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Three Up, Three Down: Mullins Turns Things Around

Cedric Mullins Chicago White Sox
Baltimore Orioles photo (Facebook.com/Orioles)
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It was a pretty good week for our Baltimore Orioles, as they’ve won five of seven since we introduced our Three Up, Three Down feature last week. Let’s see who contributed, and who didn’t, to that nice little run in Chicago and DC (plus the final two at home against Oakland, one of which included Adley Rutschman’s first ever walk-off home run at any level).

Three Up

Cedric Mullins

Cedric Mullins topped the DOWN list last week, thanks to a -31 wRC+. This week, you couldn’t escape him. He completely turned things around in topping our UP category. Ced was second on the Birds with a 215 wRC+, thanks to a .391/.548/.522 slash line over 31 plate appearances. That included a 25.8% walk rate, second on the team only to Rutschman. Mullins added two extra-base hits (a double and a triple), drove in seven, and raised his season averages to .242/.367/.394, good for a 122 wRC+. He also stole four bases, and is 9-for-9 in that category in 2023.

Jorge Mateo

Speaking of stolen bases, Jorge Mateo was actually caught for the first time this week, while being successful twice, and is 8-for-9 this year. However, base thievery isn’t why we are talking about Jorge in this week’s UP. Mateo was the team leader in wRC+, at 250 over 24 PA. He hit .474/.478/.842 with three doubles, and a homer, and seven driven in.

Unfortunately, Mateo was removed from last night’s game after hobbling out of the box in his first at-bat. We learned after the game that he was having right hip discomfort, and is considered day-to-day at the moment. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that the off day today provides all the rest he needs.

Yennier Cano

The Birds’ best reliever this week was Yennier Cano, called up on Friday as Keegan Akin went on the paternity list and Cole Irvin was optioned to Norfolk. The 29-year-old appeared in three games for the O’s last year, allowing nine earned runs on nine hits and five walks over 4.1 IP, so needless to say, Birdland didn’t have high hopes.

Boy were we wrong. Cano, thus far, has been a revelation. Over the same number of innings pitched as he had all of last year (4.1), Cano has yet to allow a single baserunner to reach, retiring all 12 batters he’s faced (there was a double-play ball on an inherited runner in there).

With some other members of the bullpen struggling to regain their 2022 form, Cano’s emergence was absolutely critical to the Birds’ success over the past week. Here’s to him hanging around and pitching like this.

Honorable Mentions

Anthony Santander, Gunnar Henderson (really – third on the team with a 135 wRC+), Dean Kremer, Kyle Bradish

Three Down

Ryan Mountcastle

Swapping positions with Mullins this week, Ryan Mountcastle finds himself going straight from UP to DOWN. Since driving in nine in that record-tying performance on April 10, Mountcastle has just two RBI, and posted a -37 wRC+ over 32 PA, going just 3-for-32 with no walks, five strikeouts, and a single home run. His season batting average dropped nearly 60 points to just .208 over that stretch.

The good news is that he was absolutely hammered by a BABIP of .077, and his Statcast numbers (see below) still paint a very promising picture, so some positive regression is certainly in order.

Cole Irvin

Cole Irvin swerved his way right to the AAA Norfolk Tides after another disappointing performance Thursday against the hapless A’s. Staked to a 3-1 lead after two innings, Irvin allowed a single, HBP, and a home run in coughing that lead right back up. His mates held him up again, scoring four times in the bottom of the third and giving him an even larger lead with which to work (7-3) after three innings. Cole retired the first two in the fourth, and looked ready to settle in. He then went single, walk, walk, single, and it was 7-6 O’s just like that.

Irvin failed to get out of the fifth inning in any of his three starts in April, walking eight in 12.2 and sporting an ERA of 10.66.

Let’s hope he can get things ironed out in Norfolk. He was brought over to be a reliable innings-eater (he threw 178 and 181 in 2021 and 2022 for Oakland), and has been nothing of the sort. His walk rate had been trending downwards every season (from 2.81 BB/9 in 2019 down to 1.79 BB/9 last year) but has ballooned to 5.68 here in 2023. So keep an eye on those walk numbers as his Norfolk stats roll in.

Cionel Perez

One of the most pleasant surprises of 2022, reliever Cionel Perez has seemingly turned back into a pumpkin. A reclamation project of Mike Elias from Cincinnati, where he had posted a 6.38 ERA in 25 appearances in 2021, Perez turned things around in Baltimore. He posted a 1.40 ERA in 66 appearances, and allowed just a single earned run over his final 17 IP last year.

So far in April though, he can’t find the plate and isn’t missing any bats. His BB% is currently at 11.1 compared to 9.0 last year, while his K/9 has dropped from 23.5% to 17.8%. Brandon Hyde gave him four chances last week, and in those four appearances he managed just 2.2 IP, during which he walked five, struck out just one, and gave up seven hits.

With the emergence of Cano, and Dillon Tate and Mychal Givens hopefully returning soon, Perez’s roster spot is looking quite precarious, despite being the only lefty of those just mentioned.

We’ll be back here next week for another edition of Three Up, Three Down, and with any luck we’ll again be talking about a 5-2 (or better) week for the Birds.

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