Baltimore Orioles Looking at Seattle Mariners’ Wade Miley

The Baltimore Orioles have slipped to a half-game out in the AL East and are rumored to be looking at Wade Miley of the Seattle Mariners to add to their starting rotation.

Wade Miley had one of his best starts of the season on Saturday afternoon at Wrigley Field and the timing couldn’t have been better. He held the Chicago Cubs hitless for six innings to start the game. He lost the no-hitter in the seventh, but got through the inning allowing just one hit and one run. He struck out a season-high nine batters.

As the trade deadline looms, there are plenty of teams looking for rotation help. With the Seattle Mariners likely holding on to young pitchers Taijuan Walker and James Paxton, Miley is a pitcher who could be on the move. Jon Heyman, at Today’s Knuckleball, reported that the Baltimore Orioles are one team that has been talking to the Mariners about Miley.

The Orioles desperately need rotation help. They were recently passed by the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL East and the Red Sox are in their rear-view mirror. The Orioles starting rotation is 13^th in the AL in ERA (4.98) and 14^th in innings pitched. Chris Tillman is their only starting pitcher with more than 10 starts who has an ERA under 4.00 and the only starter on the team with more than five wins.

Ubaldo Jimenez (7.06 ERA) has been a disaster. Yovani Gallardo (5.37 ERA) struggles to get through five innings. Mike Wright (5.97 ERA) has been even worse than Gallardo. The only starter other than Tillman who has been respectable is Kevin Gausman, who has a 4.18 ERA. Dylan Bundy was recently inserted into the rotation. In three starts, he’s allowed seven earned runs in 14 innings and has yet to make it through six innings.

Wade Miley hasn’t been great this year, but he’s projected to be an improvement over Jimenez, Gallardo and Wright, if only a slight improvement. Here are the rest-of-season projections from Fangraphs for these four pitchers:

4.42 ERA (4.28 FIP), 1.38 WHIP, 6.8 K/9, 2.8 BB/9—Wade Miley

4.42 ERA (4.34 FIP), 1,42 WHIP, 8.1 K/9, 4.1 BB/9—Ubaldo Jimenez

4.62 ERA (4.67 FIP), 1.47 WHIP, 6.1 K/9, 3.6 BB/9—Yovani Gallardo

4.96 ERA (5.01 FIP), 1.43 WHIP, 6.2 K/9, 3.0 BB/9—Mike Wright

Considering that he currently has an ERA over 7.00, that projection looks optimistic for Ubaldo Jimenez. Also, Miley’s projection is based on the assumption he’ll be pitching for the Mariners, with half of his games at Safeco Field. His projection will likely get worse if he is traded to the Orioles and Camden Yards, a more hitter-friendly park.

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The Mariners are 7.5 games out of first in the AL West, but just four games out of the second Wild Card spot. The have the longest active postseason drought in baseball (since 2001), so their fans likely think they should be buyers, not sellers. Their rotation is shaky as is, with Felix Hernandez being decidedly un-King-like and Hisashi Iwakuma currently sporting the highest ERA of his career. Taijuan Walker is on the DL and James Paxton always seems a pitch or two away from the DL. Wade LeBlanc currently rounds out their rotation. Given all this, isn’t it strange to think the Mariners would be trading a starting pitcher?

Yes, it would be an odd move for the Mariners to trade Miley, considering the state of their own rotation and their proximity to a Wild Card spot, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad move. Taijuan Walker is set to begin a rehab assignment on Monday. He will bump someone out of the rotation when he returns. Hernandez, Iwakuma and Paxton are likely to stay in the rotation, so it will come down to Miley or LeBlanc when Walker is healthy. Will it make all that much difference which of those two lefties the Mariners keep? Is there that big a difference between Miley and LeBlanc? I don’t think so. If they can get something remotely beneficial in return for Miley, they should make the deal.

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It really comes down to whether the two teams can agree on a value for Miley. The Orioles are in the thick of a pennant race, while the Mariners are flirting with contention from a few feet off the dance floor. The Orioles haven’t had a left-handed pitcher start a single game for them this year, which could drive the price up a bit, but they won’t want to pay too much for a pitcher who doesn’t look appreciably better than what they currently have.