Another very successful week for the Birds! After going 5-1 against Detroit and Boston at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the O’s are 16-8 and just 3.5 back of the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL East. Tampa is also the only team in the American League with more wins than Baltimore (Toronto also has 16, and Atlanta and Pittsburgh have 17 in the NL).
Let’s see who contributed and who didn’t ahead of a road trip during which the good guys will hopefully be able to stack some more wins, as they head to Detroit and Kansas City before really testing their mettle in Atlanta.
(We’ll be trying something new this week. With each player discussed, we’ll include a snapshot of their StatCast page. These were obtained via Baseball Savant.)
Three Up
Cedric Mullins
Just as he is cemented atop the Orioles batting order against right-handed starters, Cedric Mullins has seemingly staked his claim atop our UP list, as he starts us off for the second straight week. Mullins hit .368/.455/.632 over the past six games, spanning 23 plate appearances, good for a wRC+ of 205 and 0.4 fWAR. He walked as many times as he struck out (3), his seven hits included two doubles and a home run, he drove in five and of course, swiped another base (despite a Boston pitch-out, HA).
Mullins’ season numbers bottomed out on April 11, when he was hitting just .163/.250/.326 (.576 OPS), and has rebounded nicely since. For the season he now sits at .271/.386/.447 (.833 OPS), good for a 139 OPS+, tied for second best on the team with Adley Rutschman. Particularly encouraging are his numbers against lefties: 9-for-28 (.321) with three doubles, a home run, and just three strikeouts to six walks.
Perhaps he should lead off against southpaws as well!
Ramon Urias
You’re probably not surprised at the two guys I mentioned as being tied for second on the Orioles in wRC+, Mullins & Adley. You may, however, be a bit taken aback at who currently sits fourth: Ramon Urias!
With the caveat that he has 30-40 fewer plate appearances than Adley & Ced (though just 13 fewer than team leader Austin Hays), Urias has posted a wRC+ of 133 for the season. He was particularly good over the past six games, hitting .429/.455/.524, good for a wRC+ of 181, while leading the team with six runs driven in. While Ramon’s numbers were very much boosted by his 4-for-4 showing in yesterday’s win over Boston, before that he also had another four hits (two doubles) and five driven in against the Tigers & Red Sox combined.
Urias’ .538 BABIP certainly had a say in his spot on this list, but that’s baseball.
Tyler Wells
Mullins wasn’t the only player from last week’s UP who deserved a spot this week too. However, we wanted to make room for a new face in the feature, so I’ll break form and say a few words about one of our honorable mentions below.
For now, we welcome Tyler Wells to our UP for the first time this season. Wells started Friday against the Tigers and again yesterday against Boston, pitching a combined 12.2 innings, allowing two ER on seven hits, striking out 12 while walking just two, and tying Kyle Gibson for the longest outing of 2023 to date by an O’s starter with seven full innings Friday.
Wells was a popular choice among fans to move back into a long relief role when the bullpen was struggling a few weeks ago, but has, in my humble opinion, cemented himself as a starter for the time being. He started 23 games last year with a K/9 of 6.60 and a BB/9 of 2.43. He has improved those numbers to 7.14 and 0.93, respectively, this season, a marked improvement. And look at that fastball spin rate!
Honorable Mentions
Yennier Cano
Yennier Cano was awesome again. Just a revelation at the back of the bullpen. He tied an O’s record for most consecutive batters retired to start a season (25) before plunking Justin Turner yesterday. He has still yet to allow a baserunner other than that HBP.
Three Down
Adam Frazier
“Whoa whoa whoa,” I hear you saying. “Adam Frazier was a part of both walk-off wins!” That he was! Frazier’s fielder’s choice to score Ryan Mountcastle beat the Tigers on Friday (thanks to a terrible throw by Spencer Torkelson), and he scored on a wild pitch Sunday after coming in as the Manfred Man/Zombie Runner, in Urias’ stead.
While we thank him for those contributions, Frazier was still very bad this week. In 19 plate appearances, he hit .105/.105/.105 – so yes, that’s just two singles. He struck out four times, didn’t walk, posted a wRC+ of -53, and for the season now sits at .208/.288/.333. His wRC+ of 77 is second-lowest among O’s regulars (see below), and the signing, panned by many when it happened, is looking to be as bad as we thought, especially with Jordan Westburg (.982 OPS) and Joey Ortiz (.889 OPS) mashing in Norfolk.
Let’s hope that “veteran leadership” is really providing some intangibles we aren’t seeing, because what we can see from Frazier is very bad.
Anthony Santander
So if Frazier is just the second-worst hitter among Birds regulars, who’s first? Unfortunately, it remains 2022’s best among qualified Birds, Anthony Santander, who just can’t seem to get it going. In 23 plate appearances this week, Santander hit .200/.217/.300, a wRC+ of 33, and managed just two doubles, two RBI, and one walk to go with three strikeouts. He did at least have two sacrifice flies in yesterday’s win.
For the season, Santander is hitting .205/.274/.325, with seven doubles and still just a lone home run after hitting 33 in 2022.
Some of his StatCast numbers are encouraging (avg. & max EV, HardHit%), while others are not so much (xBA, xSLG, Chase Rate). He is currently swinging at 41.6% of pitches outside the strike zone, compared to 35.0% last year, and his highest since 45.3% in 2017, so we should probably start there when it comes to hoping for improvements.
Swing decisions, Anthony!
Adley Rutschman
This one hurts to see, but even Golden Gods have down weeks. Adley was only barely better than Santander last week, with a wRC+ of 34, hitting .182/.269/.182 while leading the team with 26 plate appearances. He walked four times, struck out three, and managed just four singles.
Adley will be fine, we all know this, so no need to dwell here. Except, perhaps to note, that Adley has started all 24 games this season, and perhaps a day off could be in order (as much as we’ll all groan about it when we see the lineup).
Here’s to a successful road trip, Birdland!
