Reason for optimism: Virtually all of the players that contributed to the most home runs hit in baseball in 2016 return.
Reason for pessimism: It would be surprising if all the power returns as well -- and Baltimore needs every one of those home runs.
The Baltimore Orioles of recent vintage seem to find a way each year to confound sabermetric analysts, who in turn take to their keyboards and enrage fans of the team. While many professional athletes and managers insist they don't read what's written about them, that's not the case with Orioles manager Buck Showalter. He's not only aware of what the sabermetric community thinks about the Orioles, he's amused by it. As he told the Washington Post at the start of spring training, "It's fun to see people scratching their heads about our team."
Order me up some Head & Shoulders -- here's my annual review of the Orioles.
One year ago, I pegged Baltimore for a last-place American League East finish, which obviously looked silly when the projected cellar dwellers played playoff baseball. There's no mystery as to the reason the Orioles grabbed the fifth seed in the AL. With 253 home runs, they hit the most dingers in a season of any team since the 2010 Blue Jays -- and the most as a franchise since 1996. (Brady Anderson shoutout!)
Home runs are not lucky and the Orioles have exhibited top-tier power the entire Buck Showalter era. That said, hitting 253 home runs is very different from hitting 214 a year, which is what they averaged with very little variance from 2012-15. Given that Baltimore only finished with a +29 run differential last season, every one of those home runs came in handy in nabbing the last wild-card spot.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem for 2017's outlook. Holding all else equal, even if Baltimore merely hit 214 home runs this year -- an output that would challenge for best in baseball -- they'd almost certainly finish with an under-.500 record. They got more than 25 home runs from five different players. While I'd never want to try to pick third baseman Manny Machado's ceiling, for the rest of the quintet, it's hard to see 2016 repeating itself individually, let alone collectively.
There's another hidden element at play, too, and that's health.
Teams were lucky to have three players make 600 plate appearances for them in 2016, as there were only 88 players that accomplished the feat. Baltimore had five of them, second in the majors (behind Boston, which we'll address in its outlook). They all made at least 645 plate appearances, averaging 669. Wouldn't you know it -- it's the same five players referenced in the home run discussion above.
Why are those home runs so critical to the Orioles? Because despite hitting 30 more home runs than any other AL team, they merely finished seventh in runs scored as Baltimore ranked 24th in on-base percentage. For all that power, the team's walk rate, which is often thought of as going hand in hand with home runs, stood at a pedestrian 7.7 percent, below the MLB average. That's why Baltimore's 2016 success looks unrepeatable.
Maybe the Orioles could solve a home run drop-off by morphing into a run-suppression team. It wouldn't seem likely with a rotation that finished 2016 with the third-worst ERA in the AL and brings no new faces to this year's projected rotation. (They did shed Yovani Gallardo and his 5.42 ERA, however.)
The bullpen posted a stellar 3.40 ERA last season, anchored by Zach Britton -- when they decided to use him (BOOM! Wild-card burn!). But even that comes with a sabermetric caveat: Baltimore had the second-largest spread (favorable) between their bullpen's ERA and their skill-based projected ERA (SIERA). In other words, the Orioles' pen posted 3.40 results, but they did it with 3.86 skills. That extra half-run every nine innings is vital on the margin, and if it's not repeatable, can cost a team a few wins a year.
Even if Showalter is outwardly amused, I get why Orioles fans are perpetually irritated by the number crunchers who constantly throw shade on Baltimore's success. For one, as evidenced by my fifth-place call last year, we appear to lack credibility. However, the outlook (here, at least) is based on critical reasoning, and as mentioned above, there's a lot to suggest that a return to over-.500 ball in 2017, let alone the playoffs, is a tall order.
Vegas would appear to agree, asking bettors to pick their poison at 79.5 wins when the markets opened. It's a pass for me because that's nearly exactly where I see the team finishing this year.
2017 projection: 79-83 (tied for fourth, AL East)
Bet recommendation: Pass