How many consecutive weeks can you write about Ryan Mountcastle? We know the answer is at least two because here we are, again, after writing an introductory piece about Mountcastle last week ,right here at BSL. In it I touched on Mountcastle’s prospect profile, what calling him up means, and why he probably belongs in a red uniform on a horse wearing a large silly hat. This, you see, is important work. The article you’re currently reading will focus less on what’s expected of him and more on what he’s actually done so far. It’s been a short time in the majors for Mountcastle, but it’s been a very productive one, and I think it bears looking at more closely.
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With two more hits last night in Wednesday’s game, Mountcastle’s batting average is up to .341 and his OPS to .937. That’s a heck of a good start to his career. So let’s begin with that, namely what he’s done really well. Obviously he’s got a lot of hits, thus the high batting average. He has four extra base hits in total, but what is probably more surprising are his four walks. He’s walking in just a hair under 10 percent of his plate appearances, which is fantastic and much higher than he managed in the minor leagues.
So that looks good on the surface, but dig a bit deeper and you’ll see that he’s swinging a lot. I mean, a lot a lot. Going into Wednesday’s game, Mountcastle was offering at 61.3 percent of the pitches thrown to him. The major league average is 28.3 percent. It’s not because he’s received weaker pitching than would be expected either, or received a far greater percentage of pitches in the strike zone than would be typical. In fact, he’s received fewer pitches in the zone than the major league average. We’re still well into small sample size territory, but if that swing percentage stays where it is, that walk rate is going to fall hard. Major league pitchers are going to learn that you can get him out without throwing strikes, and that’ll be a real test for the young Mountcastle.
That’s the book on Mountcastle though. He’s a guy with lots of power and he swings a lot. That can work if he turns bad pitches into hard hits, or if he learns to leave the bad pitches alone thereby forcing pitchers to throw pitches over the plate, but we haven’t seen evidence of either yet. It’s still very early though.
Back to the happy: he has two homers! Both of them came last Sunday, the 30th, against Tanner Roark in Buffalo against the Blue Jays. Both of them were total crush jobs to left field, the kind of homers where the left fielder just stands there and watches it go over his head, like a little kid at the end of a runway. The first one came on an off-speed pitch, maybe a slider or a changeup. The pitch dropped a bit, but he was on it the whole way. The second came on an 89 mph fastball on the inside corner and Mountcastle turned on it, sending it over the Canadian border, presumably. The power is tantalizing, and like we discussed last week, this is the part of Mountcastle’s game where he possesses star potential. Not only does he have crazy power but he can get to it in games (not always something power hitting prospects can do; sometimes it’s only in batting practice), as evidenced twice against poor, poor Tanner Roark.
Another impressive aspect to Mountcastle’s performance so far is his ability to spray the ball all over the field. Among his hits are hard line drives to right field, hard line drives to left field, hard grounders to left, and hard grounders to left field. He has a sweet swing, the kind of looping smoothness you usually only see from a left handed hitter. It’s a joy to watch. More important than aesthetics, it allows him to hit the ball to all fields. This will make him difficult to shift against and should allow him to take advantage of some of the weaker contact he makes from time to time.
There have been a few cheap hits sprinkled in there – weak grounder to third against Boston and slow chopper in between third and short against Tampa come to mind – but the batting average isn’t wholly undeserved.
If there is anything concerning in the batted ball data, it’s that Mountcastle has been hitting the ball on the ground a whole lot. It’s still quite early, so again I’d file this under “something to watch” rather than “something to aggressively sweat about.” Ground balls aren’t bad, but Mountcastle can’t adequately take advantage of his power when he hits the ball on the ground 55 percent of the time, like he’s doing now. If he continues doing this it’ll limit his power potential, essentially undercutting his greatest skill.
Now we get to the elephant in the room: his fielding. It should be stated here that one of the issues with Mountcastle as a prospect has been his inability to stick at a position. He’s not un-athletic, but he’s been steadily moving down the defensive spectrum since he was drafted, and now the Orioles are hoping he can find a home as a left fielder. I’ll repeat myself and say it’s still extremely early but the advanced metrics aren’t in love with what he’s done in left so far. I haven’t watched Mountcastle enough in the field to feel comfortable commenting one way or the other, but regardless of what your eyes tell you about his defense, it’s clear he’s there to learn this season, both at the plate and in the field. If the Orioles aren’t going to shock the baseball world and make the playoffs this year, which it seems they aren’t (sad emoji), then it stands to reason they should just put Mountcastle in left every day and let him learn on the job. And if Baseball Reference is to be believed, that’s what they’re doing, as Mountcastle hasn’t missed a game since being called up.
Overall it’s been an encouraging beginning to Mountcastle’s career. There are issues, sure. This isn’t Fernando Tatis, Jr. we’re talking about, so you don’t expect a finished product on the field. The power is playing, he’s hitting the ball to all fields, and he’s getting acclimated to left field, so those are great starting points. He’s got some stuff to work on, but this is a guy who could be the O’s regular left fielder for the next six seasons, or even longer, and his start so far hasn’t done anything to disabuse me of that possibility. Hard to ask for more than that.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.