Baltimore Orioles: New Pitchers Who May Contribute In 2020

Will the Baltimore Orioles keep any of their new guys around?

Mike Elias recently spoke about next year’s starting staff, saying that John Means, Dylan Bundy, and Alex Cobb are likely all locks and the team will look to bring in low-cost options (Aaron Brooks/Dan Straily types) to fight for back-end rotation spots in spring training. The Orioles may have found one option this season who capitalized enough to enter spring training as a frontrunner for a rotation spot in Asher Wojciechowski.

Of all the new guys brought in this season, Wojo has been the most impressive and shown that he could end up being a serviceable bridge to better times. Keegan Akin should be in the bigs shortly into the 2020 season and the combination of Dean Kremer and Bruce Zimmermann likely aren’t far away after ending this season with their first taste of Triple-A baseball.

Wojo is currently 3-8 with a 5.38 ERA and just earned his first win since July 26th, but the 30-year-old journeyman has been solid at times. Like when he recorded a 3.60 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, a .183 average against, and struck out 37 in 30 July innings while walking just eight. August wasn’t as kind, but he had an opportunity on Sunday to rebound from his last outing (2 IP, 4 ER vs Texas) with a few days of extra rest behind him. He gave up two earned runs in five innings of work, walking none and striking out two.

His 72 innings this year are a career-high at the major league level, this after logging 84.2 innings in Triple-A with Cleveland. Now over 150 combined innings, Wojo hasn’t seen this amount of work since 2013 when he logged 160 innings. He threw 119 last season, 93 the year before that, and 85.2 in 2016. No wonder fatigue has been an issue over his last few outings.

With an above-league average strikeout rate, a curveball that has limited hitters to a .198 average (.189 expected average), and a slider which has produced a 38% whiff rate, there are tools to work with. Mike Elias likes Wojo and he’s the type of pitcher we’re going to see come in next season anyway. Why not give him another opportunity?

Finally, we have one bullpen arm who will stick around next season after his first large taste of the major leagues.