Oregon baseball has shown signs of a prolific offense this season, yet it’s hampered by an unreliable and inconsistent starting pitching staff.

It feels like last year all over again.

This program, which was pitching-heavy during the George Horton era, has been flipped on its head. Oregon has begun to develop a higher rate of position player prospects — particularly those with power — while pitching has been more of a weak spot.

And it’s not to say it’s been all doom and gloom; Jace Stoffal has started to look more like a Friday starter, and the Ducks have been blessed with an utterly dominant closer in Josh Mollerus. But after Stoffal, the state of the rotation gets ugly very quickly, and that was no more apparent than in last weekend’s critical series loss to rival Oregon State.

There’s no easy fix, no magic spell that’s going to cure this young staff of its erraticism. Since they’re young, they’re going to have ups and downs. That’s undeniable. But I believe it would be beneficial, going forward, to make Matthew Grabmann the Sunday starter, as opposed to Leo Uelmen in the way things are currently slated.

Grabmann was actually Oregon’s No. 3 starter to begin the season, behind Uelmen but ahead of Jackson Pace, with Logan Mercado in the ace slot as Stoffal dealt with a minor injury. But Stoffal’s reentry pushed Mercado back to the bullpen, and Pace’s early-season success moved him ahead of Grabmann.

Fast forward to now, and the Ducks have begun to settle in with a rotation of Stoffal-Mercado-Uelmen (with no more four-game series on the schedule). Grabmann has joined fellow highly touted Canadian freshman Turner Spoljaric as a long relief man, while Pace has made spot appearances in the bullpen while acting as the team’s emergency/midweek fourth starter.

The rotation shakeups/readjustments show that head coach Mark Wasikowski is willing to make decisions based on performance. He might need to make another now. In Grabmann’s first couple starts, he struggled to put hitters away, constantly falling into deep counts. With Pace allowing just one run in his first 12 innings in the rotation, at the time, it made sense to favor him over Grabmann.

But that’s in the past.

Pace’s performance fell off a cliff, and he was demoted from the starting mix. Uelmen, meanwhile, has struggled nearly as badly, yet he’s remained Oregon’s No. 3 starter. He gave the Ducks an uncompetitive showing in Sunday’s critical rubber game against Oregon State, walking three batters and giving up a grand slam in the first inning. He struggled to throw the ball over the plate, and when he did throw it over the plate, he threw a fastball straight as an arrow right down the middle.

Uelmen has an ugly 1.78 WHIP, with 43 hits and 18 walks allowed, not to mention the seven hit batters. His 6.55 ERA is the third-worst among qualified pitchers in the Pac-12 — his rotation mate Mercado has the second-worst.

Oregon has a talented team. It’s a squad on the precipice of breaking into the top-25 rankings. But as we learned in quite unnerving fashion last year, it’s tough to win important games against good teams when you can’t trust your starting pitchers.

Truthfully, I’m less worried about Mercado, mostly because he’s a veteran with experience, plus he has a solid 9.56 K/9. Like most of the pitchers on this staff, he just needs to keep the walks down. He turned in a strong showing in Saturday’s loss to Oregon State, allowing one run in five innings.

But this is where Grabmann comes in.

Grabmann, who was ranked the No. 54 right-handed pitcher and No. 188 overall recruit in the country by Perfect Game, has shown steady progression in his bullpen appearances. At one point, he’d thrown 13 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings. He’s allowed just 15 hits in 25 2/3 innings, with an opponent batting average of .183. His season ERA was at 1.50 before making one bad pitch in Saturday’s loss to Oregon State, which ballooned it to a still-great 2.45.

There’s a reason Grabmann went into this season as Oregon’s most highly touted freshman arm. Just getting a glimpse of him, you can see that his fastball has more movement on it than any other pitcher. Even this early in his career, opposing hitters are hardly touching it. He’s been reported to reach the mid-90s with it as well.

Grabmann’s main issue to work through is commanding that fastball. As I said, it has a lot of movement, so he often seems to have little idea of where it’s going. He walked 15 batters in his first 16 2/3 innings, and that walk rate has only slightly improved in his last few outings.

But Uelmen isn’t exactly a control artist either, with a BB/9 of 4.9. Plus, he’s allowed 11.73 hits per nine innings — that’s over twice as many as Grabmann’s 5.26. Both the rankings and results indicate that Grabmann has the most upside among any of Oregon’s freshman pitchers; if he can get those walk numbers down to even below-average levels, he’ll be dominant.

With Uelmen or Pace, though they have talent and could still be valuable assets on this team, there just isn’t as much upside. They struggle with walks at times too, but they don’t have the same level of stuff Grabmann has. As we saw when Pace gave up 15 runs over 1 2/3 innings: When one of these guys can’t find the strike zone, he also tends to get hit a lot. Grabmann, at least, will limit the hits even on his worst control days.

Now, inserting Grabmann into the rotation isn’t going to solve all of Oregon’s problems. Grabmann, like any young pitcher, has things to work through. He made a costly pitch on Saturday, one that got smacked for a go-ahead three-run homer. But he’s earned a chance at reentering the starting three, especially with the struggles of Uelmen, Pace and Mercado.

Spoljaric is a name to watch too, given he’s in a similar position as Grabmann. He was Oregon’s second-most highly touted freshman arm coming into the season, with both happening to hail from Canada. His performance has been iffier than Grabmann’s (though arguably better than Pace and Uelmen’s), so I don’t mind keeping him as the long relief guy for now to get acclimated to the college level.

But the Ducks are going to need to make a change, something to shake things up amidst a critical stretch of conference play. Wasikowski has done it before. He needs to take a good, long look at his staff and make the decision that will best benefit his team going forward.