From Division Title to .500, Baltimore Orioles Look For Rebound in 2016

In 2015, the Baltimore suffered a 15 win set back from their previous season. In 2014, the Orioles won 96 games and won the American League East. The club stumbled in 2015 and their win total fell all the way down to 81. The reason why was pretty simple. While they had scored 8 more runs in 2015, they also gave up a 100 more runs. To rebound in 2016, they wiill have to stop this trend.

When an uptick like this occurs, one can generally place the blame squarely on the defense. That was not the case however for the O's. They actually cut team errors by 10 and raised the team fielding percentage. Team ERA jumped from 3.43 in 2014 to 4.05 in '15. Across the board, the pitching numbers were ugly. Among the starting staff, the lowest FIP (Fielding Independent Pitch - How Good a Pitcher was by Himself) was Ubaldo Jimenez at 4.01. In 2014, Wei-Yin Chen and Kevin Gausmann both posted sub-4.00 FIP's. With Wei-Yin Chen a free agent, likely to test the market, they will be losing their most consistent performer.

As well, underperformers Chris Tillman and Miguel Gonzalez are both arbitration eligible and likely to receive raises. Tillman posted a 4.99 ERA last year and Gonzalez's 4.91 was not all that much better. This from MLBTradeRumors, "Beyond Jimenez and Gausman, Chris Tillman and Miguel Gonzalez are likely to be back despite rough seasons that saw their ERAs catch up to their generally unimpressive career advanced metrics. It was poor timing for the arb-eligible pitchers, who failed to maximize their earning power. Assuming the Orioles bring them back, a total of $11.1MM in combined arbitration earnings is a very good price for two innings-eaters (though obviously Baltimore hopes the two can deliver more than just innings next year). If not, Tillman and Gonzalez could both potentially be non-tender candidates come next winter as their price tags keep rising."

Where it gets tricky for the Orioles is the amount of free agents on the offensive side of the ball. However, centerfielder Adam Jones sees it as an opportunity. From MLBTradeRumors, he had this to say, "It's going to be exciting to see what goes on this offseason because I know when you have a lot of free agents that means you have a lot of money to spend. And so, hopefully, I can influence some officials to spend a little bit of that money.