3 Up, 3 Down – April 18, 2022

Welcome to ‘3 Up, 3 Down’, the weekly column breaking down the three hottest and three coldest Orioles players based on their performance during the previous week. It has proven to be an interesting exercise and good opportunity to highlight the highs and lows of a long baseball season. This week will highlight the performances of the series’ against the Rays, Brewers, and Yankees over the first week and a half of the season.

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3 Up

Anthony Santander – .269/.472/.423 (.895), 1 R, 1 double, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 2 HBP, 8 BB, 6 K, 26 AB

Santander came into the season as perhaps the most obvious trade chip for the Orioles this season outside of perhaps Trey Mancini. With the outfield depth in the minors growing and two players in particular looking close to major league ready (Kyle Stowers, Robert Neustrom) the thought is try to get something for a guy who outside of a great 37 games in 2020 has been right around league average. He has real power but never walks and his defense in the outfield is lacking. Well apparently he learned how to walk with the help of the new Orioles hitting coaches, Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte. The team as a whole is walking a lot more with similar personnel to 2021 but Santander stands out in particular. He has had a walk rate between 5-6% every year of his career but he currently has a 22.2% rate over his first 36 plate appearances. That’s good for top 3% in baseball. His career high walk total for a season is 23. He is already more than one third of the way there after nine games with eight. Hes also hitting the ball hard and not chasing bad pitches so despite the fairly low slugging percentage there is evidence that it should increase. With a hot start Santander either increases his trade value as the season stretches into the summer or it gives the Orioles brass second thoughts on giving up on him.

Bruce Zimmermann – 0-0, 0.00 ERA, 9 IP, 7 H, 4 BB, 10 K, 1.22 WHIP

The Maryland native had his dream come true when he started for the Orioles on their home opener Monday April 11th and he made the most of it by pitching four scoreless innings as the Orioles went on to win the game 2-0. He did even better on Sunday against the Yankees, striking out six batters over five scoreless innings. With the injury Orioles ace John Means suffered to his elbow and looking to be out for a lot of the season even if he doesn’t need surgery, there is some extra pressure on Zimmermann to fill that role of a lefty with a low 90’s fastball and above average changeup. So far he has been up to the task. It appears as if there have been some adjustments made in his fastball/changeup combination coming into this season. Both pitches are getting more movement despite being a little slower than in 2021. He has also decreased his fastball and increased his changeup usage which is good because batters teed off on his fastball last year to the tune of a .392 batting average and .711 slugging percentage. In fact if anything I’d like to see him throw his fastball even less. If Zimmermann can be even 80% of what Means was for the Orioles then he could help slow the bleeding in the starting rotation until the highly touted prospects like Grayson Rodriguez, Kyle Bradish, and DL Hall make their debut.

Felix Bautista – 0-1, 2.25 ERA, 4 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 6 K, 1.50 WHIP

The Orioles bullpen has been absolutely spectacular to start the season so I had to pick one of its members for the ‘3 Up’ section this week and Bautista was the easy choice for me. Big Felix has started to get some attention for his nasty combination of a high spin fastball that averages 97.1 mph and a splitter that just completely drops off the table at 10 mph slower. The 26 year old was added to the 40 man roster over the offseason after dominating at three stops between A+ Aberdeen, AA Bowie, and AAA Norfolk. After toiling away in the low minors for eight years the Orioles player development under Mike Elias finally unlocked something in him that allowed him to harness his potential. Walks are his big issue and while he is never likely to have an above average walk rate he has improved in that area and makes up for it with big strikeout totals. Dillon Tate, Cionel Perez, Bryan Baker, Keegan Akin, Joey Krehbiel, Michael Baumann, and Jorge Lopez also deserve shoutouts for the way they’ve pitched to start the season. Combined those relievers have thrown to a 1.47 ERA and 0.85 WHIP over 36.2 innings with 37 strikeouts and 10 walks.

3 Down

Ramon Urias – .156/.206/.219 (.425), 1 R, 2 doubles, 1 RBI, 32 AB

Urias had a great spring as I noted in the previous entry of this series but has been slumping early once games started to count. He has actually been putting pretty good swings on the ball and has been a bit unlucky with an expected batting average of .287 compared to his actual number of .156. Same goes for his expected slugging percentage of .521 as opposed to .219. He did have one moment of glory when he walked with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th against the Yankees last Friday for a walk-off walk. There is no reason not to continue giving him regular at bats especially with the way the offense is struggling as a whole, especially with runners in scoring position. The team started the season 7-81 with runners on second and/or third base, good for a .086 batting average (the record low for a full season is .200.), before breaking out in the eighth inning on Sunday for five runs to earn the victory. Other regulars off to slow starts include Cedric Mullins (.592 OPS), Trey Mancini (.613), Austin Hays (.606), Jorge Mateo (.653), Robinson Chirinos (.514), and Ryan Mountcastle (.677). So yeah, pretty much everyone.

Chris Owings – .000/.300/.000 (.300), 1 R, 3 BB, 7 K, 7 AB

Owings only had 10 plate appearances over the first nine games of the season but they were so bad that he deserves to be namechecked. Not to mention he just represents the Orioles infield as a whole who have all struggled mightily and will hopefully not be on the team by the time July rolls around. Believe it or not Owings has yet to put a ball in play that ends up in fair territory with three walks and all seven of his official at bats ending in a strikeout. Its not like the other options for second and third base outside of (and including) Ramon Urias have been all that much better. Despite being a hero in Sunday’s game against his previous team Rougned Odor is batting .200 with a .523 OPS over 20 at bats and defensive wizard at third base Kelvin Guttierez is hitting .200 with a .633 OPS over 10 at bats. Meanwhile in AAA Norfolk Tyler Nevin has a .890 OPS while playing a lot of third base, Rylan Bannon has a .856 OPS, Jahmai Jones has a .885 OPS, and Terrin Vavra has a .820 OPS splitting time between second base and centerfield. Another few weeks of good numbers like that and I would think at least two of those guys will get a shot at the major league level.

Paul Fry – 0-0, 6.24 ERA, 4.1 IP, 4 H, 4 BB, 2 K, 1.85 WHIP

The one reliever who struggled over the first nine games of the season was Fry, the same reliever who struggled so bad in 2021 that he went from a trade candidate at the deadline to demoted and struggling at AAA Norfolk by the end of the year. Hes mixing in a changeup about a third of the time this season after only throwing five total all of last year but so far it hasn’t made much of a difference. To be fair to him with such a short sample size so far all three of the runs he gave up were in an appearance against the Rays, the same team that had him figured out like a children’s puzzle in 2021. If you take that two inning outing away he has thrown 2.1 scoreless innings over three appearances. With the rest of the bullpen more than pulling their own weight and some interesting bullpen arms in AAA Norfolk that will be deserving of a look sometime relatively soon Fry could be on a short list of candidates to be removed from the roster when they shrink back to 26 from the current 28 due to the shortened spring training. Whether that’s another demotion or being designated for assignment remains to be seen but he’ll need to start pitching like the guy we saw in the first half of 2021 if he wants to prevent that from happening.