3 Up, 3 Down – July 2022

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 July.

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

3 Up

Adley Rutschman – .274/.407/.452 (.859), 16 R, 7 doubles, 2 HR, 8 RBI, 15 BB, 17 K, 73 AB

Adley has steadily gotten better and better since his promotion in May as he has gotten acclimated to major league pitching. He batted .179 with a .529 OPS during that first month over 44 plate appearances. In June he improved that to a .241 batting average, .775 OPS, 10 doubles, and three homeruns over 85 plate appearances. This past month saw the plate discipline that he was known for in the minor leagues finally translate as he walked 15 times compared to 17 strikeouts over 91 plate appearances to go along with a .274 batting average and .859 OPS. He recently qualified for Baseball Savant’s percentile rankings and it is filled with red as you might expect. He is at least league average in every category while really excelling at walk percentage (77th percentile), whiff percentage (81th percentile), and chase rate (80th percentile). He is up to a 116 wRC+ and already leads the team in fWAR with 2.0. While the offense took some time to warm up the defense and presence behind the plate was evident immediately and that is backed up by him being in the 93rd percentile for catchers pop time throwing down to second base and the 89th percentile in framing. He is looking every bit the player Orioles fans expected when they were waiting for him to make his major league debut, hopefully the Orioles will make every attempt to lock him up on a long term contract extension over the offseason.

Ramon Urias – .329/.380/.575 (.955), 11 R, 3 doubles, 5 HR, 18 RBI, 73 AB

Urias has been hitting the ball hard all season long. The problem was that he was crushing balls right into the ground which led to an April where he hit .194 with a .463 OPS. There was certainly bad luck involved in his numbers being that bad and they improved for the month of May but when he hit the injured list in the middle of June he still only had a .225 batting average and .660 OPS for the season. At that point he was hitting the ball on the ground 47.2% of the time and in the air only 28.3% of the time. Since returning from a month on the IL he has lowered his groundball percentage to 41.9% and raised his flyball percentage to 43.5%. With a hard hit percentage in the 93rd percentile, an average exit velocity in the 73rd percentile, and a barrel percentage in the 62nd percentile that is going to lead to more power production which it did. Urias has always had sneaky power to right center field but this year he is pulling the ball with real authority and has even conquered Mount Waltimore a time or two. He plays a solid third base which has filled a hole that the infield has had all year long, at least offensively. His stellar July has raised his production at the plate to above league average for the year (108 wRC+). His walk rate is down but as long as he keeps hitting the ball hard he will remain an important part of the lineup for the rest of the season.

Felix Bautista – 0-1, 2.03 ERA, 1 SV, 13.1 IP, 3 H, 3 BB, 22 K, 0.45 WHIP

Bautista gave up an eighth inning homerun on Sunday in a game tied at two that the Orioles would go on to lose. But despite that he still had a ridiculously good month of July. So good that trade offers for closer Jorge Lopez have to be all the more enticing when you know you can slot ‘The Mountain’ into his role and likely not miss a beat. His strikeout percentage is currently in the 97th percentile after striking out a ridiculous 50% of batters last month. And for somebody whose only question coming into the season was control, his 6.8% walk rate for the month is just as eye opening as the strikeout numbers. If those rates continue to be anywhere near those levels than the only chance batters are going to have against him are going to be to run into a homerun the way Brandon Drury did over the weekend. They only batted .073 against him in July and are only hitting .161 off of the 6’8”, 280 pound righty for the season. Bautista isn’t the only reliever who had a spectacular month as a big part in the team having back to back winning months. Cionel Perez had a 1.46 ERA over 12.1 innings, Dillon Tate had a 3.00 ERA over 12 innings, Joey Krehbiel had a 1.54 ERA over 11.2 innings, Keegan Akin had a 2.61 ERA over 10.1 innings, Bryan Baker had a 2.45 ERA over 11 innings, and Nick Vespi had a 1.93 ERA over 4.2 innings before being sent back down to AAA Norfolk. Bullpens can be volatile year to year and even month to month but the Orioles have done a tremendous job of putting together one of the best relievers corps in the sport mostly from waiver claims and unheralded minor leaguers.

3 Down

Ryan Mountcastle – .195/.242/.299 (.541), 9 R, 6 doubles, 1 HR, 10 RBI, 1 SB, 87 AB

Its kind of eerie how similar the trajectory of Mountcastle’s 2021 and 2022 seasons have been to this point. He started off slow each year – .515 OPS and 36 wRC+ in April 2021, .613 OPS and 72 wRC+ in April 2022. In May he bounced back to around league average in each season – .748 OPS and 96 wRC+ in 2021, .769 and 111 wRC+ in 2022. June is when he starts hitting for real power – 1.106 OPS, four doubles, nine homeruns, and 172 wRC+ in 2021, .959 OPS, 11 doubles, seven homeruns, and 165 wRC+ in 2022. July is a big bump in the road – .656 OPS and 73 wRC+ in 2021, .541 OPS and 49 wRC+ in 2022. If we’re going to continue along the same path then the Orioles are about to have a bat in the middle of their order good enough to carry them offensively because Mountcastle had a 1.183 OPS and 208 wRC+ over 78 August plate appearances last season. It would be good timing for a player who is sitting around league average at the plate as a first baseman especially if the Orioles do decide to trade Trey Mancini at tomorrow’s deadline. As a team firmly in the wild card race with two months to go (I can’t believe I just typed those words) the offense needs to step up in a big way and Mountcastle is a big part of that. He is still hitting the ball hard when he makes contact, he is just not making much contact right now. He has always been very aggressive at the plate and a sucker for a slider off of the plate but his swing decisions have been pretty much “see ball, swing at ball” since the all-star break.

Austin Hays –.202/.269/.298 (.566), 10 R, 5 doubles, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 1 SB, 76 AB

Another guy who is going to have to get back on track at the plate if the Orioles offense is going to keep them in the playoff chase is Hays. He still has a 112 wRC+ overall on the season despite coming off of a month in which he only walked 4.3% of the time, struckout 25.8% of the time, and had an ISO under .100. So he barely broke the Mendoza line, didn’t walk at all, and didn’t hit for any power. Before the calendar turned to July he was walking a career best 6.2% of the time (outside of 21 games in 2019) and only striking out 17.6% of the time while maintaining an ISO of .196. After the first two months of the season Hays looked like a surefire all-star selection for the O’s and this year’s version of Cedric Mullins as far as an outfielder having a career year that seemed to be playing themselves onto the next playoff team in Baltimore. He was batting .297 with a .818 OPS and 133 wRC+ through May but since then is only batting .229 with a .692 OPS over 188 at bats. He is still playing good defense in the outfield (unless you look at Baseball Savant who has him in the 3rd percentile of outs above average and 14th percentile in outfield jump) and uses his arm as a weapon cutting down baserunners. The good news is that its almost September which is a month that Austin Hays owns. He had a .933 OPS in September 2021, a .989 OPS in September 2020, and a .947 OPS in September 2019.

Dean Kremer – 1-2, 6.94 ERA, 23.1 IP, 33 H, 5 HR, 7 BB, 22 K, 1.71 WHIP

Kremer came up to make his first start of the season on June 5th after missing the first two months of the season with a strained oblique and looked like a completely different pitcher than the guy who ended 2021 in AAA Norfolk after putting up a 7.55 ERA over 53.2 major league innings. After his first five starts he had a 1.29 ERA and 3.08 FIP covering 28 innings with 19 strikeouts and seven walks. Since then he has the line you see above. The funny thing is his strikeout rate increased and his walk rate decreased during that second stretch but his BABIP was .389 in July after being .289 in June. The difference is he gave up five homeruns in July versus only one in June. His xFIP was 4.69 in June and 4.68 in July so I’m willing to split the difference and assume he is going to be a guy with a mid-4’s ERA moving forward for the rest of the year. The starting pitching has been much better than expected for the Orioles this season despite being held together by Scotch tape. Jordan Lyles has eaten innings but been very up and down lately. Tyler Wells was consistently good until this month when he ended up on the IL with a strained oblique. They turned waiver claim Austin Voth and minor league free agent Spenser Watkins into useful arms but it is a real question how sustainable that is. That is on top of losing John Means, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, Alex Wells and Chris Ellis to injury and Bruce Zimmermann to ineffectiveness. Bradish is back now and looked good in his first start since coming off of the injured list due to a shoulder injury. The Orioles have DL Hall, Bruce Zimmermann, Chris Vallimont, and (gulp) Matt Harvey waiting in the wings in AAA but it would be nice for Kremer to at least pitch well enough to keep a spot in the rotation.