Orioles' early returns on Taylor Ward trade appear they fixed something Mariners couldn't

The Baltimore Orioles made an aggressive move last offseason, trading former starter Grayson Rodriguez to the Los Angeles Angels for one season of outfielder Taylor Ward. The slugger, who was coming off a career-high 36 home runs, lost his pop in Baltimore and only hit seven home runs before he was dealt to the Seattle Mariners for a three-player package earlier this month.

That package included reliever Alex Hoppe. The 27-year-old rookie really struggled in his debut season in Seattle. In 28 innings, he had a 5.79 ERA, but his underlying numbers looked a lot better. Nevertheless, Seattle decided to part ways with him to try in an effort to beef up their outfield.

Since joining Baltimore, Hoppe has the look of an elite reliever. The righty has made nine appearances, logging 8⅓ innings, and is yet to allow an earned run.

The Orioles made a few tweaks and now Alex Hoppe is at the top of his game

With Seattle, Hoppe's most-used pitch was his high-80s slider, an offering that was improving but one that saw opponents wallop to the tune of a .267 batting average. During his time with the Orioles, Hoppe has started throwing a lot more of his high-90s sinker, his least used pitch this season. Orioles pitching coach Drew French has his sinker usage up at 35.4% in August; up over 25% from where it was in July.

Hoppe has also been given a clear philosophy change against righties and lefties. He now throws his sinker almost 75% of the time to righties; in his final month in Seattle, it was 15.9%.

Hoppe's not just throwing more fastballs, he's getting them in the zone a lot more too. All three of his pitches have seen a tick up in zone-percentage since he joined the Orioles, with the sinker seeing the biggest rise from 28.6% to 55.9%. August is the only month this season that's seen all of his pitches in the zone higher than 50% of the time.

The result of all of these changes was zero runs allowed in his first nine appearances with the Orioles, as well as his lowest hard-hit rate and highest groundball rate of any month this season.

So far, what Baltimore has done with Hoppe has made him extremely effective. It's still a small sample size, and hitters will start to adjust, but usually, more fastballs in the zone amounts to a good way to get outs. The Orioles may have a back-end arm who can stick around for a while.

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