In Bundy, O’s focus on now, not on future
More than their collection of sluggers and yearly climbs to the top of the home run charts, more than their well-built bullpen full of All-Stars, and more than their leave-it-late approach to free agency, the Orioles’ run of success over the last four years has been defined by their willingness to lop off pieces of their core to help them win right now.
In turning Dylan Bundy loose in the starting rotation, as the Orioles seem to be doing after announcing that he’ll start today at Tampa Bay, the Orioles are putting a human face to that last aspect. There’s a hazard to it, one they have to have considered as they risk their former top prospect’s becoming a symbol of a myopic focus on winning today at tomorrow’s expense.
Their mindset when it comes to future assets is, to a point, admirable. In Boston, Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski is being treated as if the strategy he’s executing now and did for several years as the top baseball man in Detroit — selling off Tigers prospects for sure things — is exclusive to him. But Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette has done the same here, to a lesser degree.
He turned Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop — young assets, if not prospects — into Scott Feldman; Josh Hader and others into Bud Norris; Eduardo Rodriguez into Andrew Miller; and Zach Davies into Gerardo Parra. In each case, he added to his major league team in the only way that’s really possible midseason, and it cost the Orioles down the road.
The idea that Dylan Bundy will, at least temporarily, be part of the starting rotation is of the same belief. It’s also completely different.
Bundy, just 23 but locked onto the major league roster because he’s out of options, has been a revelation this year. He’s pitching like the 19-year-old phenom who tore through the Orioles system in 2012. He’s pitching on four and five days’ rest in two- and three-inning stints, and his arm is fresh every time he steps onto the mound. His fastball is sitting at 94 to 96 mph and reaching 98, his curveball is as sharp as ever, and the changeup he’s developed is a reliable strikeout pitch.
Most important, his arm is healthy. He says it’s recovering well after each outing. He’s even taking bullpen sessions just to stay sharp in between relief appearances. The old Bundy might not have said anything even if his arm were barking a bit. But now he would, even if he’s the type of pitcher who will take the ball even if he shouldn’t.
All told, it’s not like this wasn’t coming. Manager Buck Showalter had said it was a matter of “when,” not “if,” Bundy would start.
But this whole year for him was about delivering a healthy Bundy to the starting rotation for 2017 and beyond. Despite an innings limit that kept him to just 1032⁄3 in the minor leagues in 2012, his first professional season, Bundy needed Tommy John surgery in 2013. He came back slowly in the second half of 2014, and threw just 22 innings over eight starts in 2015 before shoulder soreness ended that season early, too. He also was feeling arm soreness in the Arizona Fall League last season, leaving after just two appearances.
That means that many of the generally accepted baselines for innings growth are hard to apply to Bundy. Whether you want to add 30 innings to what he did last year, or increase it by 20 percent, you don’t have a starter’s workload.
All that is to say that Bundy, a former top-10 prospect in baseball who still has a bright future, is a unique case in a lot of ways. One way the Orioles do not want him to be unique is for him to be the person who comes to fully represent their prioritization of the present over the future.