Matthew Taylor: This year's O's squad reminiscent of 1996 team

The Orioles are marking the 20th anniversary of the team's first wild card entry into the playoffs by looking very much the part of that 1996 team in terms of their power at the plate as well as the struggles of their starting rotation. Two decades after winning in, spite of their pitching and slugging their way into the postseason, the Orioles are looking to repeat that effort this year. The good news is they're better positioned to do so now than they were back then.

The Orioles' current 4.24 team ERA through 629 innings would rank 39th in team history in relation to the previous 62 complete seasons of pitching in Baltimore. Of the 24 seasons when the O's totaled a worse team ERA than their current mark, four ended with winning records, and only one of those teams made the postseason. It was, you guessed it, in 1996.

The 1996 O's rotation included Mike Mussina, David Wells, and Scott Erickson. It would seem, based on names alone, that there's no comparison to be made between then and now. However, when examining that period in baseball history through the lens of ERA+, Mussina was the only starter to provide an above-average performance in 1996, and it wasn't by much. Compared to his overall career numbers, it was a down year for the Moose.

Mussina's 19 wins and fifth-place finish in Cy Young voting in 1996 disguised one of the worst overall efforts of his career. He walked more batters per nine innings than any other season he pitched, allowed the most hits per nine innings of all but two of his seasons on the mound, and posted a 4.81 ERA that was his second-highest ERA. Granted, Mussina's struggles that year aren't glaring given his consistent excellence. The point is that even the staff ace didn't pitch up to his career standard.

Wells likewise struggled relative to his overall numbers. Meanwhile, the back end of the 1996 rotation included a combined 23 starts from Kent Merker and Jimmy Haynes. Among those 23 starts were nine outings that featured six or more earned runs allowed in five or fewer innings of work, and it was often fewer.

Merker was the starter when the O's lost 26-7 to the Texas Rangers on April 19. He allowed eight earned runs in 4 1/3 innings of work, which was half as many as the bullpen surrendered in a record-setting eighth inning. Those 16 runs are the most the O's have ever allowed in a single inning. Altogether, the 1996 Orioles allowed opponents to score 10 or more runs on 24 different occasions.

The 1996 season ranks among the most intriguing in recent team history. Brady Anderson unexpectedly slugged a then team-record 50 home runs, and the team reached the playoffs for the first time since 1983 after falling well short of expectations in the season's first half. The O's had a losing record and were a dozen games behind the first-place New York Yankees on July 28, three days prior to the trade deadline. Rumored to be sellers, the Orioles instead stood pat.

You can read more about that year's trade deadline in this 2013 ESPN story that ranks the non-deals as the team's best-ever trade deadline. The Orioles went 37-22 after slipping below .500 on July 28 and used the second-best finish in all of baseball to earn the AL wild card.

Twenty years later the Orioles are much better positioned during the season's first half. The team is 11 games over .500 and in first place after 71 games. The 1996 team was 39-32 and four games back of first place at the same point in the season. The O's would need to go 47-44 the rest of the way to match the 1996 team's 88 wins. That 47-44 mark is the same record the '96 team had after a disappointing first 91 games. Here's to another big finish for the Orioles, starting pitching be darned.

Matthew Taylor blogs about the Orioles at Roar from 34. Follow him on Twitter: @RoarFrom34. His ruminations about the Birds appear as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our site. 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.