3 Up, 3 Down – May 24, 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 Rays and the Nationals.

(You can discuss this on the BSL board here.)

3 Up

Anthony Santander – .462/.500/.846 (1.346), 3 R, 2 doubles, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 13 AB

The return of Anthony Santander to the Orioles lineup was a welcome sight. The offense needed some extra fire power and they got it right away from him. Unfortunately he isn’t Shohei Ohtani and couldn’t help the Orioles dreadful pitching so they still got swept by the Washington Nationals over the weekend. It will be interesting to see how much playing time DJ Stewart receives now with the starting outfield at full strength and Trey Mancini and Ryan Mountcastle permanent fixtures at first base and DH. There are teams out there that could use help in the outfield (the Chicago White Sox stick out like a sore thumb) and I don’t think anything has changed in regards to Santander being one of if not the biggest trade chip they have on a still rebuilding club. The O’s certainly don’t have to trade him but all signs point to that being the way they will choose to best maximize his value. He was slumping to start the season before he injured his ankle but hopefully this hot start in his return will jump start him back to where he left off in 2020.

Trey Mancini – .435/.536/.957 (1.492), 8 R, 3 doubles, 3 HR, 9 RBI, 23 AB

I’d say Mancini has been slowly heating up all season and Orioles fans are like a frog in a pot of water who doesn’t notice but the last two weeks have been exponential improvements so I’m pretty sure they’re noticing now. He has overtaken Cedric Mullins as the Orioles top hitter and is now right in line with his breakout 2019 season. He’s hitting the ball hard almost 50% of the time for the season and seemingly on every swing over the last couple of weeks. There must be a warrant out for his arrest because he is absolutely murdering fastballs and left handed pitching. Nine more RBI last week means he leads the majors by two with 41 on the season. They might as well start engraving the comeback player of the year award now to save them time later. Remember back in 2019 when it was between Mancini and John Means to represent the Orioles in the all-star game? History is repeating itself except this time I think the team with the worst record in baseball is going to get at least both guys in there (maybe three if Cedric Mullins gets back to what he was doing).

Freddy Galvis – .273/.385/.636 (1.021), 6 R, 2 doubles, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 22 AB

Galvis must have been surprised as well to find himself on the three down list last week because he quickly righted the ship back in the right direction. He has been the Orioles most consistent hitter for the most part. He’s a nice bat to have in the bottom half of the order with some surprising pop in the bat. To be fair he is outhitting his metrics pretty significantly but that’s ok when a guy isn’t meant to be a long term piece. He is what he is: a stopgap who we may be able to flip for a lower level prospect around the trade deadline. His batting average on balls in play isn’t outrageous at .294 but his expected batting average is 50 points lower than his actual batting average and his expected slugging percentage is over 100 points lower. His speed has gone from slightly above average to well below average over the past few seasons and his defense fell off a cliff from 2019 to 2020 and it doesn’t appear to be a fluke because its even worse this season according to outs above average. To end on a high note (since this is the three up section after all) expected stats don’t win games and while the Orioles haven’t been winning games at all, Galvis has been contributing in the effort to do so more than most on the team this year. If only the other major league free agent signing Maikel Franco could say the same thing.

3 Down

Matt Harvey – 0-2, 15.63 ERA, 6.1 IP, 16 H, 3 HR, 2 BB, 7 K, 2.84 WHIP

The writing is officially on the wall for Harvey’s time with the Orioles and probably his major league career as well. I wrote about his poor performance over his past few starts last week and it just got worse in his next two starts. The stuff just isn’t good enough to compete at this level anymore. He is getting hit around like a pinata. The problem is there isn’t exactly anyone banging on the door to take his place in the rotation. Dean Kremer and Bruce Zimmermann are inconsistent rookies taking their lumps already. Michael Baumann isn’t fully ramped up after recovering from injury. Zac Lowther and Alexander Wells are struggling through their first few starts with AAA Norfolk. Keegan Akin is probably the guy but he hasn’t exactly inspired confidence that he will be consistent enough to stick as a starter. The big guns in the minor leagues aren’t ready yet. The one thing Harvey was signed to do is eat some innings and he was at least pitching around five innings per start in April but he is only averaging 3.2 innings per start over his last four. Minor league free agents Spenser Watkins (3.15 ERA over 20 innings), Konnor Wade (0.57 ERA over 15.2 innings), or Mickey Jannis (2.92 ERA over 12.1 innings) pitching for AAA Norfolk could provide that.

Cedric Mullins – .150/.261/.150 (.411), 2 R, 20 AB

It had to happen sooner or later and here it is: Cedric Mullins went cold. Its really just three bad games. He went 0-11 from Wednesday to Friday, 2-5 on Saturday, and then got a day off on Sunday before coming up empty in a pinch hit appearance. I’ve written it many times but as long as he’s around a .725-.750 OPS his defense is good enough to make him a starting caliber center fielder. This season he has gotten away from bunting for a base hit so maybe that is something he should start doing more of again to reignite his confidence at the plate and maybe put that possibility back in defender’s heads. Overall Mullins still looks much more comfortable at the plate. He has raised his walk rate by four percent and he is hitting breaking and offspeed pitches almost as good as fastballs. And he is hitting those pitches for more power than he does fastballs. The Orioles couldn’t expect Mullins to continue to hit like he did in April but if his down months are going to be in the form of an OPS around .700 I’m sure they’ll take that. The test will be if he can settle around somewhere in the middle of those.

Adam Plutko – 0-1, 23.14 ERA, 2.1 IP, 6 H, 2 HR, 1 BB, 3 K, 3.00 WHIP

In his first 15 appearances with the Orioles covering 21.1 innings Plutko allowed three runs. In three appearances since, covering 3.1 innings, he has allowed 10. He went from being the go to guy in the middle innings when Brandon Hyde needed to get out of a jam to the last guy Orioles fans want to see with a game on the line. Its like if he was a firefighter and someone replaced the water in his hose with gasoline. Of course he wasn’t going to continue at the pace of those first 15 appearances, not with a fastball averaging 91.6 mph and strikeout percentage in the bottom 10% of the league. His ERA now sits at 5.66 for the season but it feels like to me his expected ERA is about what we can expect from him (naturally) for the rest of the season – 4.74. He is throwing his fastball less and his slider and cutter more. I would throw it even less as hitters are teeing off on it to the clip of a .378 batting average and .611 slugging percentage. Luckily for Plutko his job should be safe for now since he can still provide length out of the bullpen and there are a couple guys pitching worse than him overall.