Ryan Romano: Wade Miley isn't this bad, but he has struggled

Across April, May, June and July, not a single left-handed pitcher started for the Orioles. The club made sure that would change in August by swinging for the Mariners' Wade Miley, a veteran southpaw with a history of reliability and durability. Yet while Miley has taken the hill every fifth day for the O's, he hasn't pitched very well - opponents have roughed him up for a 7.55 ERA in nine starts and only 39 1/3 innings. As the de facto replacement for Wei-Yin Chen, Miley needs to perform better than this. Will he?

In short, yes. No major league-caliber pitcher - Braves and Twins excluded - has a true-talent ERA that begins with a seven. Miley's peripheral statistics reveal this: He's worked a far more respectable 4.64 FIP and 3.94 xFIP during his time in Baltimore. His strikeout and walk rates, at 19.2 and 7.7 percent, respectively, line up pretty closely with the major league averages for starting pitchers. He's also kept the ball out of the air; a 50.9 percent groundball rate will usually help a hurler avoid homers and get him out of some jams. Sooner or later, Miley will stop permitting this many runs to come around.

Plus, Miley has actually excelled in one regard as an Oriole. Through those nine starts this season, he's tricked hitters into laying off pitches in the strike zone, tallying a 57.8 percent Z-Swing rate. That clip - one of the lowest of his career over a span this long - ensures he'll accrue a ton of called strikes. He also hasn't lost any ground in terms of swinging strikes, as his 8.2 percent whiff rate is pretty close to his lifetime mark of 8.6 percent. When the misfortune plaguing Miley dissipates, he may start to punch out a lot more hitters. All in all, we should have some optimism regarding this lefty.

That isn't to say, however, that Miley's current hardship has no cause. For one, he's had some trouble with longballs, grounders notwithstanding - six of the 182 batters he's faced have knocked the ball out of the park. His sky-high BABIP of .387 has stung even more, and his peripherals suggest he's legitimately gotten worse in that regard: Opponents have a 26.6 percent line drive rate and 33.8 percent hard contact rate off him. Miley hasn't earned an ERA above seven, but he has regressed since coming to Charm City.

What should Miley change to remedy this? He should start by returning to the hard pitch mix he deployed in Seattle. While on the Mariners, Miley threw his four-seam fastball 33.5 percent of the time and his sinker 19.5 percent of the time. With the Orioles, he's decreased the former to 26.3 percent and upped the latter to 22.5 percent. Miley's sinker has had one critical flaw: It hasn't really sunk. Take a look for yourself - the pitch has leaked all over the zone, darting up and down, in and out. Thanks to that ugly command, he's allowed a .364 average and .659 slugging percentage on plate appearances ending with a sinker. Going back to his four-seam fastball, which he at least hasn't grooved nearly as often, could solve a lot of his problems.

Switching things up with his slider would make a big difference as well. He's spiked his usage of the breaking ball from 15.4 percent in Seattle to 23.4 percent in Baltimore, but those extra sliders haven't helped his cause: Batters have crushed them for a .349 average and .558 slugging percentage. He's put the pitch in the same place - down and in versus righties, low and away versus lefties - with the Orioles that he did with the Mariners. His adversaries seem to have pounced on that predictability, which means he needs an adjustment to get the advantage back.

Whatever Miley does, he better do it quickly. The durability that he supposedly brought to the Orioles hasn't held up - after pitching just four frames on Sunday, he left his start with back spasms, although he said on Monday that he felt much better. With Kevin Gausman, Chris Tillman, Dylan Bundy and even Ubaldo Jimenez pitching well as of late, the Orioles could have four decent (at worst) starting pitchers heading into the playoffs. They might not need Miley anymore regardless of his health, so if he wants to stick around, he has to turn things around.

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.