Contrasts In Starting Pitching Between The Yankees And Orioles Are On Full Display

In the offseason, the New York Yankees were perceived as possessing more than enough starting pitching after signing Max Fried to an eight-year, $218 million deal in December.

The grand plan was Fried would slot in between ace Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon, coming off a vastly improved second season with the Yankees by winning a career-high 16 games.

A few weeks later, the Baltimore Orioles learned they would not be able to retain Corbin Burnes after acquiring him in a trade from the Milwaukee Brewers the previous offseason. Burnes lived up to his end by winning 15 games for a team who finished three games behind the Yankees but wound up going to the Arizona Diamondbacks on a six-year deal for $210 million that contains an opt-out after the second season.

It was recently revealed in USA Today the Orioles’ effort to retain Burnes was somewhat half-hearted compared to Arizona. He disclosed the Orioles offered him four years, $180 million, making the admission in an interesting story about free agency and the perspective of going through the process.

Burnes made the comment about a month after Cole underwent Tommy John surgery on his elbow, a year after the 2023 AL Cy Young winner missed the first 75 games with an elbow injury.

The Yankees survived decently without Cole for the first two-plus months of last season when they won 45 of their first 64. This time the Yankees are experiencing mixed results in surviving Cole’s absence, but it is getting better about a week after the rotation held the worst ERA in baseball.

And the contrast was on full display Sunday about 950 miles apart.

As the Yankees played their fourth game as the visiting team against the Tampa Bay Rays at George Steinbrenner Field, Fried was allowing two singles in 7 2/3 dominant innings. Fried allowed an infield hit that was originally ruled an error and gave up a clean single in the eighth inning to help the Yankees win for the 14th time in their first 22 games and lower their rotation ERA to 4.50.

“He’s incredible,” Aaron Judge told reporters. “Everything that people have said about him from afar, he’s the real deal. You see it up close, especially to lose a guy like Gerrit Cole, who you can’t replace, and then you sub in Max Fried to go and be that ace for us. It’s been fun to watch.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” Cody Bellinger told reporters. “I’ve gotten plenty of at-bats off him with very little success. He’s one of the best pitchers in the game. He knows how to pitch.”

Those are words hardly spoken about pitching from the Orioles, whose starting pitching has produced the following ERAs in the past three seasons: 3.77 in 2024, 4.14 in 2023 and 4.35 ERA in 2022.

After Charlie Morton got rocked for seven runs in 2 1/3 innings in 24-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds and his ERA climbed to 10.89 in his fifth loss, the Orioles hold a 6.11 ERA from their starters. It is a mark higher than the 5.99 ERA from 2021, the 5.57 mark in 2019 and the 5.48 ERA in 2018, which were all seasons where the loss total surged past 100.

Morton was amongst the Orioles’ offseason moves to their rotation but instead of pursuing and landing high-end starters, the approach was to supplement some of the younger arms with veterans. Except the problem is the Orioles have yet to been able to depend on Grayson Rodriguez, who was getting a second opinion on his sore shoulder following the cancelation of a side session.

The Orioles are losers of 12 of their first 21 games with a minus-20 run differential while the Yankees hold a plus-30 run differential so far. The Orioles are off to their uneven start because of a rotation who is up to 10 starts lasting fewer than five innings.

“You’re just not going to be able to win games that way,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “You’re going to win them once in a while because you’re going to outscore teams, but that’s not how you win Major League Baseball games.”

There is still plenty of time to reverse trends, especially in an area where finishing sixth in the league gives a team a playoff berth for now but the contrasts in starting pitching could not have been more apparent between the Yankees and Orioles like they were on the fourth Sunday of the new season.