The Orioles have been rumored to be interested in trading for Drew Pomeranz, but is he worth it?

As we get closer to the trade deadline, trade rumors are starting to fly, and being that the Orioles are contenders, they’re buying. There have been a couple names thrown around, but recently, MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reported that the Orioles are looking to acquire a left-handed starter to help with their all-righty rotation, and mentioned Drew Pomeranz as a potential candidate.

Pomeranz is currently having a great year in San Diego, posting a 3.00 ERA with an amazing 10.67 K/9 through 81 innings, but the question isn’t what he’s done so far, the question is, what can we expect from him moving forward? Is he worth trading for? Or is he out-pitching himself? This, my friends, is why we have statistics.

The short answer is, yes, most of what Pomeranz is doing is legit. He’s changed his approach to pitching, he’s added a pitch and changed his repertoire a bit, and it has resulted in a lot of success.

Pomeranz hasn’t really been given the opportunity that he has now before. The closest he’s had to being an everyday starter was with the Rockies in 2012 when he started 22 games with a 4.93 ERA in 96.2 innings.

Since then, he’s been a spot starter and reliever, never amassing more than 100 innings pitched in a season. Now, in his first year with San Diego, Pomeranz is being given an everyday starting job, and he’s running with it.

So what changed? Well, first, he changed up his pitching repertoire a bit. Formerly, he generally threw his fastball around 70% of the time, he was a fastball-first pitcher. Now, he only throws that fastball 47.5% of the time and has added a cut fastball that he throws 12.8% of the time. He’s also put more emphasis on his offspeed pitches, specifically his curveball.

Before this year, Pomeranz used to throw his curveball, at most, about 30% of the time. Now, he’s bumped that up to almost 40%, and it’s a good thing too, because it’s a pretty good curveball. Its got bite to it, it’s a big hook, and it works great as a strikeout pitch.

Pomeranz has also changed where he throws his pitches. If you look at this heatmap, you can see where Pomeranz threw his fastball up until this season. Compare that to this heatmap of where he’s thrown his fastball this season, and you can see the not-so-subtle difference; he’s elevated his fastball more.

He’s done something similar with his curveball too. Take a look at this heatmap and you can see where he’s thrown his curveball up until this year, and when you compare that to this heatmap of where he’s thrown his curveball this year, again there’s a noticeable difference, he’s getting that curveball down in the zone a lot more, breaking it away to left-handers and inside to right-handers.

Looking at his peripheral stats supports the legitimacy of his performance this year as well. While his 2.67 ERA is probably going to go up, his FIP is only 3.32, so he’s out-performing himself only marginally. His BABIP sits at .248, again, a little low which would suggest a small regression in his future (however his career BABIP is only .274), but these aren’t gigantic red flags, rather they suggest that he’s just not a sub-3.00 ERA pitcher, but he’s not too far off.

So Pomeranz has made actual, tangible changes to his game, and that’s resulted in success, it’s not all blind luck, this is skill. I’d project Pomeranz to pitch around a 3.40 ERA the rest of the year, and I think he can keep his K/9 around 10 like he has been all year, and if he can do that, he’ll hands down be one of the best pitchers in the Orioles’ organization, and that’s something the team could really use if they’re going to contend for a World Series.