The 2022 season has given the Baltimore Orioles another year of data to assess its players at both the majors and minors before what should be the most important 12 months of the Mike Elias era.
In those next 12 months, we should expect the Orioles to promote prospects like Grayson Rodriguez and Colton Cowser while bringing in external reinforcements through free agency and possibly a trade.
As such, this means that 2022 provided an opportunity for players currently on the roster to prove they should remain a part of the future, even if top prospects and key free agents join the major league team. Some players took advantage of this opportunity, while others failed to demonstrate meaningful progress.
Let’s examine some players who fall under both of these categories.
By a wide margin, Dean Kremer is the player whose future has benefitted the most from the 2022 season.
Kremer ended 2021 with a 7.55 ERA, a 2.9 HR/9 and a 4.2 BB/9 that made his promising starts during the shortened 2020 season seem like nothing more than a mirage created by empty stadiums.
Even after a bumpy 2021, Kremer still made the 2022 Opening Day roster, but he wasn’t exactly penciled in for the rotation. The plan was for the top four starters to be John Means, Jordan Lyles, Tyler Wells and Bruce Zimmermann, with Kremer’s role being up in the air as neither a traditional starter or a traditional reliever. Of course, we never got to learn how exactly Kremer was going to be used after he got injured warming up during their opening series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
When Kremer returned to the roster on June 5, there were two major injuries that gave him the chance to earn a regular rotation spot with less competition than what was expected on Opening Day. John Means was out for the season with Tommy John and top prospect Grayson Rodriguez suffered a lat strain on June 1 that was expected to keep him out for multiple months.
Kremer wasted no time trying to take advantage of his opportunity, ending June with a 1.29 ERA across his first five starts. However, it appeared he was going to start regressing very quickly after a rough July. His ERA during that month was 6.94 and he allowed five homers in his five starts, good for a HR/9 of 1.9.
Once July ended, Kremer recovered and has spent the last two months being a productive member of the rotation. His ERA across his last seven appearances sits at 2.49 and he’s allowed just a single homer in his last 43.1 innings.
Kremer’s productive last two months include an especially excellent start against the Houston Astros on August 27. Facing a tough lineup, Kremer pitched into the eighth inning for the first time in his career, ending his night at Minute Maid Park with 7.2 innings pitched and just one run allowed.
It’s also worth noting that Kremer has plenty of years of team control and won’t be a free agent until the 2027-28 offseason. If Kremer’s the real deal, he’ll have plenty of time in the rotation before the Orioles need to make any big decisions about his future.
Kremer’s production has seemingly provided the 2023 rotation with an internal option that should provide stability for a group that contains several question marks including the health of Means and the iffy control of DL Hall.
After ending 2021 with his career on thin ice, Kremer should end 2022 with an excellent chance to be in the 2023 Opening Day rotation.
While Kremer has stepped up, the right-handed hitting duo of Austin Hays and Ryan Mountcastle have stagnated.
A pair of righties not improving after their home park radically altered its left field would seem like the obvious explanation, but it’s not that simple for either player. In fact, both Hays and Mountcastle currently have a better OPS playing at Camden Yards than on the road this year.
A look at Mountcastle’s iso power also shows that his raw power has remained nearly identical regardless of a park’s dimensions in left field. He has 11 homers across 267 plate appearances at home while homering ten times in 260 plate appearances during road games.
Hays and Mountcastle have also been more disciplined hitters at Camden based on their walk rate, with Hays having an especially noteworthy spike in his walk rate when playing in Baltimore.
The eye test says the wall has been very unkind to any right-handed hitter at Camden but their production on the road seems to show that their stagnation goes beyond just some new dimensions.
For Hays, not showing meaningful improvement has raised questions about his future following productive minor league seasons for two of Baltimore’s top outfield prospects.
After a cup of coffee in Toronto due to vaccine laws, Kyle Stowers got promoted for real on August 19 after posting an .884 OPS with 19 homers in 95 games with the AAA Norfolk Tides.
Meanwhile, Colton Cowser has shot up the ranks in his first full professional season, going from high-A Aberdeen to Norfolk in the span of just two months. Cowser had a pedestrian .795 OPS with the Ironbirds but still earned a promotion to AA Bowie. Once he joined the Baysox, his production massively spiked with a 1.037 OPS that included 10 homers in 49 games, a 162-game pace of 33 homers.
Of course, it’s worth noting that Stowers and Cowser have gotten off to slow starts after their latest promotions. Stowers has a .610 OPS after 48 PAs in the majors, while Cowser’s first 58 PAs in AAA have led to a .503 OPS.
If he’s not traded, Hays absolutely should be the Opening Day left fielder for 2023. However, he will certainly be spending next year on the hot seat.
As for Mountcastle, his big issue is his production relative to other first basemen. According to Fangraphs, there are 25 first basemen qualified for the batting title and among those 25, Mountcastle ranks 21st in OPS.
To put that in context, Mountcastle’s OPS was 14th among 26 first basemen last year, demonstrating his regression in his second full season.
Mountcastle’s Statcast data paints a picture of someone who is outstanding when he makes contact, but simply doesn’t do it often enough to be successful. He is in the 87th percentile for exit velocity but only the 20th percentile for whiff rate. He is simply swinging and missing too often for his exit velocity to make him an elite hitter.
His whiff rate also isn’t helped by being in the sixth percentile for chase rate. A scatter plot from Baseball Savant demonstrates that Mountcastle’s whiff rate and chase rate combine to make him an outlier, and not in a good way.
Unlike Hays, Mountcastle currently faces very little threat from other internal options for playing time. However, the Orioles have seemingly been tinkering with other players learning first base, most notably Anthony Santander. Perhaps this is just to have added versatility on the roster after Trey Mancini’s departure, but it could also signal them seriously exploring other options if Mountcastle doesn’t improve for 2023.
The 2023 Orioles will almost certainly include Hays and Mountcastle in their Opening Day lineup. However, 2022 has made their future beyond 2023 seem murky.
BSL Analyst
Rose Katz is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, where she worked for The Diamondback as the online managing editor and a sports blogger. As a student, she spent almost all of her time on campus in The Diamondback’s newsroom or at Xfinity Center, Ludwig Field and Maryland Stadium. Rose gained intern experience with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN).