Ryan Romano: String of bad luck has skewed Givens' numbers

The 2016 MLB season has passed the one-third mark, but that doesn't mean every small-sample fluke has disappeared. Some players still haven't played up to their true talent level, while others have performed far above where they should have. For the Orioles, a few position players -- Adam Jones for the former, Hyun Soo Kim for the latter -- fit each of these molds. The best example of an unfortunate player, though, lies on the other side of the ball. In his sophomore season, Mychal Givens has been criminally unlucky.

On the surface, this doesn't seem to be the case. For one thing, Givens hasn't allowed many runs this year -- his 2.05 ERA across 26.1 innings would make him a relief ace on most teams. Plus, he's actually overperformed his FIP of 2.86, indicating he's had some good luck to this point. And indeed, Givens has managed to squeeze his way out of a few jams in 2016, which may not continue into the summer. But he's gotten into those jams in the first place because of bad luck. To this point, Givens has allowed far more baserunners, on both hits and walks, than his peripherals would indicate.

We'll begin with the free passes. Last season, Givens' control made him a force: He walked only 5.1 percent of the batters he faced over 30.0 innings. After struggling to throw strikes when he transitioned to the mound in 2013, he seemed to have discovered how to target the plate. This year, however, his walk rate has more than doubled, to 10.5 percent. League wide, walks have made up 8.3 percent of plate appearances in 2016, so this is a dangerously high clip.

It's not one that Givens deserves, though. His strike rate of 65.9 percent is healthily above the 63.7 percent major-league mark, so he hasn't been wild by any means. And what's more, he should probably have even more strikes than that. Per FanGraphs, Givens has thrown the ball in the strike zone 52.8 percent of the time, and hitters have swung at 29.0 percent of his pitches outside the strike zone. Combine those two figures, and you get an "expected" strike rate of 66.5 percent. Because of the rapid expansion of the strike zone, most pitchers will net more strikes than their expected strike rate would suggest. Givens hasn't, despite pitching to a pair of top-notch framers in Matt Wieters and Caleb Joseph. This probably won't stick around; if Givens can keep throwing strikes and pounding the zone, he'll increase his strike rate and decrease his walk rate.

But walks haven't hurt Givens nearly as much as hits have. Adversaries have pummelled him for a .381 batting average on balls in play, which ranks ninth among 298 hurlers with at least 20 innings. That's far above where he was last year, when only 26.8 percent of the balls in play against him went for hits. Despite punching out an ungodly amount of hitters, Givens has a .257 batting average overall, a pretty mediocre mark.

And this, too, is unjustified. Of the balls in play against Givens this season, FanGraphs has classified 24.6 percent as "Soft" and 20.0 percent as "Hard." Each of those sets Givens apart -- in the aforementioned 298-man sample, the former is the 26th-highest, and the latter is the 15th-lowest. Givens has limited solid contact exceptionally well this season, yet he hasn't prevented hits from falling in. While the Orioles' mediocre defense has caused some of this, dumb luck should take most of the blame. (Who can forget this unfathomably stupid single?) Givens remains a fly ball pitcher -- in 2016 hitters have put the ball on the ground just 29.2 percent of the time against him -- who, as such, will probably run a low BABIP in the long term. Once balls in play off Givens start to head toward gloves, he'll see his opponent batting average plummet, along with his walks.

Givens has still excelled this season, and even if his misfortune doesn't go away, he should continue to prosper. Nevertheless, when evaluating Givens' true talent level, we must take into account the poor circumstances he's encountered to this point. If the high-walk, high-average version of Givens can allow two runs per nine innings, imagine how great he could become when the free passes and bloops vanish.

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.