Grayson Rodriguez went on the IL with a Lat strain on August 7th. At the time it was a big let down because he was having such a good season with 13 wins in 20 starts but with almost 2 months before the playoffs it felt like a foregone conclusion that he would be back in time to be part of the playoff rotation even if they had to take his rehab really slow. However as time passed and he still wasn’t facing live batters there began to be doubt that he would make it back and today it was announced that Rodriguez is being shut down for the rest of the season.
This is a huge blow to the Orioles hopes of a deep postseason run. When I wrote my blog about how this Orioles team had a better chance of going deep in the playoffs than last years a big part of that was that their 3 best pitchers of Burnes Eflin and Rodriguez was a lot deeper than last year’s Orioles team top 3 of of Bradish, rookie Rodriguez and Kremer. Now that they are without Rodriguez, one of Dean Kremer or Albert Suarez will creep into the top 3 of the rotation.
I like both Kremer and Suarez, they’ve both stepped up and played well this year when the team needed them but when this season started neither of them were supposed to be integral parts of the playoff rotation. Now with the playoffs just days away should the wild card series go to a game 3 one of those 2 guys will be starting that game.
Deciding which of those 2 should start in what would be a season on the line playoff game could end up being the single most important decision for O’s leadership of the year.
Dean Kremer
ERA: 4.10 | xERA: 4.49 | WHIP: 1.242 | FIP: 4.32 | xFIP: 4.34 | K/9: 8.5 | BUS: 4 | HQS: 8
Albert Suarez
ERA: 3.74 | xERA: 4.17 | WHIP: 1.316 | FIP: 4.12 | xFIP: 4.51 | K/9: 7.3 | BUS: 4 | HQS: 5
You’ll notice on the statline I included there are some acronyms that don’t appear on any baseball stats website. These are not advanced stats, they are quite the opposite, they are primitive stats that I made up. BUS stands for Blow Up Starts where the pitcher pitches less than 5 innings and gives up more 4 or more runs, the idea is that these are the kinds of starts that basically lose the game for your team and these are the kinds of starts that you absolutely cannot afford for a pitcher to have in a season deciding game.
HQS stands for High Quality Starts where the pitcher either pitches 6 innings with 1 ER or fewer or 7 innings with 2 ER or fewer. These are the kinds of starts that keep the team in the game even if the offense is getting absolutely dominated. These kinds of starts are the best that you can hope for from guys like Dean Kremer and Albert Suarez.
The question Brandon Hyde and whoever is helping him make this decision have to make has 2 parts:
- Who is going to give the O’s the best chance to win?
- Who is least likely to absolutely blow it?
As you can see both guys have had 4 Blow Up Starts in roughly the same amount of starts
Why it Should Be Dean
Last year Dean had a Blow Up Start in the ALDS and while I was there in person watching Dean get lit up by the Rangers all I could think was that he just didn’t have what it takes to be a playoff starter.
BUT Dean came back this year and even though some of the numbers like his ERA look very similar to next year I believe he is much improved. His xERA last year was 4.93 compared to 4.49 this year, his FIP is down from 4.51 to 4.32.
In addition to those numbers he has gotten better at avoiding hard contact with his average exit velocity, hard hit % and HR/9 all significantly improved from last year.
To do this Kremer made several small adjustments to his pitch mix,
He now throws the 4 seam fastball a little less and a little slower although as Ben McDonald will tell you he can still reach back and get a little extra.
The Velocity that he took from the 4 seam has been added to the cutter which he throws about 2mph faster this year.
He ditched the sweeper and his old changeup and in exchange picked up a split finger fastball that moves about as fast as his old changeup did but he’s able to locate it better around the bottom of the zone.
Dean’s upgraded arsenal is one of the reasons that he may be a better option than Albert Suarez. Dean has a larger repertoire of pitches and if something isn’t working on a given day he can lean on one of his other pitches to get him through it. This also helps him get deeper into games because he can give hitters multiple different looks throughout the game. Suarez relies heavily on his 4 seam fastball which he throws 50% of the time. We have seen nights where his fastball isn’t working and those nights tend to be short and frustrating and they can get ugly very fast.
Dean is much better the 1st time through the lineup than Suarez and I think in a win or go home game it is important not to be trailing early in the game especially with a young lineup of hitters that has struggled with pressing this season.
Another point in Dean’s favor is that he gets deeper into games than Albert Suarez. This season Dean has 10 games where he pitched 6 or more innings compared to Albert Suarez’s 5. This could be important because the Orioles bullpen has looked as shaky as ever with both Cionel Perez really struggling and Yennier Cano nursing a forearm tightness so the deeper our starter can get into the game the better chance we will have at escaping with a win.
Another reason to start Dean is that he has always been a starter and Albert Suarez has much more experience coming out of the bullpen. This isn’t the most fair reason but when you are making this decision you know for sure Saurez’s stuff can work out of the pen and with Dean maybe you think his stuff will work but we have no empirical evidence that it does.
This may be the most important factor of all but in general Suarez has struggled over the last month, he got shelled by the White Sox (4.1 Innings 6ER), he had a good start against the Red Sox (6 innings 1ER), he got pounded by the Giants (3.1 innings 4ER) and then most recently the aforementioned start against the Tigers so we may be seeing fatigue set in on Suarez as he has soared past his MLB career high in innings although he did most recently pitch a full season workload of innings in the KBO.
So this year’s Dean Kremer is better than last year’s Dean Kremer. Also we didn’t know it at the time but that Rangers team that took Dean to the woodshed last year ended up winning the World Series mostly on the strength of their offense and none of the teams that the O’s might face in the wild card round have a lineup nearly as dangerous as that Texas Rangers team.
Why it should be Albert Suarez
The explanation of why it should be Suarez also starts with last years ALDS. I know I just elaborated on how Kremer has changed his arsenal and gotten better since last year and that is true BUT he hasn’t gotten that much better. You could argue that all of those improvements in xERA and FIP and WHIP are small enough that they don’t really matter and also I didn’t mention this because I was building a case but his xFIP is somehow exactly the same.
I am also sure that when they are making this decision it is going to nag them in the back of their mind how poorly it went putting Dean Kremer on the mound in almost this exact scenario last year. Additionally, no matter how mentally strong Kremer is, if something goes wrong early in this game there is no way he won’t start thinking about last year’s ALDS.
Besides all of the speculation I just made, the biggest reason to go with Albert Suarez over Kremer is that Suarez is the master of the scoreless start this year. Suarez has 7 starts this year where he gave up 0 runs compared to Kremer’s 4. As I mentioned in the Dean Kremer part of this blog it is a big deal to not trail early in a win or go home game and you can’t trail if your pitcher gives up 0 runs the way Suarez has done many times this year.
If you put Suarez on the mound there is a real chance he can give you 5 innings scoreless and then turn it over to the bullpen which may be the best strategy that you can hope for. A 5 and dive from a 4 ERA pitcher and then you roll out another bulk guy like Kremer or Povich to give you 2 innings of everything they’ve got and then you turn it over to your best relievers and you hope that’s enough.
If you need more evidence for Suarez here are the statistical categories where he has the edge over Kremer, ERA, xERA, FIP, BB/9, and HR/9. Some of these advantages are slim but to still have them after almost the same amount of innings and starts is significant,
The Decision
What will matter more to Hyde when he’s making this decision? The larger sample season long numbers or the smaller sample last month or so numbers. The season long numbers favor Big Al but the last month and half would favor Kremer.
I don’t know if this matters but Kremer faced the Royals twice this season and had mediocre results pitching 11 innings to an ERA of about 5 so if it is the Royals that the Orioles end up facing (which I think I would prefer) then maybe they opt for Suarez who they haven’t seen this year although both of those Royals games were in May so IDK how much that matters at this point. Suarez on the other hand faced the Tigers a few weeks ago and really struggled going 5 innings 4ER which comes out to ERA over 7. So I would feel better if we kept him away from the Tigers.
I think regardless of the opponent I would roll with Kremer to start the game and you see how he looks the first time through the lineup. If he’s dominating you leave him in if he looks shaky you go to Suarez early. Either way you are hoping to get 7 innings between the 2 of them whether that’s Kremer going 6 and Suarez going 1 or both of them going 3.
The Dishwasher 
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