So far at just over 50 games into the regular season the Orioles regular hitters ranked in by OPS
- Gunnar Henderson – .939
- Jordan Westburg – .859
- Adley Rutschman – .806
- Ryan Mountcastle – .797
- Colton Cowser – .786
- Ryan O’Hearn – .781
- Jorge Mateo – .752
- Anthony Santander – .712
- Ramon Urias – .602
- Cedric Mullins – .537
- James McCann – .501
- Austin Hays – .445
As a bonus here are the numbers of the prospects that have gotten some at bats
Kyle Stowers – .924 (it was .584 like 2 games ago but that is what a hot stretch will do when you only have 20 ABs on the season lol)
Heston Kjerstad – .437
Jackson Holiday – .170
So what you’ll notice looking at that list is that all of the O’s young guys are killing it and all the O’s veterans are killing us. This is an interesting dilemma because the O’s have young guys that are foaming at the mouth for an opportunity to play in the big leagues and I think that if it were Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg OPSing in the mid 500s and 400s that we might have already seen a lot more Heston Kjerstad, Kyle Stowers and maybe even Coby Mayo and Connor Norby already but those guys are doing very well and instead it is our veterans who got us through the bad years and were the building blocks on which this team is built so it is harder to just to cast them aside now that they’ve had a bad couple months to start the season.
Which is why of course the O’s have not bailed on those guys. To Hyde and front office’s credit they were pretty quick to recognize that Cowser was balling and make him the regular starter over Hays and they put Jordan Westburg in the starting lineup almost every game this year so they’ve been good about handing over the reigns to young guys when they’ve been obviously good enough.
But if Mullins continues to struggle at what point will the O’s be forced to give his spot to one of the younger guys and if Hays continues to struggle how long will he be able to hold on to even the bench outfielder spot? Also at what point is Ramon Urias’ utility spot in jeopardy as he continues to struggle? Will Jorge Mateo continue to be this productive at the plate and does he even need to be a good hitter to justify his place on the roster?
These are tough questions to ask because I don’t want to have to move on from these guys that have been on the team for year I think that winning the World Series with these guys who toughed it out through the tanking era would be really cool, some of these guys’ Oriole tenures overlapped with Adam Jones so I am not chomping at the bit to replace them. But a team can only have so many guys OPSing under .600 on the roster and still expect to be competitive.
What will the Orioles do if Cedric Mullins continues to struggle?
So the answer to this one starts with moving Colton Cowser to Centerfield because none of the other Orioles prospects are centerfielders so the question then is who is going to replace Cowser in left? The serious options are Kyle Stowers and Heston Kjertsad.
Stowers is currently on the roster and has played well in his limited opportunities so far, he is probably the better defender of the 2 which probably carries a lot of weight with the coaching staff who want to feel like they can really trust whoever they put out in left field especially if reliable defender Cedric Mullins won’t be the one patrolling centerfield.
Kjerstad is the bigger prospect of the 2 so if you are the front office you are more invested in seeing your former number 2 pick now top 25 prospect in baseball player get the opportunity to succeed and fulfill his potential and he is 24 years old so it’s not like you have a couple more years to find the perfect landing spot for him. He also hit pretty well in the limited at bats he got last year and was trusted with a spot on the playoff roster.
Part of what complicates this whole thing that Cowser, Mullins, Stowers and Kjerstad are all left handed hitters so it’s not like you could go with some sort of platoon option where Cedric just faces righties and the other guy just faces lefties because that would be putting whoever left handed prospect gets stuck facing only lefties in a bad position.
Another part of what makes this difficult is that both Kjerstad and Stowers have not entirely seized the moment in their opportunity, Cowser took Hays’ regular lineup spot because in his limited at bats and opportunities he really shined. Now Kjerstad only got 14 at bats in his brief stay in the Majors this year which I wouldn’t call a legitimate opportunity and Stowers is up to just 20 at bats this year and until the other day when he went 3 for 4 with 2 doubles he had not been particularly impressive. That is not to say that neither of them can take over a daily lineup spot just that neither of them have forced Hyde’s hand the way Cowser did.
In the last paragraph I kind of disregarded Stowers’ good numbers so far this season because so much of his production came in one game yesterday but I will say that if Stowers can use that good game as a launching point and continue to look good in his opportunities over the next few weeks then if Mullins continues to struggles and the coaches are forced to bench Mullins then I think Stowers should get that spot.
Now if Stowers is just average or below average in his opportunities going forward than I think that should a daily lineup spot in the outfield open up then they should promote Kjerstad and give him a long runway to claim the spot. Call him up, put him in the lineup everyday and let him work through the struggles just like Gunnar and Adley did when they were called up and believe that the talent that made you draft him #2 overall and that pushed him up into the top 20 prospect rankings will win out and he’ll start producing at a high level.
There is another option that I didn’t really mention because I just don’t see it happening and that is if Austin Hays turns it around then he could just go back to being the everyday left fielder.
Anyway I’m spending a lot of time on this but I think the most likely thing that Cedric will get it going at the plate and will keep his spot. In his last few games he’s hit some balls hard even if most of them didn’t get down for hits and the at bats look more comfortable and competitive than they did when he was really struggling earlier in the season.
How long can Hays hold onto that bench spot if his OPS stays in the 400s?
Right now Hays has basically been relegated to the Ryan McKenna role where he doesn’t play most days unless they are facing a lefty that they feel like he has a good matchup against and then if the Orioles already have the lead and Santander isn’t due up to hit in the next inning he’ll come in for the last inning or so as a defensive replacement.
This may seem like harsh criticism but Austin Hays in the Ryan McKenna role is basically useless because at least Ryan McKenna could in theory be a pinch runner, play centerfield and even though I didn’t always like it he was a decent platoon hitter against lefties and right now Hays can’t really do any of those things. McKenna was routinely squeezed into games in place of Santander in the lare innings and I always hated that because Santander the defensive boost you get from the defensive replacement isn’t nearly as impactful as what you lose at the plate when you lose Santander and you might say well in a lot of those situation Santander wasn’t even supposed to hit in the next inning so you really don’t lose anything and to that I would say how often is the difference in a game a fly ball to right field that Ryan McKenna could field but Santander couldn’t and I would answer my own question and say that has actually never happened and I can think of at least one 9th inning fly ball that Santander would have caught had he been allowed to remain in the game.
You might think that Hays’ deep bench spot is safe because the next guy due for a call up is Heston Kjerstad and the O’s have clearly shown they don’t want him up in a bench role but Hays is so far down on the depth chart that I don’t think the O’s would need to call up an outfielder to replace him. I think the O’s would think about calling up Connor Norby or Coby Mayo once he gets healthy just to have more right handed bats on the bench because right now the only righty bats they have to come off the bench and pinch hit are Ramon Urias, James McCann and Austin Hays and if you’re an opposing manager and you see the O’s take Colton Cowser out of the game for Ramon Urias that feels like a win.
Norby and Mayo are unproven but they’ve both played really well at triple A for a long time and I would feel better rolling the dice on the young guys than putting my fate in the hands of a group of right handed bats that are combining for an OPS in the high .400s.
So how long does Hays have to get right? He started the All Star game last year and by all accounts the coaches and his teammates really like him so I don’t think Hyde or Elia’s hands are hovering over the “your fired” button like mine are as a fan but at a certain point you can’t justify your top prospects set triple A longevity records because you want to hold on to a legacy guy who hasn’t played well since May 2023. I think that the O’s should let Hays try to work through it until the trade deadline and then see if there are any teams that will give you a lottery ticket prospect or 2 for the opportunity to try to see if they can tap into All Star Austin Hays. I don’t think the O’s will have to hold off a horde of MLB GM’s trying to trade for Austin Hays but there should be at least a few that look at some of the great stretches he’s had at the plate and try to see if they can buy low on him and then build him back up.
If nobody will bite or nobody is willing to trade you anything of remote value then I think after the tradeline you let Mayo or Norby have his spot on the 26 man roster (if they haven’t been traded for Mason Miller).
Is Ramon Urias’ utility spot in jeopardy?
Ramon Urias is almost exactly what you would want in your deep bench utility infielder. He is a good defender at 2nd and 3rd and can play passably at short or first base. Although he has struggled at the plate so far for the past three seasons he has been an around league average hitter.
He is good enough that you could play him everyday and bat him in the 9 hole and if there were injuries to your main starting infielders or if Jorge Mateo forgets how to hit like he did last year but he is also not so good that putting him on the bench and only playing him once a week feels like a waste. In a world where injuries are turned off I think you would move on from Ramon Urias but just this week Jordan Westburg was hit on the hand and even though he is ok it is a reminder that good players get hurt and it is good to have guys on your bench who can come in and play a bunch of positions at a pretty high level.
Now I will say that ideally Jackson Holliday or Coby Mayo will get called up at some point and be given a chance to play everyday and as a result Jorge Mateo would be that bench guy who can come in and play a bunch of positions and if that were the case then the Orioles would have to decide between Urias and Hays as to who is going to get that last spot on the bench. But with Mayo currently injured and Holliday still trying to bounce back from his disappointing stint in the majors that doesn’t seem necessarily imminent.
So I would say that pretty much regardless of offensive production Urias’s spot on the bench is safe until either Holliday or Mayo or even Norby get called up and even then they would probably find a way to keep Urias on the roster until they were sure the new guy was going to stick this time.
Will Jorge Mateo continue to be this productive and does that even matter?
The simple answer is no and no. I would love for Mateo to keep up the bat and be even a slightly above average offensive plate but we’ve seen over the past 3 seasons that he simply cannot be relied up to do that. Regardless of what is numbers are right now I think we can expect his slash line to end up around .220/.267/.350 but his speed and value as a pinch runner and versatile defensive replacement make it so he will be a valuable part of the team for at least the rest of this season.
With the O’s being able to keep up a 100 win season pace it is possible that the front office will be patient with these struggling veterans but if we are halfway through the season and they still haven’t snapped out of it the front office will have no choice but to give one of their top prospects a shot and unless there is an injury the only way to clear up space will be to DFA someone so we are on a collision course with some tough decisions.
The Dishwasher 
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