Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Team Preview: Baltimore Orioles
Baseball is almost here! With an eventful offseason in the books and spring training underway, it’s time to preview all 30 teams in Major League Baseball. With the help of RotoGrinders PlateIQ Premium, DFS ownership trends from Chris Gimino, and our resident Premium MLB guru Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood), we take a look at some information that is definitely interesting and possibly helpful for the upcoming 2019 MLB season.
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Baltimore Orioles Preseason Overview
— Vegas Win Total O/U: 59.5
— World Series Odds: 2000/1
— Key Additions: Nathan Karns
— Lineup Update 3/20/2019: DJ Stewart was optioned to Triple A.
Other Noteworthy Players for DFS: Joey Rickard, Alcides Escobar, Austin Wynns, Drew Jackson
— Outlook: The Westgate Superbook has the Orioles win total pegged under 60 at the time of this writing. Vegas expects them to be an unmitigated disaster, and it’s painfully easy to see why. PlateIQ reveals plate discipline under 42 for all but one hitter, and a whopping six hitters with a strikeout rate over 24%. This looks is a team that could really struggle to get on base.
The good news is that they do have a small group of power bats with enough juice to capitalize on the AL East parks. Mark Trumbo ranked 60/332 qualifiers in barrel % last season, while Trey Mancini managed a rank of 32nd in that same department. Pairing those two up with the stolen base upside of Jonathan Villar may yield considerable upside on the cheap. At the end of the day, it’s still a team to bet against more often than not.
The Orioles pitching staff is in for another rough season, led by the exploitable Dylan Bundy and Alex Cobb. David Hess is also vulnerable, as he throws a ton of strikes and doesn’t miss bats. It’s a combination that yielded a 5.08 SIERA and a 16% strikeout rate last season. The Orioles did sign Nathan Karns in February, who was last seen in 2017 with the ability to get strikeouts. Elbow inflammation kept him out for all of 2018, and we’ll see if he’s still able to generate anything close to the 12.5% swinging strike rate he had before he went down. Overall, the starters are sub-optimal and that should benefit us in DFS.
— DFS Ownership Trends: The Orioles were just the 21st most popular team in 2018, and yet Camden Yards was the 10th most popular park. We stacked against Orioles pitching in Baltimore last year, and we’ll do it again this year. The most popular of the starters was David Hess, who was the 33rd most targeted pitcher overall.
Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Notes
— After signing extremely late into last offseason, it was no shock when Alex Cobb ’s career with the Orioles got off to a tenuous start in 2018. “Tenuous” might be underselling just how bad Cobb’s first half was, though; his 6.41 ERA ranked dead last of the 92 pitchers that reached the 90-inning threshold before the break. He gave up 5 or more earned runs on eight different occasions. Call it Cobb settling in to his new environs or call it a small sample, but the 2.56 mark he posted in the second half – just between Carlos Carrasco and German Marquez, for context – suggests that Cobb still may hold some intrigue on smaller (okay, much smaller) slates.
— Quietly, Jonathan Villar is tied with Dee Gordon for third-most stolen bases in MLB since 2016 (120). According to Statcast, Villar’s not an elite speedster: his 27.7 feet per second sprint speed ties him for 29th at his own position. But steals aren’t all about raw speed, and Villar’s 88.0% success rate last season says he can still get the job done on the base-paths.