Ryan Romano: The Dylan Bundy dilemma

Because the 2016 Orioles rotation isn't the most dominant, it'll need an elite bullpen to back it up, and for the most part, the team's relievers have been up to the task. The four-headed monster of Zach Britton, Darren O'Day, Brad Brach and Mychal Givens has taken the league by storm. They've all blown the ball past opposing hitters, and except for Givens, each of them has an ERA under 2.00. This bullpen has a glaring weakness, though: top prospect Dylan Bundy.

In limited action this season, Bundy has walked 13.3 percent of the batters he's faced, while striking out a mere 3.3 percent. Along with a .320 batting average on ball in play (BABIP), that means Bundy has allowed 1.71 walks and hits per inning pitched. Thanks to some help from his teammates - strong throws from Caleb Joseph and Matt Wieters come to mind - and some good fortune on fly balls, Bundy has stranded 83.3 percent of his baserunners, giving him an ERA of 1.29. But that sparkling figure is more iron pyrite than gold; the more Bundy pitches, the more his ERA will inflate it seems.

The flaws go deeper than just results. On a peripheral level, Bundy simply hasn't looked like a major league-caliber player. For a pitcher to succeed at his principal task, he generally has to fool the opposition. There are three basic means of accomplishing this: making hitters swing at pitches outside the zone; making hitters lay off pitches inside the zone; or making hitters miss on their swings. In simpler terms, he can focus on getting chases, called strikes or swinging strikes. Bundy has done none of these. Among 89 qualified American League relievers, he has the ninth-lowest O-Swing rate (21.9 percent), the 13th-highest Z-Swing rate (73.3 percent) and the second-highest contact rate (91.4 percent). Bundy hasn't deceived hitters at all - they can tell when he'll throw a strike and when he'll throw a ball, and they haven't messed up when they offer at the pitch. Any other player with this profile would immediately head down to the farm to get himself in order.

Of course, the Orioles don't have that option with Bundy. To send him to Triple-A Norfolk, they'd have to run him through waivers first, in which event some rebuilding club with less to lose could snatch him up. And despite his current struggles, Bundy still oozes potential - he can run his fastball into the upper 90s, and a mid-80s changeup is nothing to turn up one's nose at. So for 2016 at least, Bundy will stay in the show, where he'll likely continue to flounder.

Buck Showalter can make the most out of a bad situation if he uses Bundy wisely. The skipper had a similar predicament last year with Jason Garcia -- a player who wasn't seeing great results but whose potential prevents the club from giving up on him. As the record proves, Showalter reserved Garcia for the worst situations, rarely letting him pitch in a close contest. Game Leverage Index (gmLI), a metric from FanGraphs.com, describes the situation when a pitcher enters a game: A number greater than 1.00 means it's a clutch spot, whereas a number less than 1.00 means not much is at stake. Of Garcia's 21 games in 2015, just three had a gmLI over 1.00. Garcia saw most of his action in garbage time, when the Orioles either led or trailed by a lot. Even if he wasn't up to speed, he wouldn't harm the team's chances either way.

For some reason, Showalter hasn't treated Bundy the same way in 2016. Three of his six opportunities on the mound - April 7 against the Twins, April 12 against the Red Sox and April 20 against the Blue Jays - have come with a gmLI above 1.00; for the year overall, his gmLI is 1.21, more than three times Garcia's 2015 mark of 0.39. For better or for worse, the Orioles will stick with Bundy until he starts to fool hitters.

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.