That stretch from late May to mid-June when the bad news came quickly on so many elbow injuries — for Kyle Bradish, John Means, Tyler Wells and Danny Coulombe — will be hard to top in terms of season-defining stretches for these Orioles.
It feels like we just had another, though, beginning with the trades last Friday of Austin Hays to the Philadelphia Phillies for Seranthony Domínguez and Cristian Pache and three prospects to the Tampa Bay Rays for Zach Eflin. Then came the deadline period in which the Orioles added two more pitchers — Trevor Rogers and Gregory Soto — and saw the return of Jackson Holliday and the injury to Jordan Westburg, which required further roster shuffling. Thursday’s postgame news of Coby Mayo’s pending promotion only added to that.
There are always tweaks to be made, but we have a pretty good idea of what the final form of these Orioles into and through October will be. Here’s what it all means to me.
Jordan Westburg’s injury tests depth at a unique time
All year, the Orioles’ strength has been their depth. There are always one or two players swinging a scalding-hot bat and enough good players in the lineup otherwise that they’ve withstood significant slumps and weak spots in the bottom third of the order without much impact on results.
Having an All-Star infielder like Westburg break his hand after the team traded a major league right-handed-hitting infielder in Connor Norby (and lost another righty bat in Hays) is part of why the Orioles as an organization have basically shrugged at the notion they’ve had too many players at one position or another for the last few years. More often than not, you end up needing them.
They would have been well within their rights to keep Norby and Kyle Stowers for this reason, but that’s not to say they shouldn’t have moved them. It takes a high level of conviction in the pitching infrastructure to see upside in Rogers, and I have that, so it feels like a trade you make if you’re the Orioles.
It also means that your infield depth at this point is a bat-first corner guy in Mayo and utilitymen Terrin Vavra, Liván Soto and Nick Maton for the rest of the season. These are the tradeoffs you make. The Orioles knew trading Norby would be a risk but weighed the reward of reinforcing the bottom of the rotation, and we know which proved more valuable to them. Next time their depth is considered a luxury, though, let’s remember this.
Coby Mayo’s debut stint will be fascinating
We have a lot of evidence as to how varying levels of prospects debut and are used with the Orioles in recent years, but Mayo’s summons seems most closely to resemble Colton Cowser’s debut last year in that there was a clear and obvious positional fit and need.
The idea of Mayo’s bat in this lineup adding right-handed thump and balance in Westburg’s absence is plenty attractive. That’s the headline here. I just wonder, with Gunnar Henderson having a tough spell at shortstop, what those two playing alongside each other on the left side of the infield does to the Orioles as a whole. I deferred ever having an opinion on Mayo’s defense because it never felt like a possibility to me that he’d play third base over anyone in the organization, given Henderson and Westburg’s presence. That was clearly misguided, because here we are.
Manager Brandon Hyde seems to require convincing that a player can handle himself in the field before handing over an everyday role. He may not have a choice with Mayo, and the whole situation puts pressure on his bat that may not prove additive.
Someone is always left in the waiting room
Heston Kjerstad, who was optioned as part of Thursday’s roster moves to make room for the new trade acquisitions, knows his plight intimately. He can handle a corner outfield spot but not as well as those above him, so he finds himself as a bench bat when he’s in the majors at all.
This time, Kjerstad accumulated an .882 OPS in 64 plate appearances spanning 32 games. He and Stowers more or less shared the fifth outfield roster spot all year and had a combined 118 plate appearances over 109 games. Kjerstad was breaking through a little bit, but the reality is that, for whatever reason, the plate appearances the Orioles had available didn’t trickle down to that spot on the roster. That could have changed without Hays, and there are always ways to get deserving young players more opportunities if a team wants to (even if that would mean giving up platoon advantages once in a while).
Given the reality we were living in, though, the fact that Austin Slater is now in that fifth outfield spot feels fine. Considering what we’ve seen, he’s simply not going to play that much. Same probably goes for Soto on the infield. But these are the two options: A team develops so many good young players that even the bench is full of current and former top prospects, or it has true bench players whose pedigree is more suited to the role. There aren’t many in betweens — at least not around here yet.
An encouraging Jackson Holliday sign
There’s going to be a time when Holliday simply is an established and successful major leaguer — probably a really good one — and we won’t have to look for signs that he will eventually get there. But seeing him deposit that slider that ended up in what is every left-handed hitter’s wheelhouse onto Eutaw Street was a reminder of how quickly he arrived to this point. When he was still at Low-A Delmarva — four levels below the major leagues but just 15 months ago — pulling such pitches was something Holliday realized he wanted to do and immediately sought to address.
That he’s doing that at this stage in his career is another sign that he has it in him to steady the ship in the majors, and he’s going to get plenty of runway to do it. It would have been even more impressive if that potential second home run went out, though. Orioles development staff used a game at Norfolk in 2023 in which Cowser hit home runs at 110 mph to left and right fields in the same game as an example of his abilities this winter. Holliday hitting a 109 mph pull-side tank then driving that ball out to left the next time up would have been similar.
They really don’t value high-pick pitchers, huh?
A week ago, the Orioles had two pitchers taken on the first day of the MLB draft in their farm system: right-hander Seth Johnson, selected with the 40th pick of the 2019 draft by the Rays, and Jackson Baumeister, Baltimore’s second-round pick a year ago.
Johnson was used to acquire Gregory Soto from the Phillies, while Baumeister was part of the deal that brought Eflin to the Orioles. I saw Johnson pitch well several times this year and Baumeister once. Both showed promise. Each boasted a really good fastball, but the breadth — though not necessarily quality — of their secondary pitches lagged the rest of the pitchers in the farm system.
The Orioles believe they can find pitchers with broad sets of weapons anywhere in the draft and bring them to the majors to contribute in any role. They plan to demonstrate that without two of the highest-pedigree arms in the system.
And that’s what this is about, really. They gave up a lot for four major league arms, and they are deep into a process of developing their own so they don’t need to trade in the coming years. They’re taking a unique way to end that cycle.
