Kevin Millwood....An Oriole Again?

Kevin Millwood is free from the Yankees and is still interested in pitching. According to Britt Ghiroli, the Orioles are somewhat interested in bringing him to Baltimore.

Is that a good idea? Yes...under certain circumstances.

Firstly, Millwood was not so bad last season. He was not great but not so bad. His ERA was a hefty 5.10 but his xFIP was 4.46. And he did have his moments:

ERA
April        3.38
May          4.29
June         8.82
July        10.66
August       3.54
September    3.82

He has his uses, even at the tail end of his career. But only in a particular role. And right now that role is as a AAA pitcher.

The current rotation in Norfolk right now is some combination of Ryan Drese, Mike Ballard, Rick VandenHurk, Chris George, Chorye Spoone and Chris Jakubauskas. None of them are pitching well. Anybody feel OK with one of those guys making a spot start?

Brian Matusz and Justin Duchscherer are coming back at some point. But until then, the Oriole rotation is a bit thin right now. If Jake Arrieta's hip acts up on him, I'd rather call up Kevin Millwood than Ryan Drese. And there is little risk that Millwood will take a full time rotation spot from one of the young pitchers.

Will Millwood sign a minor league deal? Who knows? But that's the only way he fits on this team.

Can Kevin Millwood Win in New York?

So I saw this exchange on Twitter on Friday...

Then about the same time, Craw of Camden Depot had left a comment on my "What is Curt Schilling had remained an Oriole?" post directing me to Jeff Zimmerman's post on FanGraphs about a formula he had devised for extimating wins based on ERA and run support. I put the formula into an Excel spreadsheet and decided to find out who was right. Could Kevin Millwood win 15 games for the Yankees this season?

Projected Winning % = 0.112(Run Support)-0.105(ERA)+0.446
with an R-squared = 0.827

Projected Wins = 0.7 * Games Started * Projected Winning %

I took Millwood's ERA from last season, gave him the same number of starts and gave him the Yankee run support (5.3 r/g) from last season. That netted 10.9 wins which we can round up to 11. However, Millwood pitched better than his ERA would indicate last season when you examine his FIP and xFIP numbers. 

His xFIP was 4.66 and since his Marcel projections put him at 4.68 this season, that seemed like a reasonable assumption to make. Plugging in a 4.66 ERA over 31 starts with the 5.3 runs per game of support gives him 12 wins (11.9).

But what if the Yankees score more? Two seasons ago, the Yanks scored 5.6 runs per game. Using that number with the 4.66 ERA, that gives him 13 wins.

Now, while all this shows that Millwood would fall short, if I plug CC Sabathia's numbers into the calculations, he should have only won 17 games. He actually won 21. That Yankee offense could bring a couple extra wins. That would be 15 wins for Millwood, if everything broke just right.

Millwood's ERA by month for 2010:

ERA
April      3.38
May        4.29
June       8.82
July      10.66
August     3.54
September  3.82

It's one thing to go through a rough patch for a last place team like the Orioles. One has to wonder if Millwood would get the chance to make 31 starts for the Yankees if he hit a similar rough patch. Since he's starting the season in AAA, that makes the odds of getting 30 or more starts even less likely.

So, if Millwood is able to pitch as well as he did last season AND it actually shows up in his ERA AND the Yankee offense performs a little bit better than it did last year AND he gets 31 or more starts AND he gets a little luck...he could win 15 for the Yankees this season. But it seems pretty unlikely.

However, I do think he will surprise a bit and provide quality innings for New York this season. And double digit wins are a definite possibility.

So Who Was That Guy Pitching for the Orioles with "Millwood" on His Back?

Dear ESPN,

     Kevin Millwood didn't pitch for the Indians last year.

Or the year before that. Or the year before that. Or the year before....

Nice focus.

Regards,

Dempsey's Army



No Arbitration for Uehara and Troubling Warehouse Strategies

The Orioles have declined to offer arbitration to RP Koji Uehara and SP Kevin Millwood.

Millwood was a no-brainer; he may have accepted. Uehara was not though. There is a market for Uehara's services this offseason, mostly due to performance as a closer over the last three months of the season. Uehara showed the ability to close and that skill is still overvalued in the marketplace.

There was a good chance that Uehara would refuse and sign elsewhere, netting the Orioles a supplemental draft pick after the first round in the 2011 amateur draft. If he accepted, I can't imagine he would receive more than $3 million in arbitration. That would allow the Orioles to either retain his services or trade him to a team that wanted his services more. (A similar situation happened with the Braves and Rafael Soriano last offseason..the Braves were able to move him when his arbitration number didn't match their budget.) As it is, the Orioles now receive nothing.

Maybe Andy MacPhail was afraid he would get something closer to his $5 million salary he has earned the last two seasons and he would probably know more about this than I would but it seems a strange decision to lose Uehara for nothing when you could have taken the chance to get something for Uehara's departure.

Speaking of MacPhail, according to Jeff Zrebiec, he was very disappointed that the team missed out on Victor Martinez. I really hope MacPhail is working the PR angle here because if overpaying Martinez was their grand plan for the offseason, I'm worried about the team's philosophy. As I stated yesterday, Martinez was not going to be the primary catcher for Baltimore and while his bat is elite for a catcher, it's rather ordinary for a first baseman. He hasn't even really caught that much over the past three seasons, only 246 games over that span. The chances of him remaining a team's primary catcher anywhere over a 4-year deal are slim.

If the Orioles were putting all their eggs in the Victor Martinez basket, I'm worried about their sanity.

Preseason Predictions Revisited

As the season heads into its final week, it seemed like a good time to revisit my preseason predictions. As it turns out, they were fairly optimistic so they were also largely wrong. Here we go.

* Garrett Atkins won't be a regular with this team by June 15th. Somebody has to come to their senses. Nice clutch hitting in Tampa but that can't last.

Done and done. He was released before the end of June.

* Nick Markakis...breakout! Enos Slaughter for the new millennium. I recycling this from last season.

Yeah. Maybe someday but I'm done expecting anything more than average production from Nick at this point. Wrong.

* Brian Matusz....breakout! Don't be surprised if Matusz is having Tim Lincecum-type success (without the gawdy strikeout totals...but damn good ones) by the second half of the season.

Second half stats from Matusz and Lincecum over their first full season:

K/9    BB/9    K/BB   WHIP   HR   ERA
Matusz         7.0     3.2    2.19   1.30    8  4.27
Lincecum       8.6     4.0    2.15   1.30    5  3.38

Matusz has certainly improved as the season has gone along but not quite to the level I had expected. Close though. The walks are down, the strikeouts are up. Things are moving in the right direction.

* Matt Wieters...breakout! I'm going with the Keith Law prediction of "well over .300 with 20-25 homers" for his sophomore season.

Really wrong on this one. Wieters has actually taken a step back. Not a good sign.

* Adam Jones....no breakout! It would be hard to call this a breakout since he was pretty good last year but I expect that this is the year Jones starts to show people that Adrian Gonzalez is not necessary because the Orioles already have a bat as good in centerfield. Look for an average around .300 with something approaching 25 homers.

Not exactly. If you take away his hideous April, he looks like a guy who can hit at those levels. But he has basically held steady on his production from last year. Wrong.

* 80 wins. That's my guess. And with a little luck...you never know.

You wonder what would have happened if Buck Showalter was managing back in April. But the Orioles were lucky to avoid 100 losses. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

* Ben McDonald becomes a surprise hit on MASN.

He's been fine but no better than Brady Anderson.

* Kevin Millwood 2010 = Rick Sutcliffe 1992

It started out that way but certainly didn't end up there. Sutcliffe finished 1992 with 3.1 WAR for the Orioles. Millwood has 0.9 WAR. Millwood almost met the minimal expectations: league average pitching and eating innings. He pitched 180+ innings, which was good, but a 5.29 ERA is only good for an ERA+ of 80, which is not so good. Wrong.

* Felix Pie forces something this summer...a trade, a position change....something.

Pie has kind of made himself the forerunner for the LF job in 2011 since his return from injury earlier in the season. But a batting line of .274/.304/.401 isn't going to lock it down for him. Thus, I doubt the team makes any moves assuming that Pie will be the man. Not so much on this one.

That was kind of depressing. Anyone ready for 2011?

It Could Be Worse: Kevin Millwood

It sounds strange to say that a team with the worst record in baseball and a team that can't seem to get above the .300 mark could be worse off. But they could be (and that's the scary part). I'll be doing a mini-series this week on Oriole players who are giving better than they are getting during this lost season.

When the Orioles acquired Kevin Millwood for Chris Ray this offseason, I was hoping that he would serve a role similiar to that of Rick Sutcliffe in 1992; he didn't have to pitch like and ace, he just needed to eat some innings and provide stability to a young, inexperienced rotation. And he has done that and more. As of June 1st:

           ERA    SO    BB    IP   WHIP   HR   FIP   W-L
Millwood  3.89    58    17   74.0  1.27   12  4.47   0-5

Millwood is well on his way to pitching 200 innings one-third of the way through the season. He is giving up a lot of home runs but not with men on base; 10 of the 12 homers he has surrendered have been solo shots. His 3.41 K/BB ratio is 2nd among AL starters.

He's done everything I had hoped and more. Although he is still winless on the season, that is due far more to the weak offense than to his effectiveness. Millwood is a big reason the Orioles were able to keep Chris Tillman in Norfolk for 2 months to work on his control and his cutter, send Brad Bergesen down to AAA to get his sinker back and why Jake Arrieta is having to kick the door down to get to Baltimore instead of being rushed to the majors (like Tillman and Matusz were last season). This is a good thing.

Millwood's FIP suggests that he may regress as the season wears on but his impact will be felt long after he is gone, either by free agency at the end of the season or by trade at the deadline. He is allowing the young staff to develop at it's own pace and may bring back prospects or draft picks as well. He is one of the bright spots in a dark season.

Help Me, Oriole Rotation. You're My Only Hope.

An Open Letter to the Oriole Starting Five:

Hi guys. It's closing in on Spring Training and Baltimore fans are full of (cautious, admittedly) optimism and hope. Young prospects are on the rise, national media are picking Baltimore to be much improved and even projection systems like PECOTA have the Birds within the margin of error for a winning season.

But I know the truth. This team only goes as far as you five gentlemen take us. The offense is good but not good enough to outslug the Yanks, Sox or maybe even the Rays. No, we need pitching and we need plenty of it to succeed. The good news is, you won't have big shoes to fill. The starting rotation on Opening Day was Alfredo Simon, Koji Uehara, Mark Hendrickson, Adam Eaton and Jeremy Guthrie. Jeremy, you are the only one who remains.

Each of you have a job to do and the Baltimore faithful beg you to do it well.

Kevin Millwood, we know your best days are probably behind you. While you are the de facto ace, nobody expects you to be anything better than league average. We need you to be Rick Sutcliffe circa 1992. You remember the Red Baron, don't you? He came to Baltimore late in his career to help anchor a staff of young hurlers (Mussina, McDonald, Rhodes) and for the first half of the season pitched like the Sutcliffe of old. OK, not like 1984 Sutcliffe but he went 12-6 over the first half of the season with a 4.13 ERA. He finished the season as a slightly below average pitcher in terms of ERA but for half of 1992 (and then some) he was a hero. He helped lead the Orioles, who had lost 97 games in 1991, to an 89 win season in 1992. More importantly, he bought time for the kid pitchers to develop and stabilized the rotation.

You can be that hero, Kevin. I know former Braves have not fared well in Charm City (Javy Lopez, Leo Mazzone, B.J. Surhoff v2.0) but this is a different era, an era of hope and resurrection. Seize the day and perhaps the Orioles will relax facial hair policies for you too.

Jeremy Guthrie, the Orioles claimed off of waivers three seasons ago and you went out of the frying pan and into the fire. 2009 was rough on you. You gave up a league high 35 homers. But that won't happen again because deep down, you are a groundball pitcher with enough of a fastball to strike batters out. Don't give in and keep the ball down in the zone. You finally have help. A veteran to eat innings, kids behind you who will pitch better as the season wears on. You are battle tested, sir. No pitcher in baseball has faced the fearsome lineups you have faced more often over the last three seasons.

We don't need you to try to be the ace anymore. We just need your innings, we just need your experience, we just need your spirit. Just keep the ball in the park and let your defense do the rest.

Brad Bergesen. You were labeled a AAAA pitcher. You were not supposed to have the stuff to pitch in the AL East. You were not supposed to be in the rotation in 2009. But you were and you were the best of the rotation last season.

You're a groundball machine. You walk no one. Nobody's getting a cheap hit off of you. According to The Bill James Handbook, you might just be the best fielding pitcher in the American League. You have the best chance of any of the starters to hit 200 innings pitched like Guthrie did last year. You're a fan favorite already and everyone is pulling for you to succeed. Like it or not, you're the underdog and everyone loves the underdog. Just keep it up. Please.

Brian Matusz, I have not had so much fun watching a guy pitch since Mike Mussina donned the orange & black. You have four pitches and you command them all extremely well. So on any count, you are likely to throw any of them. It reminds me of Mussina throwing his knuckle-curve on a 3-2 count, buckling the batter's knees and ringing up the K. You are that kind of talent. I can see you tying the hitters up in knots, mentally and physically with each successive at bat.

You are to inherit the "ace" tag for Baltimore and become the best Baltimore pitcher since the aforementioned Mussina. The rotation is relying more on your success than on any other individual pitcher. But the scouts love you and I think you may be due for a great leap forward in 2010.

Chris Tillman, it was not pretty during your 12 major league starts in 2009. A 5.40 ERA and lots of walks. But at the age of 21, you had nothing left to prove in the minors. You destroyed the International League posting a 2.70 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 96 innings for AAA Norfolk. It was your time. It is your time.

But just relax. No one is expecting you to be anything more than the 5th best starter for the Orioles in 2010. But I saw you in AAA. Your fastball moved and you mixed you pitches well. In Baltimore, you overthrew and that fastball flattened out. No need to throw through a brick wall. The baseball is an egg. Hold it like and egg. And by the end of the season, you may just start to show flashes of the ace potential you brought with you from the Seattle organization.

So don't believe the hype. If the Orioles are to surprise the league this season, it won't be because they signed Miguel Tejada and Garrett Atkins, it will be because the five of you.

Now let's go O's!

The Crystal Ball '10: Kevin Millwood

I've covered the Millwood trade a bit before but I thought we needed to take a closer look at what to really expect from Mr. Millwood the Oriole. First, the projections:

IP      ERA    K    BB
CHONE         177.0   4.83   112   64     
Bill James    175.0   4.37   126   55
B.P.          143.3   5.19   100   46 
 

I think that Millwood has to pitch for a league average ERA (or approaching it) and at least 180 innings to be really useful for the Orioles in 2010. That means somewhere between a 4.60 and a 4.70 ERA. From the above projections, Millwood is, at best, at the high end of the ERA and at the low end of the innings pitched.

The good news is that Millwood is leaving The Ballpark at Arlington. Camden Yards is a homer haven but on the whole has been a neutral hitting environment for three straight seasons. The Rangers' stadium is even more homer-prone than OPACY and is a much better hitter's park overall. Millwood may be able to take advantage of pitching is a better environment in 2010.

What is more difficult to tell is how much help Millwood will need or get from the defense behind him. The strikeout rate dropped last year and he's a flyball pitcher, (although not an extreme one) so there's going to be a lot of balls put in play. A Markakis/Jones/Reimold/Pie outfield should be plenty busy but have the potential to help Millwood a lot. Izturis is top notch at short and Roberts is still passable at second. When we know who will hold down third and first base in 2010 we will know a bit more.

If his health holds, Millwood should be a good bet to approach league average and pitch north of 175 innings which would have made him one of the better pitchers in the O's rotation in '09. It's certainly a risk but it's short term risk If he pitches well enough to keep Jake Arrieta in AAA and Jason Berken and David Hernandez in the bullpen, it will be worth it.

Baltimore Orioles Acquire Kevin Millwood, Send Chris Ray to Texas

It looks like all the smoke around a Kevin Millwood deal were indeed signs of fire as the Orioles will reportedly send RP Chris Ray to the Rangers for Millwood and cash considerations.

I am not a fan of Millwood the Baltimore Oriole...but considering who the Orioles are giving up and that cash is coming back to offset the $12 million that Millwood is due in 2010.

Now, the stark realities of Kevin Millwood. Only a 5.6 K/9 rate versus a 3.3 BB/9 in 2009 for a measly 1.73 K/BB ratio. He's a flyball pitcher coming to Camden Yards. His BABIP was .279 last season, by far his lowest rate since 1999. He appears to have been extremely lucky to post a 3.67 ERA last season. He could be an absolute disaster for Baltimore.

There is hope here however. Over the last three seasons, Millwood has an average ERA+ of 99, pitched an average of 180 innings and is good for two complete games a season. I know this is what Andy MacPhail thinks; Millwood is a league average pitcher who has pitched in a hitter's park and can eat innings and provide stability in the rotation...and hey, maybe we get lucky and he's even better than that. Bill James does project him to post a 4.37 ERA (slightly better than league average) over 175 innings.

The Rangers will reportedly pick up a quarter of Millwood's $12 million salary. For $9 million over one season, he is a calculated risk but not a crazy one.

The Orioles send former closer Chris Ray to Texas. As much as I hate to say it, this is no great loss. Ray is damaged goods at this point and showed absolutely nothing to lead one to believe that he will ever be an effective major league pitcher again. The Oriole bullpen needs an overhaul and it's probably time for someone else to deal with Ray.

In general, when you can trade a reliever for a starter I am all for it. I am tepid about Millwood as a good fit for the Orioles though. But for one year, even a colossal disaster will be over with quickly. All things considered, it's a good move and a good idea.

Base Hits: Winter Meetings, Oriole Blogosphere and It Could Be Worse

Not a ton of substantial Oriole news from the Winter meetings. The most interesting thing that was reported was the gulf between what the Texas Rangers were asking in trade for Kevin Millwood and what the Orioles were willing to offer. According to Spencer Fordin, the Rangers wanted Chris Tillman and the O's were offering Brandon Erbe or David Hernandez.

I'm not crazy about Millwood pitching in orange and black but if you had to trade someone, David Hernandez would be the only acceptable piece to give up.

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Speaking of Fordin, he also talked with Oriole manager Dave Trembley about the closer situation for 2010:


Trembley said that he'd rather not rely on Jim Johnson or Koji Uehara as his closer, preferring instead to slot them earlier in the game.

"If you don't get a closer, now you come into Spring Training kind of unsettled again and you might have to take a look at JJ there," said Trembley, who grew comfortable with Johnson as his setup man. "...But if you go out and get a closer, then I think you can kind of line up the back end of your bullpen."

I think Uehara would be great in the closer's role, imagine a Trevor Hoffman type vs. Mariano Rivera. But it sounds like the Trembley is interested in a "proven" guy for that role.

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How do you say Screech in Japanese? Jeff Fiorentino may soon find out as he signs a one year deal with the Hiroshima Carp. Yet another team for me to follow this season.

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Like Arlo Guthrie said, "When you're down it always feels better to know someone's got it worse than you. But what about the last guy? Nobody's got it worse than that last guy."  That's kind of what it's like to be an Oriole fan. We've got it bad but the Nationals fan is that last guy.

First, the Nats traded their Rule 5 draft pick , the first overall, to the Yankees for RP Brian Bruney, a middling reliever with control problems who has filled a ROOGY role for the Yankees the last three seasons. The Nats can afford to carry a Rule 5 guy on their roster more than any team in baseball but choose to send that pick to New York for...well, you could find a guy like this on the scrapheap.

Secondly, they signed veteran catcher Ivan Rodrigez to a two-year deal worth $6 million total. Forget that there were comparable players available for less years and less money, forget that this is 2009 and not 1999...actually don't forget any of this. The Nats overpaid mightily for an aging inferior player.

The team got older, less talented and more expensive. It's rough to be a Nationals fan.


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The Wayward O has the first in hopefully a long series of posts called O Fights! It's gnarly.

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I won't even begin to pretend that I understand all this but over at Fangraphs.com, Dave Allen attempts to show that Gregg Zaun is a fabulous blocker of pitches.

Always interested to see strides made in measuring catcher defense and this may explain in a small way why Zaun's catcher ERA was lower than Wieters' when he was traded to Tampa Bay.

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Tip of the hat to Weaver's Tantrum who wrote about way-under-the-radar-free-agent SP Justin Duchscherer and the possible fit with the Orioles. The thought had crossed my mind but I haven't seen anybody else even hint at the possibility. But it makes a lot of sense.

Dave Mc is a righteous dude.

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John Sickels has his Top 20 Oriole Prospects up at MinorLeagueBaseball.com. No big surprises on the list but a few notes:

-  SP Zach Britton is at #3. Sickels likes Britton a lot and so do I. At least as much as you can like a pitcher whom I've never seen pitch.

-  C Caleb Joseph is at #16. Sickels doesn't like his defense.

Most of the prospects are in the low minors. To conclude:

I think the Orioles system is often underrated. There is a lot to like at the top, with Matusz entering the '10 rotation and Arrieta not far behind him. I probably like Arrieta and Britton a bit more than most analysts. Erbe has tremendous potential as well. There is the nucleus of a really good pitching staff here, with several potential major league starters as well as the raw material of a fine bullpen, with a mixture of excellent arms (Mickolio, Lebron, Cooney) as well as guys with command (Egan, Gamboa) who could be fine staff fillers....

 All in all, this system has some major strength in young pitching but they could stand to boost the hitting.

Which is, of course, just as Andy MacPhail likes it.

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MVN is no more. I wrote a bit for MVN last year. My take: Some great content on MVN but it was a lousy  platform to blog on. Never like the new layout they did either. It was hideous and difficult to read.

That said, it's sad to see them go. Oriole Central was over there and they are gone. Oriole Magic was over there too and still appear to be live on that platform. I assume this will not last long. I am curious to see where these peices on the Oriole blogosphere end up. And I'm glad I kept this original version of Dempsey's Army up and running.

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Twitter is a-buzz with winter meeting news. I sent a tweet to Baseball America's Ben Badler to inquire about Oriole SP prospect Steve Johnson and the Rule 5 draft:

@BenBadler re: Rule 5 - O's fans worried about AA SP Steve Johnson being unprotected. Any real danger here?

BenBadler  @DempseysArmy Definitely a chance he gets picked 

 Well, that's not what I wanted to hear. Sometimes we fans overrate our own prospects and I was thinking that Johnson wouldn't be on anyone's radar. Evidently, that's  not the case. Not maybe...but definitely a chance sounds like it's at least 50/50.