The Baltimore Orioles, over the last few years, have given fans a lot to be happy and excited about.
We have seen pitchers like Corbin Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez and Kyle Bradish become household names in Birdland rather quickly. However, many Oriole fans will still tell you their favorite O’s teams were those of the early 2010s that finally brought competitive baseball back to Charm City.
There are countless fan favorite players from that stretch of teams, but I wanted to give credit to right-hander Chris Tillman, who at that point was the closest thing Baltimore has had to an ace since Mike Mussina.
Tillman’s overall stats are by no means gaudy. His career ERA sits at 4.57 with an ERA+ at just 91. But that by no means takes away from the impact he was able to make on the Orioles’ rotation during his time in orange and black.
Tillman was the Orioles’ Opening Day starter for three straight seasons from 2014-2016. Baltimore went 3-0 in those games and Tillman’s final lines in each of those games are as follows.
2014: 5 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K
2015: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 4 K
2016: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 5 K (rain delay caused this short start)
That is good for a 1.31 ERA across 13.2 innings of work on one of the biggest days on the baseball calendar.
Aside from the Opening Day memories, Tillman strung together a couple of quality years with the O’s as well. From 2013-2016, Tillman was as reliable as it gets, eclipsing 170 innings pitched in all four seasons and 200 innings pitched in two of them.
From 2012-2016, Tillman’s ERA sat at 3.81, a very respectable mark. He was also selected as an American League All-Star in 2013. In a time where the Orioles rotation was a revolving door, Tillman provided some much-needed stability.
Now that we’ve refamiliarized ourselves with Tillman and his work, I wanted to go over what allowed him to be such an underrated asset for the Orioles.
Tillman operated with a five-pitch mix, including a four-seam fastball, slider, changeup, 12-6 curveball and cutter. While he never really possessed plus velocity, averaging a fastball around the low 90s, Tillman had excellent extension.
Extension is as simple as it sounds, a measurement from the front of the pitching rubber to their release point. Likely aided by his 6’5 frame, Tillman averaged six feet and five inches of extension, placing him in the 77th percentile of Major League Baseball. By reducing the distance his pitches would have to travel to home, Tillman was able to make his pedestrian fastball appear a couple of ticks higher.
Another one of Tillman’s calling cards likely played off his first one. He had a run value of one on both his fastball and changeup, good for the 60th and 69th percentile in MLB, respectively. Run value is another metric used by Baseball Savant that measures the run impact an event has based on runners on base, outs and ball and strike counts, measured on a per pitch basis.
Therefore, Tillman, who threw his fastball at a 53% clip, was able to speed up the internal clock of batters and disrupt timing with his off-speed pitches, like his changeup that he mixed in 15% of the time. While Tillman never had the devastating stuff to blow batters away, his unique ability to manipulate timing allowed him to be a successful pitcher for, likely, a lot longer than he should of been.
To wrap up, I know this is cliche, but Tillman’s ability to adjust and overcome were a big part of successes in the league. Between making tweaks to his fastball, adjusting his pitch mix to complement one another and finding ways to go deep into games, Tillman cemented himself as a fan favorite Oriole.
For me personally, Tillman was towards the early days of my Oriole fandom. I remember his Opening Day run, All-Star Game honor and, even though it didn’t go our way, his gutsy Wild Card performance against the Toronto Blue Jays in 2016.
The analytics may have never suggested he was anything special, but Tillman was one of those rare players who seemed to always be able to prove them wrong. His efforts will forever be remembered in Birdland, as he was a key contributor of bringing excitement back to Baltimore.
What’s your favorite Chris Tillman memory? Let us know in the comments below! Make sure to follow The Baltimore Battery on Facebook, Twitter (X) and TikTok, and use the hashtag #baltimorebattery when sharing our content!
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