Down on the Farm – June 7, 2022

Welcome to ‘Down on the Farm’, a minor league spin-off of my weekly article ‘3 Up, 3 Down’. Every week I will highlight the three hottest and three coldest players in the Orioles minor league system from the previous week. Hopefully this will help in keeping track of the progress of the prospects playing for the Norfolk Tide, Bowie Baysox, Aberdeen Ironbirds, and Delmarva Shorebirds. Also be sure to check out my threads on the message board that are tracking both pitching and hitting statistics for the Orioles top prospects.

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

On Fire

Gunnar Henderson – .476/.500/.857 (1.357), 3 R, 3 doubles, 1 triple, 1 HR, 7 RBI, 21 AB (AA Bowie)

Henderson is the gift that keeps on giving for Orioles fans and executives alike. He did strikeout seven times and only walk once this past week but I think you’ll take that when you hit almost .500 with five extra base hits en route to earning a player of the week honor. The Orioles rewarded Gunnar by promoting both him and Jordan Westburg to AAA Norfolk on Monday which now places seven of the Orioles top nine prospects at AAA or above as the future gets closer and closer to the present. Henderson didn’t give them much of a choice. He was already very young for AA and didn’t face a single pitcher younger than him in his time with Bowie and now becomes the youngest player in all of AAA by several months. In the end he walked (19.7%) more than he struck out (18.3%) for the Baysox all while matching his batting average (.312) and ISO (.261) from his dominant stint in A Delmarva to start 2021. His 178 wRC+ leads all Orioles minor leaguers (by a lot) and was the second best in the Eastern League. He also leads all Orioles prospects with at least 50 plate appearances in OPS (1.025), on-base percentage (.452), and is second in slugging percentage (.573) only trailing AAA Norfolk’s Jacob Nottingham. He doesn’t turn 21 until the end of the month and has put himself in a position where he could potentially force his way into a major league debut before the season ends. I see that as much more likely for his fellow infielder Westburg, who finished his time in AA with a .817 OPS and 123 wRC+ despite a serious two week slump, since he is a polished 23 year old player drafted out of college from a competitive school and he impressed in his time at spring training a few months ago. Either way it is an exciting development that could lead to the Orioles having another top 10 prospect in baseball entering the 2023 season.

Cadyn Grenier – .444/.542/.611 (1.153), 6 R, 3 doubles, 4 RBI, 5 BB, 5 K, 1 SB, 18 AB (AAA Norfolk)

Grenier entered the 2022 season looking like he was going to be this year’s version of Mason McCoy, a borderline prospect with a good glove on the infield but with a limited shelf life due to the more heralded prospects coming up behind him. Through May 18th he was living up to that, batting .180 with a .558 OPS and 57 wRC+ but has been on a tear since then. In the two plus weeks starting on May 19th he is hitting .380 with a .984 OPS and 170 wRC+, walking 17.7% of the time and striking out 21% of the time. Overall that has put him league average at the plate with a 99 wRC+ in AAA and that would be enough to be a productive player if he can maintain that given he is known for having great defense. He has a career high 13.7% walk rate and his 24.4% strikeout rate is five percent lower than it has ever been as a professional so clearly he is still learning from the Orioles focus on swing decisions. The only reason Chris Owings still has a job at the major league level is his ability to play shortstop so with the above mentioned promotions of infielders Henderson and Westburg plus Grenier and Richie Martin (.829 OPS, 127 wRC+) performing well that could change very soon. Something has to give. The Tides now have 10 infielders on their roster even after Jahmai Jones was released. The new additions plus the return of Terrin Vavra means less playing time for guys like Grenier and Martin, if that is the case the team might as well let them be in the same situation at the major league level in what should be an improvement over what they have with Owings.

Ignacio Feliz – 0-0, 0.00 ERA, 5 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 7 K, 0.80 WHIP (A+ Aberdeen)

Feliz’s season is pretty incredible. He gave up 10 runs in his first two appearances on eight hits and four walks covering 3.2 innings with eight strikeouts and it looked like more of the same after he posted a 9.33 ERA with A+ Aberdeen over 18.1 innings at the end of 2021. Since then he has been incredible going 3-0 with a 2.03 ERA over 31 innings with a 0.90 WHIP, 49 strikeouts, and a 3.17 FIP. He is back to looking like the guy who broke onto our radar pitching with A Delmarva to start last year where he earned a promotion to the Ironbirds with a 1.05 ERA over 43 innings with 45 strikeouts. In fact he has been even better. He is striking out 38.5% of batters which is second in the organization with pitchers who have thrown at least 20 innings and the only player ahead of him? DL Hall who is striking out 38.8% of batters. He is ahead of Grayson Rodriguez (37.4%) who is third and then there is a bit of a drop off from there. He is walking 11.5% of batters which is less than he did with Delmarva last year (12%) and is right in line with Hall as well (11.6%). This is a guy the Orioles got in the minor league phase of the rule 5 draft prior to the 2021 season and is still just 22 years old. His poor start is hiding a true breakout by another Orioles pitching prospect and its past time we start paying real attention to him from here on out.

Ice Cold

Hudson Haskin – .217/.222/.217 (.439), 4 RBI, 1 BB, 9 K, 23 AB (AA Bowie)

Nobody started the season hotter than Haskin who surprised everyone with the power display he put on over the first seven games of the season. He hit three doubles and four homeruns to go along with seven singles over his first 27 plate appearances for a 1.753 OPS and 370 wRC+. Since then he is batting .208 with a .632 OPS and 80 wRC+ over 161 plate appearances. So in 134 more plate appearances he had the same amount of extra base hits after April 21st as he did before April 21st. Overall he is right in line with his performance in 2021 between A Delmarva and high A Aberdeen. He has a .265 batting average, .808 OPS, and 122 wRC+ for AA Bowie after putting up a .792 OPS and 121 wRC+ with Delmarva and .774 OPS and 118 wRC+ with Aberdeen last year. Its still a great profile for a center fielder and Haskin has played 32 of his 45 games in center field despite sharing the outfield with another plus defender in Zach Watson (before he landed on the injured list). Haskin hasn’t really had an ice cold stretch to land him on this list before this week but I’m sure the team would like to see some more consistency before potentially promoting him up to AAA Norfolk around the time Kyle Stowers makes his major league debut.

Garrett Stallings – 0-0, 47.25 ERA, 1.1 IP, 8 H, 0 BB, 0 K, 6.00 WHIP (AA Bowie)

Stallings looked so good over his first five starts of the season culminating in six no-hit innings on May 8th. At that point he had a 2.63 ERA over 24 innings with 23 strikeouts and only eight walks. He had also only given up three homeruns after struggling with them in 2021, allowing 19 over 106 innings. In his four starts since that game Stallings has a 10.57 ERA over 15.1 innings with 16 strikeouts and only two walks. The problem is he gave up 27 hits and seven homeruns over that span. The interesting thing is that his strikeout rate is up, his walk rate is down, his WHIP is down, and his HR/FB rate is down compared to his time in AA Bowie last year. The problem is that he went from a groundball pitcher (58.8% with high A Aberdeen, 51.2% with Bowie in 2021) to a flyball pitcher so far this year (34.8% groundball rate, 43.8% flyball rate). It would be nice to have statcast information on hand to try and see if this is by design or something that is a work in progress as far as getting that groundball rate back. His ERA for the season sits at 5.72 while his xFIP is 4.44. That is eerily similar to his 5.54 ERA and 4.43 xFIP with Bowie last season despite having a different way of getting there. I’m going to track his groundball rate for the rest of the month and see how it correlates to his success or lack thereof.

Mike Baumann – 0-1, 23.63 ERA, 2.2 IP, 9 H, 4 BB, 4 K, 4.88 WHIP (AAA Norfolk)

I’m not sure what to make of Baumann. Coming up he was known for having a mid-90’s fastball that he could ramp up to the upper 90’s and an excellent slider. That is why a lot of evaluators figured he would wind up being a back end of the bullpen reliever if he couldn’t find a usable third and/or fourth pitch. The Orioles seemingly wanted to work him in a role in-between starter and high leverage reliever much like they have successfully done with Keegan Akin this year. A multi-inning, one time through the lineup reliever is a growing trend in the sport and Baumann seems like as good of a candidate as anyone to fill that role. He started the year with the Orioles and was averaging 96.4 mph with his fastball but was strangely not throwing his slider much at all. Watching him after he was sent down to AAA Norfolk it was easy to see why, he just didn’t have any feel to command it. I’m assuming that’s what they want him working on down there and a result he has a 8.79 ERA over 14.1 innings for the Tides with 20 strikeouts and nine walks. Obviously a lot of that has to do with his blowup outing this past week but it goes to show that you can’t get by with one pitch, and more specifically when that one pitch is a fastball, no matter how hard you can throw it at the upper levels of the sport. Interestingly his 3.51 xFIP is lower than his 2021 4.59 xFIP with Norfolk in 2021 when he had an actual ERA of 2.00 over 27 innings. His strikeout rate is up, his walk rate is up only slightly, and he is getting a ton of ground balls (69%). The problem is he has a .390 BABIP against him and an unlucky 25% HR/FB ratio. Bad luck or not Baumann is four months away from turning 27 and reaching an age where he can barely be called a prospect. That doesn’t mean he can’t figure it out and become a successful pitcher on this team but he doesn’t have as much development time left in him.