The Orioles Just Got Their Closer Back And Might Need A 9th-Inning Committee Anyway

On Saturday night Orioles rookie manager Craig Albernaz found himself mixing and matching in the ninth inning even though his big-money free-agent closer was just back from a lengthy stint on the Injured List.

He may have to get used to it.

July is nearly here and the O’s closer, Ryan Helsley, has tossed just 12 innings and he’s been shaky as heck in doing it. A two-pitch guy who relies heavily on a four-seam fastball that the league slugged a repulsive .667 off or a year ago is having difficulty commanding anything thus far, and looks like the latest in a long line of Mike Elias pitching signings with disastrous results.

Hesley has throw only 40 strikes than balls this season; yeah he has a ridiculous 59% strike rate. The average ball off the bat of an opponent is 93 mph, just blow the official designation for a “hard-hit ball,” … and a staggering 56% of everything hit off Helsley this season has in fact been hard hit.

Here’s a peek at Helsley’s O’s career so far:

Walk Rate: 16%

Strike Rate: 59%

Hard Hit Rate: 55%

.SLG off Four-Seam: .500

.SLG off Slider: .500

The fact he broke down for so long, so soon (especially when the team made it sound like he’d barely need the 15-day stint in the IL is a troubling sign and incredibly on brand for an Elias guy. "Level of concern is not high at all," Albernaz said; the closer missed over six weeks.

And the fact that he’s come off the IL and immediately given up three home runs and also had two utterly non-competitive walks to bottom-of-the-order guys to punctuate Friday’s ninth-inning collapse ain’t great.

Oh, and the timing of all this drama is pretty ugly, too, because the guy who held this late-inning pen together in improbable fashion while Helsley was out – journeyman Rico Garcia – is now back to looking like the guy he was before the first 20 innings of this season.

Bad Timing

Garcia was also a part of that Friday night meltdown, and the lack of a true lefty-lefty specialist will loom very large if in fact Albernaz has to work around his closer. Keegan Akin and Grant Wolfram won’t cut it against elite lefty bats in high-leverage sports.

Garcia was dominant against lefties and righties alike for the first two months of the season, but his last six outings have produced a 7.20 ERA, and, actually the defense has flattered him. Garcia’s FIP in that span is 9.50. Everything is being hit in the air all of a sudden and with a thump.

We may continue to see Yennier Cano matchup beyond the seventh and eighth inning; his sinker is a weapon to lefties and righties when it's on and it's been on all season, getting crucial double plays or ground ball outs or potential ground ball outs (that the brutal infield defense butchers). The league is slugging .156 off the sinker this season, and his strikeout of Kyle Tucker Saturday to avoid what would have been an epic meltdown Saturday might be a preview of what’s to come in the second half of the season.

“It was outstanding by Cano,” Albernaz said after the win Saturday. “Not having Helsley for that stretch of time, like we talked about, put our bullpen guys in a variety of situations, and we were comfortable with Kit (Andrew Kittredge), comfortable with Cano, comfortable with Rico. These guys have been throwing extremely well.”

Helsley, even when getting saves, has been courting disaster. Hopefully the skipper heeds his own words here. The Orioles dug themselves such an early hole, they can't afford to extend too much trust in a close who always looks to be teetering on implosion.

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