Taking a shot at projecting the pitching staff

The Orioles will begin the season with 15 pitchers on their 28-man roster. The rosters must decrease to 26 players and 13 pitchers beginning on Monday, May 2. But here is a guess at how that group of 15 could look starting Friday at Tropicana Field.

My group of pitchers includes 15 of the 21 hurlers that are currently on the club’s 40-man roster, so no 40-man roster moves would be needed to start the year with this group.

This is just a guess and how I might set it up, and as we know, putting me in charge is not a good idea. But on a blog, I can run things!

Lefty John Means gets the opening day start Friday and we already knew that. Last year at Boston in the opener, he led the Orioles to their first opening day shutout since 2005. He gave up just one hit over seven innings, throwing 97 pitches in a 3-0 win.

That was the Orioles’ first shutout in an opener since they beat Oakland 4-0 as Rodrigo López threw six scoreless innings. It was the sixth opening day shutout in club history.

Means that day became the first pitcher in Orioles history to work at least seven innings while allowing one or no hits and no runs in a start at Fenway Park. Yes, that is and was good.

Right-hander Jordan Lyles starts behind Means, with the club hoping he continues his strong finish to the 2021 season and eats innings in the manner he did for the Texas Rangers last summer.

After that, much speculation has been that Dean Kremer will start in the third slot. I would go with Tyler Wells, who pitches today at spring training and would be on regular rest Sunday against Tampa Bay. Lefty Keegan Akin could follow him in a tandem pitching scenario.

Then I would have lefty Bruce Zimmermann getting the home opener in Game 4, with Kremer to follow in relief. And then Michael Baumann, coming off the strong outing Sunday, starts the fifth game with Zac Lowther following in the piggyback.

That is eight pitchers with five starts and three long relief tandem spots.

In the bullpen, with Tanner Scott traded, the O’s would have just Paul Fry and Cionel Pérez from the left side, in addition to Lowther and Akin pitching in the tandems. From the right side, they would have Jorge López, likely to get some early save chances, along with Dillon Tate, Bryan Baker, Félix Bautista and Joey Krehbiel.

Baker has just one inning under his belt in the majors and it was a scoreless inning for Toronto last Sept. 5 versus Oakland. In November, the Orioles claimed him on waivers. For the Jays’ Triple-A club last year, he had stellar numbers, going 6-1 with a 1.31 ERA and 11 saves. He pitched 41 1/3 innings with a WHIP of 0.847.

Bautista is the hard-throwing righty that hit 100 mph often for the Orioles when he pitched on three levels of the Baltimore farm last season. He started with high Single-A Aberdeen, moved to Double-A Bowie and then finished at Triple-A Norfolk. His command and control still comes up short at times, and he walked five in 3 2/3 innings this spring. On the farm last season, Bautista was 1-6 with a 1.54 ERA and walked 30 while fanning 77 over 46 2/3 innings.

Krehbiel is yet another pitcher the Orioles claimed off waivers from Tampa Bay and that happened last Sept. 21. After that, he allowed four runs in 7 1/3 innings for the Orioles and has a 3.18 ERA in 11 1/3 career big league innings. He used his slider a lot and his fastball averaged 96 mph in the bigs last summer.

O’s executive vice president Mike Elias talked about his young pitching staff at camp on Monday. It’s time for some of them to take steps forward, hopefully in some cases, big steps forward. Grayson Rodriguez, DL Hall, Kyle Bradish and others are knocking on the door.

“Obviously, our pitching staff, it’s going to be a struggle sometimes to cover innings, and it’s something that we’re certainly aware of and worrying about and talking about, but there’s a lot of opportunity here for the players that are here and that are coming,” said Elias. “I also think we have a really good chance of getting some big graduations in that department as well. We’re looking forward to that. But we’re counting on Means and Lyles, once they get built up to hopefully remain healthy and be strong, and we’re still really counting on this group - Zimmermann, Lowther, Kremer, Baumann, Keegan Akin, the guys that are on the 40-man that we’ve been pitching the last couple of years.

“Some of those guys need to step up. That’s why we’re struggling right now is because we haven’t gotten a real cemented breakout from one of those guys, and we still have high hopes for them and want some of those guys to click this year, because it’s going to be tough if they don’t and we’re going to have to move on to other people.”

Triple-A Norfolk begins a new season tonight at home versus Charlotte with lefty Kevin Smith getting the start. Yesterday, right here, we posted the break camp rosters for the other three full-season O’s farm clubs.