Zach Wilt: Looking at Brad Brach's improvements from last year

Brad Brach appeared in his eighth game of the season last night in the Orioles' walk-off victory against the Blue Jays and for the first time in his nine innings pitched, the O's reliever allowed an earned run. His ERA skyrocketed from 0.00 to 1.00 ERA in 2016. Seriously though, Brach looked solid again out of the 'pen, this time coming in to relieve Ubaldo Jimenez. He issued just one walk and even the RBI double off the bat of Edwin Encarnacion came on a well-placed, low 86 mph splitter.

In one of the league's strongest bullpens, it's easy to overlook Brach who should typically be used to hand things over to All-Star set-up man Darren O'Day in the eighth. Typically. Brach has actually only worked the seventh inning in three of his eight appearances this season. He's also recorded more than three outs on three separate occasions.

It's no secret that the Orioles' starting rotation leaves a bit to be desired. Entering last night's contest, O's starters ranked 24th in ERA (5.08) and 23rd in WHIP (1.40). That's why it's imperative that they have one of the best bullpens in the game. It extends past O'Day in the eighth and Zach Britton closing games out in the ninth. If the Orioles are going to contend this season, they're dependent on a guy like Brach. And so far, he looks to be up to the task.

2015 was an impressive season for Brach. He appeared in 62 games for the O's and recorded a career-low 2.72 ERA (3.47 FIP) with a 1.19 WHIP and 2.34 strikeout-to-walk ratio. So far this season, he has been even better. Entering last night, we saw Brach's strikeouts per nine innings jump from 10.10 in 2015 to 12.27 this year and watched him cut his walk total from 4.31 per nine last season to 3.68. Sure, he's been helped out by a crazy low batting average on balls in play (.077 heading into yesterday), but his 1.57 FIP suggests that his stuff is really this good.

So what's led to these results? He's fooling more batters at the plate this season. In 2015, opponents swung at 48.1 percent of Brach's pitches. They're swinging at 55.1 percent this season. His pitches outside of the strike zone are fooling batters at an increased rate as well, 45.1 percent of the time compared to just 34.9 percent a season ago.

PITCHf/x hasn't shown an uptick in velocity or even that he's throwing different pitches this season. Brach has averaged 93.9 mph on his four-seam fastball, 93 mph on his sinker, 85 mph on his split and 86.6 mph on his slider. Right around his career averages. However, he's seeing an increase in his horizontal movement on his pitches so far.

His sinker and splitter are moving more than they did in all of 2015, while the four-seamer appears to be around the same as it was for most of last season. We saw this trend begin for Brach in the second half of last year, so it's no surprise when you look at the splits and notice his ERA dip to 2.27 and opponents' average drop to .183 after the All-Star break.

All of these numbers, and I know there's a lot of them, are presented in an incredibly small sample size. We're talking about just nine innings here, folks. But they appear to follow the pattern that Brach's data began to show last season. The pattern of a top-tier relief pitcher in the league.

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.