Orioles' biggest offseason mistake is already coming back to haunt them

As indicated by their record, the Baltimore Orioles are a flawed team. They have players they were expecting a lot from, slumping to start the season, and they've lost games on embarrassing defensive gaffes, but when looking at the team and trying to diagnose what is going wrong, the most glaring weakness is the lack of a true ace starting pitcher at the top of the rotation.

If you look through the Orioles' game logs and inspect the starting pitchers' stat lines for every game, you'll notice that with a few exceptions, there are very few blow-up starts where the Orioles starter got shelled. Instead, what you'll see is consistent mediocrity. Here are the Orioles last 13 starts (since they sent down Cade Povich):

• 5 IP, 3 ER
• 1.2 IP, 3 ER
• 5.2 IP, 3 ER
• 5.1 IP, 5 ER
• 6.1 IP, 4 ER
• 5.1 IP, 1ER
• 5 IP, 6 ER
• 6 IP, 3 ER
• 5 IP, 0 ER
• 6 IP, 4 ER
• 6 IP, 2 ER
• 4.1 IP, 4 ER
• 5 IP, 2 ER

Looking at these stat lines, you can see some bad starts, some pretty good starts, but mostly "ok" starts. Most telling of all, you see zero really good starts.

The Orioles need a pitcher to win them a game every now and then

If you average all of these stat lines, it comes out almost exactly to five innings and three earned runs per start. A five-inning, three earned run start comes out to a 5.40 ERA, which is not good, but if your starter leaves the mound after five innings having only surrendered three runs, even if your offense hasn't scored at all, you're still "in the game"; you could say your starter "gave you a chance". There are days when the offense plays well, and five innings with three earned runs feels great. Brandon Young's 5.2 innings of three-run ball felt dominant with the Orioles up seven.

In general, though, having your starter go five innings, giving up three runs, is kind of like flipping a coin. If the offense comes through and scores five or six runs of their own, it'll probably be fine, but if they're having a tough night and can only score three or four runs, that's probably not going to be enough considering that the bullpen then has to cover four innings, and they're not going to hold the opposition scoreless every night.

True to what you would expect from a coin flip, the Orioles have been hovering around .500. They were 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 6-6, 7-7, 9-9, 10-10, and 13-13. They could easily win their next two games and be 15-15 by Wednesday. It's going to be really hard for the Orioles to pull away from .500 when their rotation gives them a "coin-flip start" almost every game.

Which is where a top-of-the-rotation starter comes in. What helps teams consistently win as their offense ebbs and flows over the course of the season is being able to rely on their best pitcher to go out there and shut down the opponent and win the game for them. Having your starter throw seven or even eight innings of one-run ball and allowing you to win a game by a score of 2-1 is huge for a team, and outside of Trevor Rogers very first start of the year, the Orioles have not gotten that at all this year.

The Orioles have not been shut out even once this season, and they've scored 3+ runs in 19 of their 28 games. If once a week they could win a game by a score of 3-2, that would literally change the course of their season. Instead, it's been three weeks since the Orioles have won a game where they've scored less than six runs. If the only way your team can win is by scoring five or six runs, you're going to have a losing record, even if you have a well above-average offense.

This is a frustrating weakness to be dealing with because it was so obvious over the offseason that the Orioles needed a top-of-the-rotation arm, and they just ignored that glaring hole on the roster. Instead, they chose to rely on Rogers, who has never pitched a full season, and Bradish, who was coming back from Tommy John. It was always a risky plan and has gone south faster than even the most ardent Orioles doubters could have predicted.

The worst thing is that there is no way to fix this problem except hope that these struggling pitchers just figure it out. Nobody is trading an ace pitcher in April, and with how things are going, the Orioles are not going to be in a position to be buyers at the deadline.

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