Zach Wilt: Celebrating Dylan Bundy Day

It's only mid-May, but I am happy to report that Dylan Bundy Day is officially a thing for Baltimore Orioles fans. Congrats, guys, we've made it happen. Every five days (or so), myself and fellow Orioles enthusiasts celebrate a day in which our team's best starting pitcher takes the mound. We wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and well rested from a good night's sleep, we're eager to watch our team that evening, and we feel confident in our starting pitcher's ability to earn a victory for his ballclub. It truly is a wonderful thing.

In seemingly no time at all, Bundy has stepped into a major role for Buck Showalter's club. When No. 1 starter Chris Tillman began the year on the disabled list and Kevin Gausman struggled through April (six starts, 30 innings, 7.50 ERA), the Orioles could have been buried early in an always competitive division. Yet a new hero emerged and he wore No. 37.

Following an impressive bounceback season in 2016, Bundy is finally showing the baseball world what he can do when he's healthy and the restrictions are off. Through his first seven starts of the season, he leads Orioles qualified starters in innings pitched (45.2), ERA and FIP (2.17, 3.44), WAR (1.1) and wins (five). While I'm not much of a pitcher-win guy, I am a fan of the Orioles' results when Bundy is on the bump. His club is 6-1 in his seven starts this season. Bundy has delivered a quality start (at least six innings and three earned runs or less) in every outing this season.

Bundy isn't a huge strikeout pitcher, he averages 5.52 per nine, and his average fastball velocity is only 91.8 according to PITCHf/x data. So where are these results coming from? How has he stepped into this role and performed at such a high level? What kind of wizardry is he using out there on the mound to get these results?

The data would suggest that Bundy has done an excellent job of fooling hitters in 2017. Among Orioles starters with at least 10 innings pitched this season, Bundy leads the team in generating soft contact from the opposition, which he does 25 percent of the time. He also has the fewest balls hit hard against him (28.7 percent). Even though he allows more fly balls than every other Orioles starter (42.5 percent), he allows the fewest percentage of home runs on that contact (5.3 HR/FB) because he's tricking hitters. It's pretty remarkable.

Scouts and the data agree that Bundy's fastball has a good "rising" action, which is what helps to produce those balls in the air that are softly hit. It's his slider though that has truly done wonders for him this season. When he needs a ground ball, that's the pitch he's able to turn to as it is often put on the ground by opposing hitters. Despite it only being used 6.30 percent of the time, Bundy's slider is the perfect weapon and he goes to it with two strikes more than he does in any other count. Bundy's sliders become strikes 37.58 percent of the time and 24.85 percent are whiffed at, higher percentages than any of his four other pitchers. Even though they know it's coming, opposing batters have a hard time laying off of it, swinging 55.15 percent of the time despite only hitting .194 on that pitch.

Pitching is about more than just good stuff though and you have to give Bundy and his catcher, who has been primarily Welington Castillo, credit for a solid game plan against his opponents. He's never going to overpower a lineup, produce a ton of swings and misses, or dazzle them with four amazing pitches. What he is able to do is take advantage of some great tools and allow his defense behind him to produce the results on some weak contact.

There's a good reason that we're making Dylan Bundy Day a holiday in Charm City. Unfortunately, the Baseball Gods robbed us of our celebratory evening last night, but fear not, in a few short hours we will again be celebrating that wonderful day as Bundy takes the mound against the Royals in Kansas City.

Zach Wilt blogs about the Orioles at Baltimore Sports Report. Follow him on Twitter: @zach_wilt. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. 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.