The four Orioles spring training nuggets that fascinated me the most this week
The four Orioles spring training nuggets that fascinated me the most this week
The news from Sarasota in the first week-plus of spring training could have plenty of long-term ramifications for the Orioles on the mound and in the outfield.
Back in my day (leans back in his chair, looks longingly into the distance), the first week or so of spring training was always the best — months worth of stories in a Notes app ready to report, no games to complicate things, still a lot of excitement to be there.
This year’s condensed schedule meant that was quite a cramped time before games started, and the Orioles are already right in the thick of games as they prepare for Opening Day. It’s been an adjustment following from afar and reading everything, but I’ve done a decent job at it. And here are some things that really made me think over the last week.
1. No right answers on stretching out Tyler Wells and Jorge López
With respect to prospects Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall, whose major league debuts are still to come, some of the best raw stuff on the Orioles’ roster right now probably belongs to a pair of pitchers whose fates for 2022 seem up in the air: Tyler Wells and Jorge López.
With those two hard-throwing right-handers, the Orioles are tantalized with what it could look like as a starter and thus stretching them out this spring. They’re different cases from one another, but in both instances, pursuing that middle-of-the-road path just seems dicey, even if the optimal outcome is clearly the most valuable.
Wells’ case isn’t exactly unique for the game itself. The hard-throwing reliever was a starter all the way in the Minnesota Twins organization, but had Tommy John surgery on his elbow and rehabbed through the lost COVID season before the Orioles took him in the Rule 5 draft. Locked on the roster all year, he pitched in relief and was the team’s closer by the end of the season, but his starter background and stuff profile is obviously attractive to explore in the rotation. Boston is doing the same thing with a Rule 5 pick they had success with in 2021, Garrett Whitlock.
As a concept, it’s a very traditional procedure to blood a pitcher in the big leagues, get him some time in the bullpen then build back up to being a starter after that experience is gained. In practice, with the narrow scope of the team’s I’ve followed and covered, it’s hard to remember a recent shining example of that working out.
The Orioles are still in a position on the competitive aspirations spectrum (the low end of it) to be able to roll those dice for the slim prospect of reward, but any kind of poor outcome, health or otherwise, opens them up to having to answer why they didn’t leave well enough alone. Hopefully, they take precautions to ensure Wells can go back to being a trusted reliever if the experiment goes sideways or they decide they don’t need him.
The latter part would especially be true if López, who spent most of 2020 and 2021 in the Orioles’ rotation but struggled to pitch deep into games, gets one last crack at the rotation. The calculus is basically the opposite with him. He’s been stretched-out before, and has tantalized as a starter even if it didn’t work out for a variety of reasons.
If one that was in the water supply last year — the amount of personal stress his son’s illness that required a bone marrow transplant last year — proves true, the Orioles would be well within their rights to see if he can start again. They don’t have a lot to lose from trying, as he showed he could transition well to the bullpen last season. But having him (or either) of these pitchers in the rotation to start the season would be a statement about last year’s crop of rookie starters — all but one of whom would either be pushed to Norfolk or the major league bullpen.
2. The other shoe with Trey Mancini in the outfield
Trey Mancini was told this month that he’d be playing some outfield this spring, which is an interesting development for several reasons. There is the idea of positional flexibility with Ryan Mountcastle locked in at first base, to be sure, and how the designated hitter spot will be required for Adley Rutschman a few times a week once he’s called up early in the season. Mancini’s marketability as a late-summer rental also factors in.
I wonder if there’s not short-term ramifications for another of the Orioles’ established outfielders that’s worth factoring in here. Since we’re in the fourth year of the Orioles having more outfielders who should play than outfield spots, the caveat that this group is hardly ever healthy together seems superfluous. But to have Mancini working in right field, which was previously believed to be the permanent domain of Anthony Santander, seems like it means something.
Santander is coming off a down year, but put in real work on his body to prevent the injuries that hampered him last year from coming back. It would be a sell-low situation considering how he performed in 2021, yet the switch-hitting Santander at age-27 making $3.15 million with two years of club control left is still a fine trade asset.
If the plan is to have Kyle Stowers in right field at some point this season, this is probably a thought the Orioles are having now. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like there’s more at play here than the obvious.
3. The Adley Rutschman-sized void in camp is odd
Seeing the Internet go nuts for a Bobby Witt Jr. home run Tuesday only highlighted that his peer atop league-wide prospect rankings, Rutschman, isn’t playing in the Orioles’ games and driving the storylines of this camp the way he was meant to.
It’s probably all for the better — there’s only so many ways to write around what the Orioles will do with him come Opening Day — though it would have been fantastic to see him go scorched-earth in his game opportunities and see how that could force their hand.
Without him in the fold, at least for now, it seems like there’s something missing. That’s not to say that the rest of the prospects in camp aren’t getting plenty of chances to shine. Stowers’ home run Tuesday was impressive. Grayson Rodriguez’s appearance Monday was meaningful, and Wednesday night, Kyle Bradish will start under the lights away at the Yankees. These are all meaningful occurrences, the kinds of things that should be happening in Orioles camp.
It’s discounting everyone else to say that it’s a bit of a drag without Rutschman, but I’m sure there’s a sense of that in Sarasota — for those not relieved he isn’t forcing his way onto the Opening Day roster.
4. Mark Trumbo on the Orioles’ hitting coaches
Fascinating may not be the appropriate thought here—it was more just an approving nod. And for the purposes of this space, I wanted to just drop in the block quote of what Mark Trumbo said about the Orioles hiring Matt Borgschulte and Ryan Fuller as their hitting coaches despite backgrounds that didn’t produce major league hitting coaches a decade ago but absolutely do now.
Even if more and more of baseball is turning to coaches with backgrounds like the Orioles did, harping on their backgrounds is beside the point. There’s a natural caveat with this that it’s not clear that anything the Orioles are building with their major or minor league coaching staffs will lead to a major league winner, but the combination of knowledge, curiosity, collaboration, and continuity are a big part of what they believe could bring them there.
They challenge each other and push each other plenty, but in a productive way. There’s not really a place for a former big leaguer saying, ‘Well, that’s not how I did it’ and stunting progress. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.