The Winter of Coby Mayo: On growing prospect buzz, and what the Orioles' prep hitter success could mean for 2022
Each passing prospect list seems to have the Orioles' young slugger higher and higher. On the rise of Coby Mayo's prospect star, and what their hits with high school hitters could mean for 2022.
It seemed like the Orioles were home for all of August and September last year, and on one of those nights where the workload was light, I decided to take a pass in my notebook at where I thought their top prospects stacked up for the pending assembly of Baseball America’s top prospect rankings.
The exercise was partially something to kill the time, but had a few real purposes. One, it would serve as a list to base reporting on in the coming days and weeks. But it also helped to group players together in the kinds of tiers that drive that process.
I relay this because I dug through notebooks recently to see what that list looked like, and hilariously enough, Coby Mayo wasn’t on it. I was going off the top of my head, and just forgot him, even though the story I’d written about him right around then was one of the more informative to report I was part of all season.
When I realized that error, I slotted him somewhere in the mid-to-low teens, I believe, and I’m glad I didn’t stick with that.
Mayo signed as a high school senior for $1.75 million on the back of his immense power potential, and after a knee injury forced him to start his season in the Florida Complex League, he made tremendous gains (outlined in the above-linked story) to post an eye-popping line in his pro debut. He had nine home runs with a .981 OPS in 51 games between the FCL and Low-A Delmarva, and while it was a small sample size, it did a lot to highlight how he’d answer some of the contact quality and swing path questions that stood before him.
My reporting for the rankings included one evaluator who was surprised to hear Mayo wasn’t among the team’s top five prospects, which warranted a reevaluation in his place in the process. Two-plus months of torrid production in the lower levels is much easier to dream on than a high-minors pitcher whose warts are exposed in the big leagues or a lower-ceiling player with more experience, I grant you.
But if a realistic short-term outcome for Mayo is a Gunnar Henderson-esque first full season where he ends up in Double-A at age-20, that needed to be reflected in his position in the Orioles’ rankings. I decided to put him 10th, which seems light compared to the rest of the prospect industrial complex, whose rankings came out in the ensuing months. Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs had him seventh, The Athletic No. 9. On Tuesday, he was the sixth and final Orioles prospect at No. 98 overall in the ESPN top-100 list that covers the entire league, representing the most bullish of them all.
It makes sense. Mayo’s age, power profile, physicality, and projection all make the best-case scenario an incredibly productive one for the Orioles. It’s not a high-risk bet, as you can easily point to the outcomes and underlying batted ball data from his game action and see a player worth believing in. It’s certainly a high-reward proposition, though, to be early and still be right.
Henderson’s precedent is instructive, though. The 42nd overall pick in 2019, similarly a slugging prep infielder who signed for an overslot bonus, came out of 2020 having been the youngest player at the Orioles’ alternate site but equipped with invaluable experience of improving his swing outside game action and fine-tuning it for when games came.
He had a similar amount of buzz last winter despite not playing in games, and came out to tear up Delmarva at the start of the season. He had eight home runs and a .943 OPS there in 31 games in May and June, compared to Mayo’s .963 OPS and five home runs in 23 games at the end of the season.
If an outlet, as I did, sees a parallel and doesn’t want to miss that wave, then now is the time to be high on Mayo.
There’s another aspect of this that’s worth noting as well where it relates to the Orioles’ 2022 draft pick, which at this point is first overall. With a full spring of baseball ahead of us, three of the top draft prospects are high school hitters in Druw Jones, Termarr Johnson, and Elijah Green.
Putting the Orioles’ seeming aversion to using high picks on pitchers aside, it doesn’t seem at this point like there are any such real candidates for 1-1, so that’s an easy bucket to ignore. They’ve taken polished and productive college hitters with the last few top picks, and paid them below-slot signing bonuses to enhance their ability to spend later in the draft, so that’s always a possibility here.
But given the strength of the system overall, it seems the Orioles are well-placed to diversify their prospect base with one of those high school hitters. Fortunately for them, with picks like Henderson and Mayo, they’ve shown an aptitude of identifying not only how these younger high school players can best improve but which players are most willing to do that. Henderson struggled in his short-season debut in 2019 and was overmatched at times in 2020 at the Bowie camp, but stayed the course with the coaches and was rewarded.
Mayo, too, had to commit to a new way of training and work extensively on his swing path to get to this point. The Orioles wouldn’t have made such commitments without confirming they were the types of players who could do that, and their ability to identify it projects well to the decision they could have to make in July.
It’s one thing to be able to identify the high-floor-with-upside mix of college bats at the top of the draft they’ve taken recently, and another to be able to do it with the more limited data and information available from high school players off the showcase circuit.
There are plenty of pitfalls into talking one’s self into a famous player as the Orioles’ top pick, as they’ve proven in recent years. But those who haven’t learned and can’t stop looking at someone like James Madison outfielder Chase DeLauter on draft lists will have a lot to dream on with any of those top high school bats.
Perhaps the Orioles’ track record recent (albeit limited) track record with prep hitters will embolden them to make it a reality.
John,
Coby seems to be a nice kid. My wife and I happened to meet him at a Florida Panthers hockey game in November. That arena is minutes from where he went to high school (Majorie Stoneman High School) in Ft. Lauderdale. He said at the time he has just come home from Instructional in Sarasota.
As a long suffering beer vendor who has worked far too many games with hardly any fans, I said we can surly use your help in Baltimore and then smiled.