If Orioles fans were imagining that Dan Duquette would somehow pull an upper-rotation starting pitcher out of his hat before the looming waiver deadline, they are not going to be terribly excited about veteran Wade Miley.
If they recognize, however, that the midseason pitching market was thin and the Orioles needed a left-hander who can churn out innings and has been pitching well of late, they should be satisfied that the team is better than it was before Sunday's trade that sent Triple-A pitcher Ariel Miranda to the Seattle Mariners.
Miley isn't going to wow anybody with his season stats. He is 7-8 and just recently pulled his ERA down under 5.00, which is going to bring out some boo birds to say that he will fit right into a rotation that already has too many pitchers with numbers like that. But a closer look at his performance this season reveals a pitcher who has pitched effectively throughout July (3.45 ERA) and would have a winning overall record if the big-swinging M's had not averaged 2.2 runs in his last five starts.
The Orioles gave up a decent prospect, but they're reportedly getting money back from the Mariners and Miley is not a two-month rental. He's signed through the 2017 season with a team option for 2018.
OK, so it's not a big splash, but the Orioles had to do something and time was running short. The starting rotation had been on a nice roll over the 13 starts heading into the weekend series against the Toronto Blue Jays, which _ combined with the promising emergence of Dylan Bundy as a permanent member of the rotation _ threatened to erode the organizational sense of urgency to acquire outside help.
That was before Kevin Gausman and Yovani Gallardo came unglued on Friday and Saturday, and the Orioles tumbled briefly out of first place. Baseball operations chief Dan Duquette contended all along that he was pursuing a pitching deal and he has a history of making trades at this time of year.
If there seemed to be better options out there than Miley, the Orioles were not positioned particularly well to compete for the bigger names on the market because Duquette already had traded away several well-regarded prospects to improve the major league team over the past three seasons.
Miley gives the Orioles a left-hander in the rotation for the first time this season and brings experience from both leagues. He impressed the Orioles when he gave up just two hits over six shutout innings in a victory at Camden Yards in May and has a 3.00 ERA in his three starts against American League East opponents this season. In his most recent start for the Mariners, he allowed just one hit and struck out nine over seven innings against the first-place Cubs at Wrigley Field.
It remains to be seen just how Buck Showalter will configure the rotation going forward, since he now has four veteran starters (plus Vance Worley) to go with Gausman and Bundy.
Gausman isn't going anywhere, of course, and no one should bail on him because he got knocked around Friday night. He's a big part of the future of the rotation and it looks like he's figuring things out, even if his growing pains have been pretty painful at times.
Gallardo also will continue to go out there in spite of the command issues that have undermined several of his recent starts.
But the arrival of Miley in the middle of the rotation will allow Showalter the flexibility to skip Gallardo if he continues to struggle or pick his spots with Bundy as the season progresses.
If history is any guide, Showalter will still mix and match his starters and leave some slots open until the last minute.
It was nice to watch Ubaldo Jimenez deliver an effective start in that rain-makeup game in Minnesota on Thursday night, but the deal can't help but limit his future opportunities to re-establish himself in the rotation. It would have been delusional to think he's suddenly going to morph back into the guy who was so good right before the Orioles signed him 2 { years ago.
Miley is a well-traveled journeyman who will be playing for his fourth team in the last three years, but he won 16 games and made the National League All-Star team with the Diamondbacks in 2012 and he was 11-11 last year with the Red Sox. He has averaged nearly 200 innings in his four full major league seasons.
He may not be a sexy acquisition, but he makes sense.
