Offseason Improvements – Part Two: Hitting with John Rhodes

The baseball season ends and most fans put the sport out of their mind until pitchers and catchers report to spring training around five months later outside of the occasional transaction over the offseason. Its not so easy for the players themselves. In fact, the offseason is when they can focus their energy on making significant strides in their development. Whether its adding a new pitch or putting on good weight to improve their power. Of course improvements can be made during the season and that’s where you can really see the results of the hard work being put in but in this two part series I wanted to take a look at what exactly goes into an offseason routine for developing minor league prospects. I talked to one pitcher and one position player in the Orioles system. First up was right handed starting pitcher Zach Peek, acquired from the Los Angeles Angels in the Dylan Bundy trade. For part two I spoke to outfielder John Rhodes who was drafted out of the University of Kentucky in the third round of the 2021 draft.

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

Rhodes was one of four college outfielders selected with the Orioles first five picks in last year’s draft and he currently sits as BSL’s 23^rd ranked prospect in the organization, behind only the O’s top two picks Colton Cowser (5^th) and Connor Norby (13^th). He enters a deep system loaded with talent in the outfield but as he told me when I talked to him last week iron sharpens iron. How did he feel about being drafted by Orioles with the 76^th overall pick last July? “Camden Yards is actually the only MLB stadium I had ever been to.”

“It’s a unique experience, it happens so fast so until you experience it you don’t understand how pressure filled and how much things can change. So the day of, I think at like one o’clock that day when the draft started up (day two) I told my dad “hey man, I think I’m gonna have to go back to school. I don’t think I’m gonna get picked, I don’t think I’m gonna get my number” and then thankfully something happened and the next thing you know I’m flying up to Baltimore a week later so it was a crazy experience but it was awesome. It was one of the best days of my life and a cool experience to share with my family.”

He started his professional career with a week’s worth of games in the FCL where he batted .214 with a .389 on-base percentage and .603 OPS before being promoted to low A Delmarva along with the majority of the college position players from the draft class. There he received 105 plate appearances over 23 games putting up a line of .266/.343/.372 (.715) with four doubles, two homeruns, and six stolen bases which comes out to a perfectly league average 100 wRC+. You can see how that has a good chance of improving in 2022 given that he had a perfectly respectable walk rate of 8.6% and a really solid strikeout rate of 15.2%.

How did Rhodes feel his first taste of pro ball went? “It was ok, I mean I didn’t necessarily exceed my expectations or the goals I had for myself but it was great to get my feet wet. I think that’s what that first little short part is about is just getting your feet wet and learning as much as possible. That was my mindset going into it – I want to learn how to be a professional, I want to learn from some of the older guys that have been there and so I think it was cool to really step in there and have that mindset and so I can grow on it this year.”

So the underlying numbers indicate a good approach at the plate and he has plus raw power that just needs to be translated more into games. Rhodes agrees: “I didn’t necessarily barrel balls as much as I should. My barrel rate was I think the highest in our draft class with two weeks to go and then I just fell off. Just completely fell off. And so really improving my barrel rate and my damage rate, hitting the ball harder and making harder contact more consistently. My walk numbers were fine, my strikeout numbers were fine, I wasn’t chasing too many bad pitches but I just wasn’t hitting the ball hard enough.”

So the season ends, what is the first step to trying to make those improvements? “I take a little breather. I think that’s the right thing to do because its, man, it’s a long year. I haven’t got to experience a full season but I went from playing 50-60 college games last year to another 15-20 in the Cape (Cod League) and then another 30 in pro ball. I had never played more than literally 40-45 games in a year, I was beat.”

Then it was time to get to work. Some guys might mix cage work and trying to increase their muscle mass to maximize their power in their frame but Rhodes is already filled out for the most part physically. That doesn’t mean there aren’t physical changes he could put his energy into. “I focused on my mobility a lot this offseason, I was playing at like 215 last year and I just felt a little too big. I didn’t feel like I could move as well as I should. I’m back down to like 205 now. Really took stretching and running seriously for the first time in my life and I feel good. I feel like I’m in really good shape.”

The other part of the equation is changes to his swing and taking a better path to the ball instead of dropping his hands straight down towards the ball. “In college you’re taught down, down, down with your swing and so learning how to level it out and how to hit with a wood bat, it’s a different game because you can clip balls with a metal bat in college and it can be a homer. But in pro ball the fields are bigger, you’re playing at night more often, the winds aren’t as good, the balls aren’t necessarily as good at the lower levels, and you really have to be mechanically sound so for me it was just cleaning up a lot of mechanical flaws that I had in college.”

The Orioles player development since Mike Elias and company took over has been completely overhauled and for the better based on early evidence. In 2019 the team focused on increasing strikeouts and that’s exactly what happened with low A Delmarva leading the way to record numbers. There was no minor league season in 2020 thanks to the pandemic but in 2021 the focus was on improving plate discipline and swing decisions. That has worked out as planned as well if you consider this article written by Travis Sawchik last July and the fact that 2021’s minor league hitting coordinator and AA Bowie hitting coach, Ryan Fuller, is now 2022’s major league hitting coach as the team prepares to see many of its top prospects hit the big leagues.

“It’s a complete revamp and for the right reasons. Coming from high school and college you get normal BP all the time, just normal BP. You’re graded everyday on how many balls you hit well, little things like that. The big mindset change with our organization is improving versus proving. And so our practice settings are more challenge BP, more machine work. Things that make you fail so that when the games come, the game seem easier. So for me that’s been a lot different in terms of learning to fail and that its ok to fail in practice when in my head I thought I had to be perfect all the time. Its been cool to be like “ok I can fail here, I’m gonna fail in a game” but that’s part of it, we play a game of failure.”

“I was really surprised because I heard about pro ball from a bunch of different other people and its “yeah, you’re all on your own” but we’re trying to completely revamp how we do it here and its awesome. I think everyone is super well qualified and its been an awesome experience.”

Asked for more specifics when it came to how to accomplish his and the team’s goals over the offseason, Rhodes gave an excellent answer. “We have a K-vest sensor that we rolled in during instructs and kind of measured out your sequencing so you have four parts of your swing and getting them all in line. You look at Rutschman’s swing and its lined up like one, two, three, four and its like “dang” then you look at mine and its like 2, 4, 3, 1 and I’m like “oh no I got some ways to go” and so we work through that a little bit. But really its just you gotta challenge yourself everyday. Having like a mixed BP everyday, having hard machine work. For me that’s what I focused on this offseason was just doing something everyday that challenged myself and in turn I think that’ll ultimately increase my barrel rate and make me hit the ball harder because I’m not just in a comfortable setting.”

Long time Orioles fans know all too well how different all this sounds compared to the last few decades ever since ‘The Oriole Way’ went bye bye birdy. Even someone as new to the organization as Rhodes has heard the same from some teammates. “Its been really cool to talk to the guys like Adam Hall that have been here through the old regime to now and he’s like “its completely different” and the thing is the guys are totally bought in. Adley is super bought in, Westburg is bought in. And its cool to see those guys that are knocking on the door to the big leagues being super bought in to this stuff that they’re implementing to us. From top to bottom everyone is really hammering this ideology.”

It must be working for him because he has made the most of the playing time he has gotten at major league spring training. He has been brought up for two games at the time of this writing and made his presence known in each of them. In his first game he immediately gunned someone down from the outfield for an assist and then lined a single into right center field. In the second game this past Friday he destroyed a ball into left field for a long homerun. That has to boost a guy’s confidence who is most likely slated to start the year in high A with Aberdeen. A solid season in which he ends with a few hundred AA at bats in Bowie would put him on track to be major league ready no later than 2024.

Its exciting to hear that even though it hasn’t been easy to watch the results at the major league level over the past four seasons, the team is doing everything in its power to change that from the inside out and make the most of the vastly increased talent pool that they have acquired through trades, international signings, and the draft. Its not something Orioles fans are used to and it will take some getting used to and proof that it will work all the way through the major league level. But for those who have been paying attention to what is going on in the minor leagues (and its never too late to start), its easy to see the progress. I will end this short series with an extended quote from John Rhodes that should give even the most cynical O’s fan a glimmer of hope, which of course springs eternal as the season approaches.

“The sky’s the limit. Just being at mini-camps and being at other stuff, when I’ve been watching the cages I’m just like “oh my gosh dude”, we got some dudes. Me and Darrel Hernaiz, there was actually a sim game – I think it was the one Stowers hit a bomb off of Grayson. I was DH’ing that game and he was coming off the bench later in the game and he turned to me after Gunnar made a sick play and he was like “this is an insane display of baseball”. And so just being around these guys everyday, seriously the sky is the limit.”

“I’m looking at some of the dudes that we have coming up and you know Gunnar’s a man, Adley’s a man, Stowers is nasty. We’re just a few years away from something special could be brewing. The more you’re around it everyday the more real its becoming. Credit to the front office because they’re done an unbelievable job. I’ve talked to my friends that play in other organizations, they’re talking about their talent and we are far ahead of some of these other teams in how we do things and the talent we have here. Its super impressive to be around everyday. It is really, really impressive.”

“The future for Birdland fans, its bright.”