Vespi 'pretty impressive' in O's bullpen

KANSAS CITY -- When the Orioles optioned left-hander Nick Vespi weeks ago, it wasn’t a roster shuffle they wanted to make, but one they felt they had to. Vespi had pitched two innings -- in extras, at that -- for his first big league win in his debut on May 20. Already to that point, he had been riding a streak of zeros unrivaled across the organization.

But at that point, the O’s were in a gauntlet of their schedule, innings at a premium and with an eight-game road swing through New York and Boston on the horizon.

“That was a move we didn’t want to make,” manager Brandon Hyde, whose team suffered a 7-5 loss to the Royals on Thursday night, said earlier this week.

It’s easy to see why, Vespi’s latest act merely another 1 1/3 scoreless innings in the opener of a four-game set at Kauffman Stadium to run his total on the year to 23 2/3 (inclusive of his time with Triple-A Norfolk). Only one pitcher in the Majors, Tampa Bay’s J.P. Feyereisen, can still lay claim to a feat as prolonged as that to start this season.

“He's doing outstanding,” Hyde said after Thursday’s loss. “It’s early in his big career, and hasn’t given up a run. Pretty impressive.”

All the while, there was plenty of reason for Vespi to finally fold against the Royals.

Staked with a 7-4 deficit in the seventh inning, Vespi promptly issued a four-pitch leadoff walk -- and against a left-handed hitter, something he’d done only twice this season. To quell the threat, he also did something he hasn’t done much of this year, inducing just his third double-play ball, though a hard-hit one at that.

Crisis temporarily avoided, the threat was fueled once again when Emmanuel Riviera lofted a triple off the wall in left-center. Each of those balls were scorched past Vespi with 110.1 mph and 100.7 mph exit velocities, respectively.

But Vespi didn’t waver, retiring Michael A. Taylor to be able to walk off the mound with another ho-hum scoreless frame. And by the time Vespi calmly retired Nicky Lopez when given another batter in the eighth inning, it was merely gravy on an already torrid start to the year.

“Did a great job,” Hyde reaffirmed.

How, exactly, has Vespi accomplished his start?

Much is reliant on his slider, a darling of the Pitching Ninja Twitter account having induced whiffs half the times he’d thrown it entering play on Thursday -- yet zero times against Kansas City. Not a hard thrower, the similarity in Vespi’s velocity across pitches allows him to play each off another. Against the Royals, his slider averaged 83.5 mph and topped out at 85.9 -- each just a hair down from his fastball average of 88.5 mph and max of 89.7.

“I've just stuck to the same gameplan I've had in years past, and it worked for me this year,” Vespi said at the time of his callup. “ … I'm just attacking the zone with all my pitches. There's no secret to it. That's what I've been doing, and it's been working.”

And it wasn’t long ago that Vespi thought this all not possible.

Vespi was left off the 40-man roster and thus unprotected from the Rule 5 Draft, which was canceled this past offseason due to the lockout. Had it played out, he was a very likely candidate to have gone selected, an MLB-ready lefty who could slot seamlessly into numerous bullpens.

The 26-year-old has said, despite the potential for slighting to come with such an omission, that he’s happy to be pitching for Baltimore especially, the organization that made him an 18th-round pick in the 2015 MLB Draft. And the feeling is mutual, Vespi the proprietor of the team football that has made the rounds during pregame stretch.

Seven long years and an untimely debut given the circumstances are the only things that stood between Vespi and this run of success. When he was given his first callup in May, he said he was still numb while addressing the media, standing in the Orioles’ clubhouse for the first time.

The only individuals who appear to be at a loss for physical proficiency are those in opposing batter’s boxes.