Cowser learns from whiffs
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SARASOTA, Fla. — In Sid Holland’s eyes, Colton Cowser has certainly grown but hasn’t changed much in their 15 years together as coach and player. Cowser is still the same high-energy, goofy character he was as a boy, the type to sprint around Holland’s Houston-area training facility and nearly run into another player as they swung. But there was one significant way Cowser, the Baltimore Orioles’ No. 4 prospect, came into this offseason a different player.
“Colton, from the time he was 7 years old,” Holland said, “had never failed.”
That changed in 2022, Cowser’s first full professional season after the Orioles drafted him fifth overall the year before. But it still ended in Triple-A Norfolk, the 22-year-old’s third affiliate of the year, to position him for a major league debut in 2023.
A left-handed-hitting outfielder known for his bat-to-ball skills and whole-field approach in college with Sam Houston, Cowser is among the young players on the Orioles’ spring training roster who manager Brandon Hyde said will get frequent playing time early in exhibition games. He’ll look to show off the adjustments he made in his offseason work with Holland, a longtime hitting coach who has worked with major leaguers, to fix an uncharacteristic spike in strikeouts and swings and misses.
“He’s been a guy that doesn’t strike out a lot,” Holland said. “It was just more of a mental thing for him and knowing that it’s going to happen. He likes to be really particular about his swing, about his moves, so it was more just trying to get him to understand, ‘Hey, you’re gonna make some mistakes. You can’t fix every swing.’
“He’s one of those guys who wants to feel like he’s always locked in. Just let him know sometimes it’s not gonna happen. You’re gonna have to go out there and battle with not being at your best.”
Cowser largely managed to do that. Despite his season’s roller-coaster nature — a strikeout-heavy showing for High-A Aberdeen, explosiveness with Double-A Bowie and a drastic dip before a strong finish with the Triple-A Tides — Cowser ranked second among Orioles minor leaguers with 36 doubles and tied for third with 19 home runs while posting an impressive .278 average, .406 on-base percentage and .469 slugging percentage.
Despite the inconsistencies, Cowser avoided going “down the rabbit hole” to discover the root cause, believing in tweaks more than a midseason overhaul. But when the offseason presented the chance to evaluate video of his performance, he found that some of his issues stemmed from a collapse of his back side as he loaded to swing, with his hips sliding forward and “causing me to get kind of uphill and come out of my swing.” He worked with Holland to create a tall, strong back side.
“Once I realized what it was, I could identify it and understand the feeling of what was causing
it,” Cowser said. “It’s just when I’m loading, try to treat it like I’m a tree, I guess you could say, and make my forward move off that.”
Cowser and Holland’s training included a focus on improved performance against left-handed pitching. They also worked in some of the game-like preparation that has become typical of the Orioles’ hitter development program, having Cowser face a pitching machine and hardthrown batting practice from closer distances.
He struggled adjusting to that approach early in 2022, but a blend of the Orioles’ methods and his own helped Cowser recover with Bowie.
He began last season in High-A Aberdeen and, like most other Baltimore prospects who went there, atypically struggled. The summer after he was drafted, Cowser walked more than he struck out between the Florida Complex League and Low-A Delmarva, but his strikeout rate from that stint nearly doubled with the IronBirds.
A promotion to Bowie ignited Cowser’s bat. Although he continued striking out in more than a quarter of his plate appearances, Cowser hit .341/.469/.568 — good for a 1.037 OPS — with 10 home runs, six more than his Aberdeen total in 53 fewer at-bats.