Don’t tell Chris Tillman that the Baltimore Orioles starting pitching isn’t a strength for the club. He’s posted an 8-1 record and a 3.01 ERA through 13 starts this season.
There isn’t any debate who the number one starter on the Orioles has been this season. It’s Chris Tillman. His 3.01 ERA in 2016 is half a run lower than runner-up Kevin Gausman‘s 3.52, and more than half of the 7.00 ERA that Yovani Gallardo put up before landing on the disabled list after four starts.
Tillman, 28, hasn’t lost since April 14 in Texas when he allowed six runs in 5.1 innings. Since then he has gone 7-0 in ten starts, including a win over the Royals on Wednesday night that included 7.1 scoreless innings. Since his last loss, Tillman has put up a 2.63 earned run average which includes seven outings of allowing two or fewer runs, three of which have been shutouts.
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Aside from his June 3 outing against New York, Tillman has pitched at least six full innings every time out in that span. Against New York the right-hander went 5.2 innings and gave up five earned.
Last season Tillman went 11-11 with a 4.99 ERA. After Wednesday’s game, Baltimore manager Buck Showalter said, “You can make a heck of a living going 11-11 in the big leagues, but Chris wants to be better than that because he knows he’s capable of it and wants to bring what the club needs.”
2012 has arguably been Tillman’s best season to date, after he went 9-3 with a 2.93 ERA over 86 innings (15 starts). Even with fewer innings pitched this season, Tillman has surpassed his strikeout numbers from that season by nine, in eight fewer innings.
One reason for his success looks to be less reliance on his fastball, which he has been using 7.5 percent less than a season ago, from 65% down to 57.5%, while also throwing it just a touch faster at 91.8 miles per hour, up three-tenths from last season.
So what is taking over the missing 7.5 percent of his pitches? Predominantly, the cutter. Up to 13.6 percent usage from 7.5 percent in 2015, and according to BrooksBaseball, “Has heavy sink, extreme cut action and generates a high number of swings and misses compared to other pitcher’s cutters.”
The Baltimore rotation as a whole is 18-19 and holds an ERA of 4.66, which ranks 20th in baseball and 9th in the American League. Boston holds the same ERA, so effectively the two teams are tied for the worst ERA in the AL East.
To counter the poor performance of the rotation, the Orioles have the best bullpen ERA in baseball at 2.65 and have the second-best offense in their division (8th in baseball) with 275 runs scored. Boston is at the top of the leaderboard here with 342 runs scored.
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With Chris Tillman leading the way and a slight 1.5 game cushion over the Red Sox, the Orioles may just have enough to stick around in the playoff hunt, which nobody could have predicted before the season started.