Orioles reliever Pedro Strop has had an ugly season thus far for Baltimore and some are blaming the World Baseball Classic for his struggles, MASNSports.com reports. Strop won't completely rule out the WBC as a contributing factor.
Strop pitched six times over a 13-day span in the WBC for Team Dominican Republic. He went 6 2/3 scoreless innings and gave up just three hits and no walks with seven strikeouts.
Over 11 innings with the Orioles thus far, Strop has allowed eight runs -- seven earned -- on nine hits with nine walks and 11 Ks for an ERA of 5.73 and a WHIP of 1.64.
"I don't know because it was my first WBC and I don't have any other experience with it," Strop explained. "But I felt real good pitching then. I don't know what to tell you about it. If you go in the WBC and pitch a lot and come to your team and feel a little sore or something, you can look at that. But I don't feel anything wrong with my arm. My arm feels good. Maybe the high intensity of the games and you go back to lower intensity in spring training, maybe it changed something with mechanics. I'm not saying that is what happened, but maybe. Who knows?"
Strop has actually been improved of late with one run allowed over his last 5 2/3 innings spanning seven appearances. That said, he's still walked six over that span.