and we’re going to keep investing in them, and they’re going to be big parts of wherever we go this season.

“I’m hopeful that we’re going to see those numbers creep up soon and I think we’ve seen some encouraging swings from some of those guys lately. Some of the balls have fallen, some of them haven’t, but there’s been some positive trends already.”

* Last night’s game began with the Orioles fifth in the majors in OPS at .740, which put them second in the American League behind the Yankees’ .769.

The club record for highest OPS in a season is .822 in 1996, when the Orioles made the playoffs as the wild card and lost to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. Also when the world was introduced to 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier.

That team hit 257 home runs to break the major league record of 240 held by the 1961 Yankees. It was stocked with veterans like Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, Bobby Bonilla, Rafael Palmeiro, Roberto Alomar, B.J. Surhoff, Chris Hoiles or Mike Devereaux. Pete Incaviglia and Todd Zeile arrived in a late-August trade with the Phillies.

The 2024 Orioles are a more youthful group.

Their OPS ranking is the highest in club history since the 2013 Orioles finished fourth at .744. They were fifth in 1996.

According to STATS, the Orioles have never ranked first in OPS. They finished second in 1969 at .756 and in 1971 at .745. They were third in 1966 (.733), 1983 (.761), 1985 (.765) and 1992 (.738). Besides 2013, they also finished fourth in 1982 at .760.

They’ve placed fifth in fifth seasons, including 1968, 1970, 1973 and 1979.

There will be a quiz later.