3 Up, 3 Down – July 12, 2021

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 comes after series against the Blue Jays and White Sox.

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3 Up

Spenser Watkins – 1-0, 1.93 ERA, 9.1 IP, 7 H, 6 BB, 6 K, 1.39 WHIP

Such a cool story for Watkins to even make his major league debut this season after he was ready to retire and coach high school baseball if the Orioles hadn’t come calling in the offseason. He pitched a scoreless inning in his debut and then got a chance to make his first major league start with the Orioles starting pitching being so thin and terrible at the major league level. He earned the win against the high powered Blue Jays offense, only allowing one run over five innings. It had been nine games since an Orioles starter went five innings and over a month since they went five innings and only allowed one run or less. So of course he was given a second start and he was effective once again, allowing only one run to another potent offense in the White Sox over 4.1 innings. He didn’t get to that five inning mark the second time around but he battled and the only run he gave up was on a homerun by rookie slugger Andrew Vaughn. While John Means is expected to return to the rotation following this week’s all-star break and Bruce Zimmermann not long after that the other pitchers getting starts right now are Jorge Lopez, Matt Harvey, Keegan Akin, and Tom Eshelman. Unless he implodes I would much rather see Watkins starting games than at least two of those options. We had Spenser on our podcast (‘On the Verge’) leading up to the season and it is so cool to see him having this success.

Trey Mancini – .294/.368/.588 (.957), 2 R, 2 doubles, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 17 AB

It was good to see Mancini bounce back a bit heading into the all-star break after a couple of down weeks and he gave us the best moment of the week on Sunday even though it still ended up being a loss in extra innings. Trey was given the day off to rest before he is scheduled to appear in Monday’s homerun derby in Colorado during the all-star game festivities. He gave us a sneak peak in the bottom of the ninth with two outs when he hit a pinch hit, game tying homerun to right field. Hopefully he carries that momentum into the derby and becomes the third Orioles to win the contest (Cal Ripken in 1991, Miguel Tejada in 2004). He is facing some stiff competition with Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Joey Gallo, Trevor Story, Matt Olson, Pete Alonso, and Salvador Perez rounding out the field. No matter how he does it’s a great decision by major league baseball to give Mancini some spotlight after battling back from cancer last year to resume his successful baseball career. With the trade deadline approaching in a few weeks its possible that this will be the last chance Orioles fans get to really soak in his time as an Oriole although it is certainly no guarantee that he gets traded.

Adam Plutko – 0-0, 2.25 ERA, 4 IP, 5 H, 1 BB, 2 K, 1.50 WHIP

Plutko started the season as a very pleasant surprise pitching out of the bullpen after being acquired from the Cleveland Indians towards the end of spring training. He had a 1.20 ERA in April over 15 innings but then struggled mightily in May and June posting a 8.76 and 6.28 ERA respectively. So far in July he has been back to being effective with a 1.50 over six innings. The peripherals aren’t as pretty as they were in April but it is good to have a middle reliever who can give you multiple innings especially when pitchers who had been effective all season like Paul Fry and Cole Sulser have been struggling lately. I would be shocked if Plutko isn’t non-tendered over the offseason but I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t survive the season when the Orioles are desperate to fill the remaining innings for the year unless he goes back to his May performance. He doesn’t pitch well in Camden Yards with seven of the 10 homeruns hes allowed this season coming in the team’s home ballpark despite pitching less innings there. He has a 6.55 ERA at home with a 1.55 WHIP over 22 innings and a 3.16 ERA and 1.36 WHIP over 25.2 innings on the road.

3 Down

Tom Eshelman – 0-1, 18.00 ERA, 2 IP, 4 H, 1 HR, 3 BB, 1 K, 3.50 WHIP

I personally wouldn’t have given Eshelman any starts other than an emergency spot start if almost nobody else was available but here he is having made his fifth straight start of the season this past week. I liked the acquisition when the Orioles traded for him in 2019 because while he never had great stuff he seemed like a right handed Alexander Wells with very few walks but that just clearly hasn’t translated to the major league level. He has eight walks over 18.1 innings and only six strikeouts on the season. Its not like he earned the shot the way Spenser Watkins did either. At the time he was called up from AAA Norfolk he had a 6.41 ERA over six appearances encompassing 19.2 innings. I know the idea is to use him at the major league level regardless of performance because he will be easy to replace on both the 26 and 40 man rosters when the time comes while protecting pitching prospects with an actual potential future with the team like Wells, Zac Lowther, Kyle Bradish, etc. but if you’re going that route I’d rather see guys like Konner Wade or Mickey Jannis get more than one relief outing before being sent down and/or DFA’d. I’m really hoping that with the second half coming up on Friday that the strategy of the season starts to shift towards seeing what some of these players in the 10-20 range of our prospect list can do.

DJ Stewart – .000/.143/.000 (.143), 1 BB, 6 AB

I have a feeling that the DJ Stewart era might be coming towards an end here in Birdland. I would go so far to say that the only thing keeping him on the team is how poorly Yusniel Diaz is performing in AAA Norfolk (one hit over 30 at bats for the month of July!). He is getting fewer and fewer at bats in favor of Ryan McKenna, who is at least fast, can take a walk and plays great defense, and isn’t doing much of anything with the at bats he has been getting. Kudos to Stewart for grinding as much as he did to get to this point after initially being such a disappointment following being taken with the Orioles first round pick in the 2015 draft (25^th overall). He still has a great eye that keeps his on-base percentage more than .100 points higher than his batting average but the problem is that he can’t seem to keep his batting average over the Mendoza line. He is near average in sprint speed which is surprising given his size and stature but he is dreadful in the outfield (6^th percentile in outs above average, 3^rd percentile in outfield jump). With Jahmai Jones not only being deserving of making his Oriole debut soon, the ability that he has to play the outfield could be bad news for Stewart given that he has to be waiting for an Austin Hays or Anthony Santander IL trip to increase his playing time again.

Cesar Valdez – 0-0, 22.50 ERA, 2 IP, 5 H, 2 HR, 1 BB, 2 K, 3.00 WHIP

The dead fish must be zombies because they are swimming like nothing ever happened to them. I defended Valdez in this spot earlier in the season but now I’m coming around to the fact that he just isn’t fooling anyone anymore. Its not just seeing eye singles giving him trouble now, its hard hit balls and homeruns. It was fun while it lasted… After a 1.42 ERA in April he has had a 11.57 ERA in May, a 7.71 ERA in June, and a 22.50 ERA so far in July. He has to be heading towards a DFA sometime soon. Maybe the Orioles can replace him with another guy they plucked from the Mexican League at an advanced age, Manny Barreda. Barreda has a 2.73 ERA over 26.1 innings pitching out of the bullpen for AAA Norfolk. Some other relief options sitting in AAA are Fernando Abad (3.60 ERA over 15 innings), Marcos Diplan (2.60 ERA over 17.1 innings), Dusten Knight (0.95 ERA over 19 innings), and Eric Hanhold (3.31 ERA over 16.1 innings). Its at the point in the season where the team might as well throw a bunch of players at the wall and see who may be able to stick heading into the 2022 season.