Welcome to ‘3 Up, 3 Down’, the monthly column breaking down the three hottest and three coldest Orioles players based on their performance during the previous month. It has proven to be an interesting exercise and good opportunity to highlight the highs and lows of a long baseball season. This month will highlight the performances of the series’ that happened in August.

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3 Up

Adley Rutschman .261/.397/.446 (.842), 22 R, 8 doubles, 3 HR, 8 RBI, 22 BB, 17 K, 92 AB

It only took a few months but Rutschman has cemented himself as the best player on the Orioles and perhaps the best catcher in baseball. If you look at his Baseball Savant page he is elite at pitch framing and walk rate (when he is batting) while being above average in max exit velocity, xwOBA, expected batting average, expected slugging percentage, barrel percentage, strikeout rate, whiff rate, chase rate, and pop time throwing to second base. The Orioles have a better record when he is behind the plate as well as a much better ERA for the pitching staff when they are throwing to him. He is just a stabilizing presence for the team in every aspect. At the time of this writing he has 28 doubles, a triple, and 10 homeruns on the season and I would expect those doubles to turn into more homeruns as his career progresses. The most impressive part of his month of August was the fact that he walked five more times than he struck out giving him an incredible 19% walk rate and 14.7% strikeout rate for a 145 wRC+. His control of the strike zone is like a ten year veteran. Its impossible to know the ins and outs of the clubhouse but they are clearly having fun in there continuing to surprise everyone with their play. Adley comes across as a quiet leader that has built real rapport with his battery mates. The significance of his development and arrival to the big league club will be nearly impossible to quantify outside of the numbers but there is a clear delineation between pre-Adley and post-Adley. The team should lock him up long term and try to make it a post-Adley world for as long as possible.

Cedric Mullins.296/.358/.469 (.827), 14 R, 6 doubles, 1 triple, 3 HR, 6 RBI, 7 SB, 98 AB

Mullins may not be the MVP candidate that he was in 2021 but he has still been above average at the with a 107 wRC+ and continues to play an excellent center field. He has been even better after the first couple months of the season, batting .280 with a .770 OPS and 120 wRC+ since June 16th. He has an 8.5% walk rate and 18.4% strikeout rate in that time span which is right in line with his 2021 numbers. The power has lagged behind but that isn’t too surprising considering the depressed offensive environment this season but he has already reached the second half of last year’s 30/30 milestone, stealing his 30th base on Tuesday night. One of the other big differences between last year’s historic season and this one is his performance against left handed pitching. In 2021 he batted .277 with a .788 OPS while hitting 29% of his extra base hits against them. This year he has a .204 batting average and .557 OPS off of lefties with only 18% of his extra base hits coming in those situations. Against right handed pitchers he is hitting .288 with a .804 OPS. Those are the only sample sizes we have to go off of considering he was a switch hitter until spring training 2021 so who is to say if it is an issue that can be solved or if he is more of a platoon player moving forward with the talent in the minor leagues working its way up. I don’t think its very close to reaching that point yet but we have seen Ryan McKenna get more starts in center field against lefties than might’ve been expected. A good September would go a long way towards helping their O’s with their playoff push and also cemented himself as an integral part of the team moving forward.

Dean Kremer3-1, 2.25 ERA, 32 IP, 26 H, 4 BB, 21 K, 0.94 WHIP

The bats were pretty quiet across the board so the Orioles starting rotation was really the star of the month. To go along with Kremer’s 2.25 ERA – Kyle Bradish had a 3.14 ERA over 28.2 innings, Austin Voth had a 2.57 ERA over 28 innings, Jordan Lyles had a 3.18 ERA over 34 innings, and even Spenser Watkins had a 4.70 ERA (3.93 FIP) over 30.2 innings inflated by a couple bad outings. That’s not to say the bullpen wasn’t great as well, at least at the back end. Felix Bautista had a 1.23 ERA over 14.2 innings with seven saves and 20 strikeouts to just two walks. Cionel Perez had a 2.89 ERA over 9.1 innings with nine strikeouts. But it was Kremer who impressed the most. He may not have missed the most bats or had the best metrics on Baseball Savant of the pitching staff but he did an excellent job bouncing back from his first bad month in July and attacking hitters. He has cut his walk rate from 14.5% in 2020 to 10.2% in 2021 all the way down to 5.3% this season. His hard hit percentage against has also seen a similar decline leaving him with a 3.22 ERA for the year over 89.1 innings. The pitching staff is a testament to the work Chris Holt and company have put in over the past couple years and what can happen when they’re given time to work through growing pains. Kremer, Watkins, and Keegan Akin are guys who have improved tremendously from 2021. Bradish has a stark improvement from the first half to the second and Voth went from unusable in DC with the Nationals to staff ace with the O’s. It will be interesting to see what they can do with guys like Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall heading into 2023.

3 Down

Rougned Odor.200/.286/.263 (.548), 7 R, 2 doubles, 1 HR, 6 RBI, 3 SB, 80 AB

There is no denying that Odor has made an unmeasurable impact on the team when it comes to bringing good vibes and confidence in the clubhouse, calming pitchers down when he notices them getting out of sync, and coming through with clutch hits when it matters the most. But that doesn’t mean you can just throw out the pedestrian output he has provided at the plate or even the baserunning and fielding blunders he has made. He is great at starting and turning double plays which is valuable on a team that induced quite a few of those but he is still in the 11th percentile in outs above average and is below average in every metric other than max exit velocity. For the season he is batting .204 with a .632 OPS which comes out to a 79 wRC+. With the promotion of Gunnar Henderson he is seeing less time in the starting lineup which has allowed him to provide that incalculable value without penalizing the offense for it as much. As much as Oriole fans may hate it, Odor is here for the duration of the season. Hopefully his moxie helps push the team into the playoffs.

Austin Hays .213/.250/.388 (.638), 9 R, 5 doubles, 3 HR, 7 RBI, 80 AB

Whether it is because of a bunch of minor lingering injuries or its just a prolonged slump Hays has had an awful second half of the season. He started off so hot that I was proclaiming him this year’s Cedric Mullins and he seemed like a lock to be the Orioles all-star representative. Through June 25 he was batting .288 with a .830 OPS, 19 doubles, a triple, 10 homeruns, a 137 wRC+, 6.7% walk rate, and 18% strikeout rate over 284 plate appearances. Since then he has hit .197 with a .577 OPS, 11 doubles, five homeruns, a 63 wRC+, 3.8% walk rate, and 23.5% strikeout rate over 213 plate appearances. Not even the month of September has been able to save his season so far despite him flourishing in the final month of season historically. Now that Kyle Stowers is on the roster and Colton Cowser is in AAA he has some real competition to stave off if he remains on the team in 2023. Another option is to trade him in a package for a starting pitcher over the offseason. It may be selling low a bit but his overall numbers on the season (105 wRC+) are pretty consistent with the player he has been over the past few years and I could see a team valuing him more than the Orioles will moving forward. Put him, a guy like Keegan Akin, and a prospect in the 6-15 range into a proposal and you should be able to upgrade a slot in the rotation pretty considerably. There are four weeks left in the season so still time enough for Hays to end on a high note.

Joey Krehbiel0-1, 5.79 ERA, 1 SV, 9.1 IP, 13 H, 1 BB, 3 K, 1.50 WHIP

Krehbiel has been a valuable member of the Orioles bullpen all season, mostly as a 6th or 7th inning guy that can bridge the gap from the starting pitcher to the high leverage relievers like Felix Bautista, Cionel Perez, Dillon Tate, and previously Jorge Lopez before the trade deadline. He doesn’t throw particularly hard or strike many guys out but he has good spin on his fastball and a great changeup that is able to induce weak contact. For the season he is in the top 6th percentile when it comes to average exit velocity and the top 14 percent in hard hit rate. Until the month of August hit he had a 2.35 ERA over 38.1 innings with 33 strikeouts and only 13 walks. August was bad to him and it was even worse than the topline numbers would indicate. His FIP was 7.61 and his xFIP was 6.12. His homerun rate spiked and his BABIP wasn’t even high sitting at .286. He has had two scoreless appearances since the calendar rolled to September and the team is going to need that to continue for him and a few other members of the bullpen like Keegan Akin and Bryan Baker to bounce back as well if they want to make the playoffs. They have pitched a ton and are possibly worn out but to be fair no reliever had pitched on three consecutive days all season until Nick Vespi did it this past weekend. The starting pitching has been much better this season and Brandon Hyde has tried his best to manage their innings but the high leverage innings will only increase down the stretch.

Bob Phelan
Bob Phelan

BSL Analyst

Bob is a co-host of ‘On the Verge’ an Orioles podcast focused on the O’s farm system here on BSL. He used to run the baseball blog ‘The Oriole Report’ before transitioning to podcasting about movies, TV, Video Games, and MMA. ‘The Redbox Report’ movie podcast was started in 2013 followed by ‘The Redbelt Report’ MMA podcast in 2016. Bob has also written for Konsume.com and BaltimoreSportsReport.com and delivers mail for a living in Baltimore County. Follow him on Twitter @TheOrioleReport.

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