Baltimore Orioles: Why can’t this organization develop pitching prospects?

If you’ve been following the Baltimore Orioles since the 90’s, you were privileged to see Mike Mussina pitch. Since then, not many other Orioles pitching prospects have come close to what Mussina did in an Orioles uniform

It’s a little disheartening to see how many highly touted pitching prospects the Baltimore Orioles have had in the last 20 or so years without any real success. The last homegrown talent the Orioles had was Mike Mussina, but you know how that ended, with him signing with the New York Yankees.

Let’s go through the names of some of the Orioles pitchers that were pitching with the team during the 14 consecutive losing seasons. We’ve got Jason Johnson, Jose Mercedes, Josh Towers, Sir Sidney Ponson, Daniel Cabrera, Bruce Chen, Erik Bedard, Jeremy Guthrie, Rocky Coppinger, Rodrigo Lopez, Brian Matusz, Brad Bergesen, and Adam Loewen.

As a fan, I always rooted for those players to be the next ace of the staff that could lead the Orioles to a World Series Championship, but that wasn’t the case. It seems like every year, other teams draft and develop pitching staffs that do well, but the Orioles don’t.

Look at the last few pitching prospects the Orioles have drafted: Dylan Bundy, Kevin Gausman, Hunter Harvey, and Cody Sedlock. It seems like those players are never healthy except for Bundy and Gausman now. Kevin Gausman has been lights out since he was traded away from the Orioles.

That says something about the Orioles organization. It’s not a good thing when a top pitching prospect was mediocre in the Orioles organization, but is doing very well in another organization.

It would be great if the Baltimore Orioles could develop their own pitching prospects instead of signing mediocre pitchers when we all know they won’t make that much of an impact on the starting rotation. It’s time to do something within the Orioles farm system in the way of player development.