3 Up, 3 Down – May 30, 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 Yankees and Red Sox.

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

3 Up

Rougned Odor – .261/.292/.565 (.857), 4 R, 1 double, 2 HR, 8 RBI, 23 AB

The Odor signing was puzzling to me even when it first happened over the offseason. It seemed like the team jumped on him quickly when there were plenty of free agents that seemed to be a better fit for the team than a guy who hit .202 with a .665 OPS last year with the Yankees and hadn’t had a wRC+ even approaching 100 since 2018 (95). He had a terrible spring training and then a terrible start to the season, hitting .150 with a .455 OPS with only two extra base hits (both doubles) over his first 47 plate appearances. It looked like the only reason he was keeping his spot on the roster was because Chris Owings was playing even worse as the last man on the roster. Apparently all it took was the now famous homerun chain to make its inaugural appearance to get him going. The best bling in baseball started popping up in early May and Odor started popping off in late April. Coincidence? Definitely. But he has batted .255 with a .752 OPS, 112 wRC+, eight doubles, two triples, and four homeruns since April 28 covering 103 plate appearances. He has also come up with big hits in big moments this season so if you believe in players being clutch, he has been. Most importantly, and perhaps the reason the O’s zeroed in on him so quickly, is that he has been an incredible presence in the clubhouse. By all accounts he has been a great teammate and leader having played in eight major league seasons coming into this year despite still only being 28 years old. He even helped the team come up with their signal to the dugout whenever they reach base, a nod to calling in an air strike in the online multiplayer Call of Duty game Warzone. Who knows how much that played a part in his acquisition but at the very least it is a great thing to have on a young team that has players making their major league debuts every week or two.

Austin Hays – .318/.348/.591 (.939), 4 R, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 1 SB, 22 AB

There are not enough good things to say about the season Hays has been having over the first two months of the 2022 season. If you remember he started off the season batting .095 (2-21) over the first six games but it was very apparent he was hitting the ball hard, the ball just kept finding a fielder’s glove. I remember reading quotes along the lines of “its frustrating but I just have to keep the same approach and trust that the results will follow”. And sure enough, they did. Since April 15 he is batting .326 with a .880 OPS, 156 wRC+, 10 doubles, and five homeruns. On the season he has a 8.2% walk rate which is very good for the typically free swinging Hays. With the new hitting coaches’ focus on swing decisions it looks like they have found a way to keep his aggressive approach at the plate while still maintaining some plate discipline. He also has a fantastic 15.3% strikeout rate, the best of his career, which puts him in the top 20 percent of baseball in that category. Health was always a concern for Hays early in his career and it was looking like he would be a guy like former Oriole Nolan Reimold who would impress you when he was on the field but frustratingly couldn’t remain there for long periods of time. He is still a guy who plays hard at all aspects of the game, as seen by when he had his hand stepped on and missed a few games, so injuries are bound to pop up here and there but after getting 529 plate appearances in 2021 and playing in 90% of the Orioles games so far in 2022 that is becoming less and less of a concern. Pitchers are throwing more breaking balls to him this year and in response he is among the better performers against those pitches, hitting .356 against them after struggling to a .184 batting average on them last year. There is a good chance Hays ends up being (one of) the Orioles representative at the all-star game this year in a break out season at 26 years old.

Marcos Diplan – 0-0, 2.25 ERA, 4 IP, 1 H, 5 BB, 6 K, 1.50 WHIP

Diplan made his major league debut with the Orioles last year and actually ended up pitching 30 innings for the team (which is more than I would’ve guessed) before being removed from the roster over the offseason. He pitched fairly well at the major league level in 2021 with a 4.50 ERA over 23 appearances. There were times when he looked great and times when he got beat up but he was far from the worst option in the bullpen over the course of a rough season. The team obviously saw something they liked because they brought him back for 2022 on a minor league contract and lets not forget he also made an appearance at the Futures Game last summer. For AAA Norfolk he had been a key cog in their bullpen pitching to a 0.71 over 12.2 innings with 11 strikeouts, six walks, and a 1.11 WHIP. He got back on the 40 man roster in April when the team was in desperate need of an arm but only ended up pitching a third of an inning before being sent back down. The need arose again this week and he did a great job giving them some good innings in three games. He walked too many batters but is still only 25 years old so he still has a chance to try and establish himself as a major league reliever. It does say something of the increased depth at the upper end of the organization’s minors that a guy like Diplan is at the bottom of the 40 man pecking order this year as opposed to the guys we saw in that position in 2021 that are too numerous to list here.

3 Down

Ryan Mountcastle – .208/.231/.208 (.439), 1 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 8 K, 24 AB

Mountcastle is another aggressive free swinger like Austin Hays but he doesn’t appeared to have grasped the swing decision concept as quickly as the surging outfielder although to be fair he had worked with Ryan Fuller at the alternate site in 2020 before making his major league debut and putting up a 7.9% walk rate over 140 plate appearances. He also had a much lower walk rate over the first two months of the 2021 season than he did the following four and he actually ended up with a 7% walk rate which is only a little below average. So far this year it is sitting at 3.8% and they put up a graphic during the series against the Red Sox over the weekend that he swings at the fifth most percent of pitches (over 50%) in the league. That passes the eye test but the crazy thing is that he is still consistently hitting the ball hard. He is in the top 13% of the league in barrel percentage, top 19% in average exit velocity, top 16% in expected weighted on-base average, and the top 28% in hard hit percentage. Statcast also says he continues to be incredibly unlucky. His expected batting average is .319 compared to his actual .250, which is in the top 6% of the league, and his expected slugging percentage is .555 compared to his actual .372. That comes in at the top 11% of the league. He strikes out a lot, he swings and misses a lot, and he chases pitches outside of the zone as much as anyone but when he makes contact he is doing damage. It just isn’t showing up in the stat sheet to this point. Hopefully as the temperature continues to rise for the Florida native so will his OPS.

Adley Rutschman –.167/.286/.167 (.453), 3 R, 3 BB, 4 K, 18 AB

Adley’s first full week in the major leagues didn’t exactly go as good as everyone hoped after he had such an exciting opening two games at home against the Rays. Its asking a lot for a catcher to adjust to the major leagues, learn and build chemistry with the pitching staff, and integrate into the clubhouse – all while heading off on a road trip to New York and Boston with full crowds against divisional rivals. Over his first 35 plate appearances he is batting .167 with a .519 OPS. Its not all bad, he already has the best at bats on the team working the count and seeing four and a half pitches per plate appearance on average. After two walks on Sunday he has a 11.4% walk rate to go along with a 17.1% strikeout rate which are both really good numbers. His batting average per balls in play is very low at .208 which suggests there is some bad luck at play (it was .279 when he was in AA Bowie last year and .364 when he was with AAA Norfolk). Obviously there are no circumstances where there would be any declarative statements made on his performance over his first eight games played no matter how good or bad the numbers were and we’ve seen struggles from almost every highly touted prospect that has come so far this season, most notably Bobby Witt Jr, Julio Rodriguez, and Spencer Torkelson. The gap between AAA and MLB is as wide as ever and it just may take these guys some time to get up to speed. But for the Orioles that is what this season is all about. Get the highly touted prospects such as Rutschman and Kyle Bradish as well as soon to be Grayson Rodriguez, DL Hall, and Kyle Stowers as much playing time as they can to get them ready for 2023 after making adjustments based on their experience to have a more competitive season next year.

Bruce Zimmermann – 0-1, 8.71 ERA, 10.1 IP, 14 H, 9 HR, 1 HBP, 3 BB, 7 K, 2.31 WHIP

After giving up only one homerun over his first six starts of the season covering 30.1 innings Zimmermann has given up 12 homeruns over his last four which has encompassed 21.1 innings. That includes nine homeruns (nine!) over two starts this week in New York and Boston. The good thing is that eight of the nine were solo shots so the damage was limited versus what it could’ve been. He has only walked three batters over his last four starts but the strikeouts are down and batters are just sitting on his fastball and hammering it. His fastball usage has decreased each year since he made his debut in 2020 all the way down to just 33.5% so far this year. The velocity on it has decreased from 91.4 mph to 90.5 mph and batters are hitting .408 off of it with a .694 slugging percentage. Even worse is the expected batting average (.420) and the expected slugging percentage (.887). His breaking pitches have both been close to elite and the change-up is still fairly effective but the league is adjusting and just waiting for him to throw that four seam fastball. He is either going to have to spam his other pitches and continue to throw the fastball less and less, add some velocity and/or change the shape to the fastball, or incorporate his new sinker more often and hope it is more effective than the four seamer. Zimmermann’s ERA for the season is all the way up to 4.53 after these rough couple of weeks but his xFIP is still a solid 3.99. Once he gets back home to the vast landscape that is now the left field at Camden Yards perhaps he will get comfortable and make some adjustments of his own.