Just because Yusniel Diaz can't be at the Orioles' minicamps doesn't change the feeling this rebuild has left him behind

The centerpiece of the Manny Machado trade was atop the Orioles' farm system when the new front office arrived. Now, it's fair to wonder where he fits in this at all.

By virtue of his status on the Orioles’ 40-man roster, outfielder Yusniel Diaz isn’t one of the top hitting prospects who has been at one of their minicamps in Sarasota, Florida this month getting acclimated to what life will be like for him in spring training.

MLB’s lockout prevents it, and besides, he’s something of a spring training veteran by now.

Even so, it’s hard to have imagined that a year ago, and definitely in the years prior, that it would be fair to ask whether top hitting prospects is a group he should be included in at all.

That’s currently the question with Diaz, the centerpiece of the July 2018 trade that sent Manny Machado to the Los Angeles Dodgers to begin this Orioles rebuild that’s now quite possibly left him behind. 

Coming off a Triple-A season that never got going due to injuries and was less productive than even Chris Davis’ worst with the Orioles, the man who was supposed to be the vanguard of their new wave of talent now has to prove he should be part of it at all.

The upcoming major league camp, judging by the amount of talented hitters who were at this minicamp to get a feel for their future surroundings, will be one that features just as many talented top prospect hitters for the organization as locked-on major league candidates. In the past, there have been just a handful of such prospects, and one of them was always Diaz.

He came to camp ahead of the 2019 season prepared in his mind to make the team despite only having a half-season at Double-A, and performed well before he was sent to minor league camp a few weeks in.

His return to Bowie was probably unwelcome, and he had an overall productive if-not eye-popping season while being key into and through their playoff run. It wasn’t the stuff of a top, top prospect, though, and Diaz began slipping off the radar.

He couldn’t get his Triple-A experience in 2020 and was at the alternate site instead, and without being on the 40-man roster, he will have known Bowie was against as close to Baltimore as he’d be getting.

But another spring training without making the team – this time as a member of the 40-man roster – preceded a 2021 season that went poorly in nearly all phases. He hit .157 with a .476 OPS in 54 games at Triple-A, and his batted ball data there got all out of whack. Diaz hit the ball on the ground 50.1 percent of the time there, and just 11.6 percent of his batted balls were line drives. When he did hit the ball in the air, he had a below-average home run/fly ball rate of 8.7 percent.

Without access to how hard he hit the ball, it’s hard to know what was behind that regression. There’s a chance he wasn’t healthy and thus wasn’t able to impact the ball the way he could at his best.

There’s also a chance that some of the swing deficiencies that had to be ironed out earlier in his career returned; Diaz came to the Orioles with a tendency to what’s called “step in the bucket” and open up with his front foot early, and that can cause a hitter to not make consistent hard contact and adapt to all pitches. He’s had two years with the Orioles’ revamped minor league hitting program to improve with, though, so it’s not as if they wouldn’t try to address that.

Regardless, it’s strange to be entering the 2022 season with the Orioles’ former top prospect as an afterthought. Even if that didn’t mean back after the 2018 season what it does now, Diaz was the main piece of a trade for a young superstar and knew exactly what was expected of him from the moment he arrived in Bowie that July. It’s one thing to be ready to show you were worthy of being traded for Manny Machado, and another to perhaps not feel like you’re getting the chance to.

That was always what I waited for with Diaz – that at moment he finally reached the majors, he would be the player the Orioles thought they were trading for and all this concern would vanish.

It hasn’t happened, for whatever reason, so now he and the Orioles sit in an odd situation entering spring training.

Diaz won’t be the center of attention when it comes to young players in camp, and will have to produce to garner much attention at all. Let’s say he hits a bit in spring training, including a few majestic home runs, and puts together a good case for a major league job that isn’t available to him.

What kind of message will that send to Diaz to be sent to the minors yet again despite doing what could be enough to make the club in another circumstance? And absent some kind of injury or move to remove a player above him on the depth chart, where is his path to the major league team? And by midseason, will he get a chance over a new-regime success story like slugging corner outfielder Kyle Stowers or someone like Robert Neustrom, who rebuilt his swing under new major league co-hitting coach Ryan Fuller?

Diaz is just 25, but he didn’t arrive in the majors with many of the old-guard prospects and is at risk of getting caught and passed by the new wave. Whatever the opinion of building the Machado deal around Diaz was four July’s ago won’t have envisioned the no-win situation both he and the club seem to be in regarding his future entering 2022.

Instead of breaking into his prime, he’s struggling to even break into the big leagues. He was among the many expected upon his trade that it would only be a matter of time, and it’s wild to see how far off that course things have gotten.