Spring was kind to Jones, Mancini
up and five trending down with Opening Day just a day away. UP: Adam Jones: Jones wasn’t around for much of the camp in Sarasota, but he probably had the best two months of anyone in the organization. Sure, the world got to see how big of a star third baseman Manny Machado is in the WBC. But Jones doesn’t get that kind of attention normally, however flawed that reality is, and was one of the iconic members of the champions from Team USA. Before he left, manager Buck Showalter praised the work Jones did to get himself ready for the early-spring tournament, and all that proved prescient. Now, the Orioles are hoping he’ll be able to continue his big year when the games count again, but Jones seems plenty up for that challenge. UP: Trey Mancini: Mancini has had the rug pulled out from him more times than anyone deserves, even by the Orioles’ standards. Last year, he was touted all offseason as a ready-made replacement for Chris Davis, only for Davis to re-sign. This year, he could have made the club in a designated hitter role before Mark Trumbo re-signed. And then even when he started playing the outfield, Mancini seemed like he’d be in trouble come Opening Day. And yet all he does is hit — even last year in his brief call-up, one scout said he looked like he had the best approach on the team — and the Orioles seem set to find a way to get him a run down the orange carpet come Monday. It’s richly deserved, however unlikely the team’s constant roster maneuvering made it seem even a few days ago. UP: Jayson Aquino: It’s hard to change your first impression, especially with the Orioles and Showalter, but few have done it more quickly than Aquino. When he joined the club for two stints last season, no one on the major league staff knew anything about the Dominican left-hander, and it didn’t seem like a good situation for anyone involved. Showalter, at the end of seemingly every September series, would say Aquino was leaving the club and heading to Sarasota to join the camp there, only he never would go. Now, he’s got some familiarity with the club, has an advocate in pitching instructor Ramon Martinez (who helped him with his breaking ball this offseason in the Dominican Winter League) and is being lined up to be the team’s fifth starter after posting a 1.20 ERA in 15 Grapefruit League innings. Talk about a turnaround. UP: Craig Gentry: The feel-good story of camp appears set to reach a smiling conclusion, with the spare outfielder erasing the effects of two years of nasty concussion symptoms to return to what appears to be his previous form as a quality bench player. His story is typical Orioles — hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh worked with him in the offseason and vouched for a player who was written off by most of the league — and it seems to have worked out. There’s some apprehension about adding a bench player without options to a roster that prizes flexibility over all else, but that’s not his problem. Gentry has done all he can to resurrect his career this spring. Now comes the hard part — sustaining it. UP: Caleb Joseph: Joseph entered the spring with legitimate concerns about whether the brutal 2016 season he endured at the plate had carried over, and answered them quickly. He hit two home runs, which provided his only two RBIs of the spring, but looked like a much more settled hitter with the bat speed he showed in 2015 en route to hitting .261/.370/.435 in the spring. There was some chatter all offseason that his minor league options could be used against him and he could be supplanted as the backup catcher by someone like Francisco Peña. That never came to pass after Peña passed through waivers and was outrighted to the minors. Joseph seems poised to put last season behind him. DOWN: Chris Davis, Mark Trumbo, J.J. Hardy: These three get to share one spot, meaning they’re only one-third down, and that’s mostly because of the crummy circumstances created by a seven-week spring training for players who probably need half that. They represented the Orioles’ biggest stars once the WBC began, and as a result had to endure the interminable spring training. The schedule was likely hard to overcome. Hardy had to race to fitness after a month or so of back spasms, while Trumbo and Davis played the home games and never seemed to get into a groove. They got closer as camp closed, with Davis homering three times in the past two weeks. Trumbo, incredibly, didn’t homer once, though he started to make his traditional loud contact in the last week-plus. Each gets a pass of sorts, as veterans who know what it takes to get ready for a season, but it was a slow spring for them all. DOWN: Chris Tillman: Putting injured players in this category is always unfair, but this is just a bad situation Tillman is in and should be treated as such. He pitched through it last summer, but the shoulder injury he has been dealing with seems genuinely limiting, and that’s bad at both the team and individual level. For the club, a rotation that would’ve been formidable with Tillman, Kevin Gausman and Dylan Bundy at the top is less imposing now. And for Tillman, having this all crop up in his walk year is going to be tough when it comes time to talk contracts in free agency next winter. The timing couldn’t be worse for anyone involved. DOWN: Mike Wright: This spring was set up for a repeat performance for Wright from last spring, when he lapped the field and made the rotation out of camp. This year, with Tillman battling his shoulder soreness, Wright would’ve had to erase some of the lingering disappointment from his 2016 but was still a front-runner for Tillman’s spot. Instead, it never really got going for him. He put himself in a better head space, and was working toward becoming a sinker-ball pitcher, but none of it clicked in Sarasota. He’ll start the year in Norfolk, where his spot atop the pitching depth rankings is no given. DOWN: Oliver Drake: Drake, the team’s only bubble player who is on the 40-man roster but has no minor league options, didn’t exactly have the spring someone in his position would be hoping for. He allowed 13 runs in 131⁄3 innings over 10 appearances, with a 1.95 WHIP and four home runs allowed. Drake’s saving grace is there’s flexibility to keep him on the roster, at least at the beginning of the season. But if it comes down to it, he doesn’t seem to have made the team’s decision on him difficult. He has been with the organization since 2008, save for a brief foray into free agency, and parting would be hard. But it’s certainly possible. DOWN: Chris Dickerson: Simply by comparison with another nonroster outfielder who had an injury history to overcome in his efforts to make the club — Gentry — Dickerson endured a tough spring. His final line of .263/.391/.605 isn’t bad at all, but he missed time with three injuries. The first was a foot injury, suffered after a foul ball, that kept getting worse. Then he missed time with an elbow problem after he was hit by a pitch, and was later sidelined a few days with shoulder soreness. He remains a depth piece, but will be tough to count on as healthy when the team needs to scoop up an outfielder from Norfolk.