Ryan Romano: Why does Worley fall apart late in games?

Through the first four games of the Orioles' 2016 campaign, no starting pitcher had allowed more than two runs. Vance Worley looked to sustain that success when he took the hill on Sunday against the Rays, and at first, it seemed like he would. The first time through the order, Worley allowed only two baserunners -- both singles -- and racked up four strikeouts. Things began to fall apart during the second go-round, however, as the Tampa Bay hitters touched Worley up for a solo home run, a single and a walk, with just one strikeout. And when the lineup reset for the third time, it was a disaster: Worley faced five batters, four of whom reached base and two of whom scored. What had looked like a dominant start from the fifth man in the rotation quickly devolved into a 4 2/3-inning mess.

Baltimore did take home the 5-3 victory on Sunday, thanks to another shutdown performance from the bullpen, but Worley's collapse hurt the cause. And this wasn't a new phenomenon -- he's always fared worse later in his starts. Across the first six seasons of his career (2010-15), Worley held adversaries to a .269/.321/.381 line the first time he faced them. The resultant .703 OPS ranked 144th out of 271 pitchers with at least 200 innings. In their second opportunity, hitters improved their production to .279/.341/.426, giving him a .768 OPS that drops him to 200th in that sample. On the third trip through, the opponent slash line jumps further to .301/.353/.458; that .811 OPS slides in at 204th among the 271 hurlers. In his tenure as a starter, Worley has always seemed to melt down as the game has progressed. Can he beat this?

To some extent, all starting pitchers will deteriorate throughout the game. Sabermetrician Mitchel Lichtman has written extensively on the "times through the order penalty", or TTOP. His research has shown that hitters will invariably perform better the second and third times they see a starter in a game, regardless of the pitcher's quality. So Worley's overall mediocrity hasn't doomed him here. Lichtman has also found that when batters have deeper plate appearances early on, they'll hit even better -- in other words, an inefficient pitcher will have a worse TTOP. In this regard as well, Worley comes out ahead: Over his career, he's thrown an average of 3.72 pitches per plate appearance, which is below the major-league average of 3.82. Something else is behind Worley's woes.

Brooks Baseball can offer some answers. According to their pitch-by-pitch data, Worley's thrown more sliders later in games. The first time through the order, he's thrown the pitch 21 percent of the time; the second and third times, he's upped its usage to 24 percent. With a lifetime .308 batting average and .479 slugging percentage against, the slider has never worked well for Worley, so this would certainly harm his case. More importantly, opponents have offered more frequently after the lineup turns over: Their swing rate has increased from 42 to 43 to 46 percent during the first, second and third run-throughs, respectively. Worley has always feasted on called strikes -- they've accounted for 20 percent of his career pitches, whereas he's netted only six percent swinging strikes -- meaning when hitters become aggressive, he struggles.

Partially because of his pitch mix and partially because of deception loss, Worley seems to have hit a wall as a starter. This doesn't really explain why Worley hasn't sustained his ability to fool hitters -- if I could do that, I'd have a cushy job in the Orioles front office. Perhaps the problems have arisen from Worley's genes: Mike Oz of Big League Stew wrote back in 2012 that Worley sweats a lot, which could prevent him from gripping the ball and undermine him once his pitch count rises. As it stands right now, he should get at least one more start to figure out what's ailed him; once Kevin Gausman makes his return, Worley will likely be the odd man out. He's demonstrated that he can limit early damage, but if he can't hold it together over five or six frames, he won't have a future in the rotation.

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.