How John Means' injury could serve as an accelerant for whatever the Orioles already planned this season
Slow-play the prospects? Say let's just be legends and call them up? Whatever the Orioles planned to do in 2022, losing John Means will only embolden them to stay that course.
At some point this week, if it hasn’t happened already, a few keystrokes in the Orioles’ analytics department will adjust the team’s internal forecasts for an extended period without top starter John Means. They will not like what they see, and there’s not a lot they can do about it.
The time for stocking up on pitching depth is largely finished, and given the shortened spring, teams are hoarding their viable pitchers and not letting them slip to a team like the Orioles on the waiver wire or after a release.
So here the Orioles sit, a week into the season and hoping further tests on Means’ sore pitching arm mean the amount of time he’ll need to spend without a baseball in his hand is measured in days or week instead of months. They have myriad issues that were exposed in a 1-5 start – a top-heavy offense, questionable starting pitching, and a bullpen full of probably good-enough pitchers who turn to goop in the ninth inning – and the steadiness of Means every five days will only serve to make that more difficult.
I can’t help but think that, one way or another, any prolonged absence for Means will serve as an accelerant of sorts for whatever the Orioles planned to do this summer anyway. Bring up the prospects and get this turnaround in motion? Hold tight and keep them in the minors because whatever they’d contribute now isn’t worth whatever club control or salary savings are lost in their primes?
Whichever the Orioles had mapped out in their minds is probably going to happen anyway. Missing Means for however long it turns out they will probably would keep them on whatever path they already chose.
In the interest of not ending another piece by laying out something bad the Orioles can do and end with a flourish by saying they shouldn’t, let’s start with the far less desirable of these two outcomes: the triage option. No splashy prospect promotions, no shotgunning players to the majors, just trying to stay alive each day with nine available innings of pitching until starters get fully stretched out and some of the bulk pitchers distinguish themselves.
Chris Ellis started parallel to Means for Norfolk on Wednesday, and adding him to the roster would be a fine option. But if the Orioles go the route of trying to manage without bringing up their most exciting prospects, that’s about as good as we’d be talking for a while.
Grayson Rodriguez and Kyle Bradish would remain in Triple-A as Matt Harvey made starts in the big leagues. It would be Marcos Diplán and Travis Lakins Sr. back in the mix before it was DL Hall.
And the reason for doing that would be simple: this team is already headed for such a rough season that there’s no use changing whatever plans there were for these top prospects to try and stop it from getting worse. It simply won’t move the needle enough.
So, call-ups planned for after the expected Super Two cutoffs might get pushed a little longer, say, for the purposes of limiting innings to get such players through the season. Maybe by then, it will be around the end of July, where the Orioles can make one last set of wildly unpopular trades but under the auspices of making space for prospects. Trey Mancini gets dealt? Here’s Kyle Stowers, and oh by the way here’s another prospect into the rotation as well!
It would make for a very long few months to get to that point, and that’s the main drawback of all this: the Orioles have basically been able to cruise into their fourth season of this long-term plan while only getting seriously criticized when they do something egregious–lose 19 games in a row, trade one of their good players, etc. Not letting the legitimate talent they’ve developed get to this team as it loses and loses might be another such occasion, and it’s worth avoiding on those grounds alone.
How could they do that? Well, by essentially saying, ‘Let’s do it and be legends,” and starting the prospect promotions as soon as possible. Rodriguez struck out eight batters and allowed two runs in five innings on just 61 pitches Wednesday. Give him a few starts to get stretched out and get him to the big leagues.
Same with Bradish, and once Adley Rutschman’s arm is healed, him as well. A few more weeks of Jahmai Jones performing in Norfolk and he can have another crack at second base; Terrin Vavra will be ready shortly if that doesn’t work out. DL Hall is more a midseason option because of where he is build-up wise, but don’t waste time with him once he’s healthy and able to pitch deep into games either.
It would be a lot of fun. None of those players seem the type to fall flat on their face, so even if it doesn’t immediately go well, it’s not going to go terribly. And it would buy a lot of goodwill, something I know the Orioles are trying to operate without considering but probably could use.
This is the far less likely of the two options, and even if it doesn’t end up on one of the poles, it’ll probably be closer to the triage than this one. But it does beg the question of when all that is going to happen. The Orioles’ emphasis on challenging their prospects has meant some have spent one month at a level before moving up, but there’s this lid at Norfolk that seems to prevent that from happening there.
Some of that is down to player performance, but this will be the year that’s inevitably tested. And for the sake of everyone involved with the Orioles and following them, hopefully this is the year where that aggression starts to manifest at the big league level. Perhaps, however improbable, losing Means could be a catalyst for that.
On a completely different note
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How John Means' injury could serve as an accelerant for whatever the Orioles already planned this season
I could obviously be wrong, but the Orioles have seemingly given every indication that Rutschman, Rodriguez, and Bradish will be up with the club sooner rather than later. Rutschman will obviously need to play for a couple weeks before he gets his call, Rodriguez probably needs to get up over 85 pitches (which would be another 4 starts or so, I'm guessing) and show 5-8 starts of being the pitcher we all think he is, and Bradish is probably just another month of success away. It's April 15 today, and if Bradish and Rodriguez are still pitching well a month from now, I'm betting they're doing it in Baltimore before the calendar flips to June. As for Rutschman, as soon as he shows he's ready to catch 4 days / week, I'm betting he's up, too.
Love the work, Jon.