O’s shouldn’t regret seeing former farmhands excel
Scouting stereotypes never predicted young slugger could be an everyday player with O’s
It’s just too easy. Every time the Orioles rotation suffers through a string of difficult performances, there’s a natural inclination to look around the majors at all their former players pitching elsewhere and wonder if baseball operations chief Dan Duquette knows what the heck he’s doing.
The obvious second-guess is always Jake Arrieta, who couldn’t get out of his own way in the Orioles organization and quickly morphed into a Cy Young Award winner after he was traded to the Chicago Cubs.
That one really is too easy, because the Orioles never figured out Arrieta and he obviously was a major talent.
However, the pitchers who actually fuel the narrative now aren’t on that level and — in most cases — moving them either to bulk up for a playoff run or to ease a roster crunch seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.
The subject came up again this past week when the Los Angeles Angels called up recent Orioles prospect Parker Bridwell, who was traded in April for cash or a player to be named. The 25-year-old right-hander stepped into the Angels rotation for a spot start Tuesday night and pitched a solid six innings against the Atlanta Braves to get his first major league victory.
He was quickly sent back to the minor leagues and who knows whether he will evolve into a guy who can pitch like that on a regular basis? But it still rankles fans to see a fresh young pitcher succeed somewhere else — even for just one game — after |
How far off the radar was Trey Mancini when it came time for a major league team to turn him into a professional four Junes ago? Ask the scout who, in a brief meeting with Mancini, asked him how many innings he’d thrown that year at Notre Dame. “Zero,” Mancini told him. “I’m a first baseman.”
Flustered, the man asked a few more courtesy questions and then left.
Mancini can laugh about it now. But it’s hard to blame anyone for passing on the first baseman seemingly only the Orioles wanted, and who is evolving this year into an everyday player.
In a baseball world where amateur talent and minor leaguers are evaluated based on their upside with a premium on athleticism, a righthanded-hitting first baseman isn’t the most attractive of prospects. No one inside the game believes they can do it until they do it in the big leagues, and even then skepticism persists.
Mancini, 25, has spent four years combating that, and is prepared to do so as long as he needs to beat away the stigmas of his archetype.
“You can pretty much know from the second you’re watching Ubaldo Jiménez struggle through start after start while collecting a huge salary.
Soon enough, the talk always turns to the former Orioles prospects who have stuck at the major league level.
For instance, Brewers starter Zach Davies, who was traded for outfielder Gerardo Parra at the 2015 nonwaiver trade deadline, has a 19-12 record in parts of three seasons in Milwaukee.
Parra batted just .237 for the Orioles as they failed to reach the postseason that year. So, that deal doesn’t look very good, but let’s not get carried away. Davies, 24, might be a member of the Orioles rotation now if that trade wasn’t made, but he also might be the luckiest 5-3 pitcher in the National League with that 5.18 ERA.
The Orioles already have more than their fair share of high-ERA guys.