Leo Tolstoy famously wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Maybe if Tolstoy had been a baseball fan, he would have agreed that bad pitchers are bad each in their own way. Maybe. Because right now, the Orioles have three distinct problems in their starting rotation in Bruce Zimmermann, Dean Kremer, and Jorge López.
Entering the season, the rotation was far from set, but at least John Means and rookies Keegan Akin and Dean Kremer appeared to be locks for a rotation spot. After that, one great big mystery. Then, spring training shook up just about everything: Akin pitched himself out of a job, Kremer’s unsteadiness bumped him down to the fifth spot, Bruce Zimmerman came out of nowhere to nab the third rotation spot, and Jorge López and the just-signed Matt Harvey surprised a bunch of people by making the rotation, too.