Cowser’s ‘crash and burn’ brings breakout
Rookie outfielder leads team in batting average, homers and more
Colton Cowser entered spring training with plenty to lose.
He was up for a spot on the Orioles’ opening day roster. After struggling during his first big league stint in 2023, Cowser faced questions about his ability to hit the best pitchers in the world. Despite his top prospect status, his stock took a little hit after hitting .115 in his first 61 MLB at-bats.
However, Cowser viewed this spring — and his scorching-hot start to the season — through an opposite lens.
“The big thing for me was coming in unafraid to crash and burn,” Cowser said.
That mindset — the “unafraid to crash and burn” motto — is one preached to Cowser and his teammates at Sam Houston State by coach Matt Deggs. Rather than focusing on the ways it went wrong last year or could go wrong this season, Cowser is instead playing as if he has nothing to lose.
“If you fail, so what? At least you’re going down guns a-blazing,” he said. “Whatever happens, happens. I’m just going out there, playing and being aggressive.”
Cowser, who Baseball America ranks as the No. 32 prospect in
baseball, isn’t just the Orioles’ best hitter through their first 15 games, but he’s been perhaps the best hitter in the majors so far this season. He’s hitting .441 with an eye-popping 1.444 OPS that is 235 points better than any other MLB hitter with at least 30 plate appearances. As Jackson Holliday, the preseason American League Rookie of the Year favorite, played his first week in the majors, Cowser emerged as a potential contender to win the award. He now has the fourth-best odds on DraftKings Sportsbook. On Monday, he was named AL Player of the Week.
“I’d like to say to myself I’m not surprised, but everyone has hot streaks,” Cowser said. “I’m going to try to ride it out however long I can
— whether it ends today or in July.”
The 24-year-old opened the season as the club’s fourth outfielder. He barely played in Baltimore’s first series against the Los Angeles Angels and didn’t start until the Orioles’ fifth game.
But as left fielder Austin Hays became engulfed by a hitting slump, Cowser caught fire. Since his first start on April 2, Cowser is slashing .452/.486⁄1.129 — good for a 1.615 OPS — across 35 plate appearances with at least one hit in all eight starts. He broke out last week in Boston by totaling 10 RBIs in the three-game series and has been a staple of manager Brandon Hyde’s lineup since.
The first two homers of his career came Thursday against the Red Sox, and he’s hit two since, including a left-on-left shot to provide an insurance run in the Orioles’ 6-4 win Sunday that prevented the club from being swept in the regular season for the first time since May 2022.
“There’s not much that’s not been impressive,” Hyde said about Cowser’s start.
Veteran James McCann said he tells younger players about the “learning curve” they’ll experience at the big leagues. It’s almost inevitable, he said, and it takes time to overcome, but players as talented as Cowser find a way.
“The kid’s a good player, there’s no doubt about that,” McCann said. “Everyone wants a player to show up to the big leagues and be the next Mike Trout, the next Ronald Acuña [Jr.]. The fact of the matter is that’s very rare. You’re going to be humbled at this level. It doesn’t matter how you’ve done in the minor leagues. I think last year his eyes were opened to that.”
Just as frustrating as slumping in the majors last summer was not returning to his pre-callup dominance in Triple-A. Cowser hit .330 with a .996 OPS for the Norfolk Tides before his promotion but .233 with a .777 OPS after his demotion. The three months of not feeling like himself allowed doubts about his ability to adjust to big league pitching creep in.
But the message from the Orioles’ brass included “lots of words of encouragement” about their belief in the 2021 No. 5 overall pick, including a meeting with Baltimore’s hitting coaches about changes they wanted him to make with his swing. The goal was to improve his “adjustability,” allowing him to look to hit a fastball but also adjust to an offspeed pitch. To do so, Cowser became more efficient with his movements at the plate and increased the repeatability of his swing.
“I’ve been able to get to this point and get by and have success because I would own the fastball,” Cowser said. “As soon as they stopped throwing me the fastball up here, I got exposed to a bunch of other stuff.”
Last season, his hands in his stance were close to his left ear. Now, they’re farther from his body and a little lower. Cowser describes these changes as making his hands “quieter.” The less tense approach can also be seen with his lower body, which is more wide and balanced than last season.
“Very proud of him, very happy with his adjustments,” Orioles co-hitting coach Ryan Fuller said. “It’s really fun to see him hit now, and we love when he’s up right now.”
Cowser said the changes allow him to stay on pitches longer and achieve his preference of hitting the ball to left-center field. Seven of his 14 hits have gone the other way, including a home run over the Green Monster at Fenway Park — an impressive feat for a lefthanded batter. Only three other Orioles lefthanded hitters have achieved the feat since 2008: Chris Davis, Gunnar Henderson and Pedro Alvarez.
“Whenever I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to pull the ball in the cage,” he said. “I was told I would learn how to pull the ball as I got older. … I feel my strong suit is when I’m going to left-center, that’s where I feel like I have the most power.”
But Fuller thinks Cowser can one-up his Green Monster big fly. He believes the Texas native will one day clear Camden Yards’ left field wall — a feat just two left-handed hitters (Adley Rutschman and Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder James Outman) have achieved since it was moved back before the 2022 season.
“That’s one of his gifts that he has is being able to go pole to pole,” Fuller said. “He has power both ways, and I think he’ll be able to tame the wall in Baltimore, too, with his power. It’s pretty special.”
Cowser’s free-spirited personality could come off to some as goofy. He makes jokes before and after news conferences with the media. He was an architect of the handlebar celebration and was the first player to hit the sprinkler in the 2023 celebration’s return. He welcomes the “moos” from the crowd as a play off his last name including the word “cow.”
But that persona, his teammates say, doesn’t get in the way of his work ethic or performance on the field.
“Off the field, we’re all just normal people, guys that mess around. When we get to work, it’s business,” first baseman Ryan Mountcastle said. “He takes care of his business, he’s always working hard — in the gym, in the cage, on the field. If he keeps doing that, he’s going to have a really good career.”
Cowser said the poor start to his big league career taught him “how hard the game is sometimes.” But it’s not the first time he’s had that lesson. Throughout his time in the minors, he slumped after almost every promotion. He hit .214 in his first 14 games at High-A and .079 in his first 10 games at Triple-A.
Knowing he later broke out at each stop gave him reassurance that, even with his mentality, he wouldn’t actually crash and burn the next time he got a shot in the show.
“I just feel like I’m finally playing my game,” Cowser said.
What’s next?
Entering the season, it appeared the Orioles’ schedule in April would help them get off to a hot start, facing teams that finished near the bottom of their division standings last year. But when they host the Minnesota Twins (6-8), who won the American League Central in 2023, it will mark Baltimore’s first series against a team that is currently under .500 since facing the Los Angeles Angels to open the year. One of those teams that was expected to be bad are the Kansas City Royals (10-6), who will host the Orioles (9-6) for a three-game series after the clubs played a competitive set earlier this month.
What was good?
Jackson Holliday faced an amount of pressure this week that few big leaguers (and even fewer 20-year-olds) ever face. He handled it all — the attention, the media, the lack of sleep — with aplomb. In 20 years, few will recall he opened his career 0-for-13 with nine strikeouts before recording his first hit Sunday. More will remember the way he carried himself during it.
What wasn’t?
The casualty of Cowser’s breakout is Hays’ playing time. Hays has been a staple in the Orioles’ lineup for years and was an All-Star last season, but he’s 3-for-35 at the plate, including an 0-for-26 skid that he ended Saturday. Hyde, Fuller and general manager Mike Elias all backed Hays, expressing their belief that he will emerge from his slump soon.
On the farm
The hitters in Norfolk have understandably garnered tons of attention so far this season, but a Tides pitcher has been perhaps even more impressive. Cade Povich, the club’s No. 2 pitching prospect, has surrendered just two earned runs and four hits in 16 innings with 24 strikeouts. The left-hander struck out 10 in 5 innings Saturday.