Rutschman watching draft class move up
Every few days, the Orioles bring top prospect Adley Rutschman over from their minor league site at Twin Lakes Park to their major league facility across town in Sarasota, Florida, and give him a taste of what it’s like.
On the other side of the baseball world in Arizona, the two players selected after him in the 2019 draft — Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. and Chicago White Sox slugger Andrew Vaughn — are playing far more often and forcing conversations to make their teams.
That’s no cause for any kind of second-guessing a selection that landed the Orioles one of the consensus top prospects in baseball, a catcher that has generated lofty expectations for when he arrives in the majors by virtue of his talent and track record in college.
It is, however, cause to consider what this current version of the Orioles value and how far down the road it will be before their mission of growing talented players in the minors leads to young stars producing at the major league level for a competitive team.
Simply put, this spring has been a reminder that they’re not even close to that.
Rutschman having more than 12 at-bats over six spring training games wouldn’t accelerate that timeline, though how the Royals are using Witt and talking about the chance that he can play himself onto the team — however unlikely — speaks a bit to what they’re trying to do.
Royals general manager Dayton Moore said in a radio interview this week that the team didn’t want to create an aura around Witt, but let him be himself and make an impression on and off the field. He’s done so to the point that Moore said he’s “openminded” about Witt making the team out of spring training, though it’s a tough ask for a player drafted out of high school in 2019 who had such a limited 2020 in the way so many minor leaguers did.
But Witt has three home runs in 35 plate appearances and is drawing rave reviews from his teammates. Elsewhere in Arizona, Vaughn has two extra-base hits and is showing strong plate discipline as he looks to be Chicago’s designated hitter to begin the season.
Like Rutschman, they were only able to play affiliated ball after they were drafted in 2019, though the Orioles’ top pick’s debut was delayed because of mononucleosis. Vaughn had 90 more plate appearances than Rutschman’s 155, and Witt had 30 more. Each missed his first full season in 2020 because of the pandemic, but trained at their team’s alternate site.
The Orioles were thrilled with how Rutschman progressed at theirs. Especially late at the Bowie camp, he had stretches where he was the toughest out there, and he used the time to refine what’s already a lethal swing.
But as much improvement he might have made in making the most of that situation, the Orioles as a team aren’t ready to improve just yet.