Infield’s future not defined by season
With so many top prospects close to the majors and so many needs on the major league roster, the Orioles filling their outfield with converted infielders and waiver and trade acquisitions has been one of the most fascinating dynamics of this rebuilding season.
It’s pretty clear that with Austin Hays, Yusniel Diaz, Ryan McKenna and even DJ Stewart and Anthony Santander, the team’s future and the outfielders’ development has been prioritized over the club’s won-loss record.
What’s less clear is what the Orioles are doing at the major league level this year to build an infield for the future.
Gone are the days when Manny Machado, J.J. Hardy and Jonathan Schoop were the present and future all at once. Other than Chris Davis, who will be here for three more years on his club-record contract, it’s much harder to see what the Orioles’ infield of the future might look like based on what we’ve watched this year.
At the major league level, the Orioles have played Jonathan Villar every game at either shortstop or second base, with Richie Martin and Hanser Alberto mixing in at the other position and Rio Ruiz serving as the primary third baseman before he was optioned to the minors last week.
Villar will be in his last year of club control next year if the Orioles tender him a contract at what is expected to be over $5 million in salary during the arbitration process.
Martin is defending well but batting .191 — his highest clip of the season — in a developmental year for the Rule 5 shortstop. There’s a lot more progress to be made for him to be able to help a contender, even at the bottom of a lineup. Alberto has been a revelation and is a weapon against lefthanded pitching, but it’s a singles-driven .314 batting average, and he’s eligible for salary arbitration this offseason.
Ruiz played a standout third base while he was in the majors and was heating up at the plate before he was sent down. That the Orioles still want him to develop is perhaps a good sign, even if it’s an indictment on what appeared to be progress at the major league level. (Additionally, if batting .238 with good defense at a premium position isn’t cutting it now, that doesn’t bode well for what seems to be the ceiling for someone like Martin.)
Excluding first base and designated hitter, where the Orioles will have to shoehorn in Trey Mancini and/or Ryan Mountcastle as Davis plays out his contract, there’s not a lot of talent in the high minors that seems ticketed for a long major league future.
Mason McCoy and Rylan Bannon are in the back-end of top prospect lists, with McCoy having a breakout year but joining Bannon in having more of a utility profile. Last year’s competitive balance round pick, shortstop Cadyn Grenier, got promoted to High-A Frederick after batting .240 over what amounted to a full season at Low-A Delmarva. He’s batting .140 with a .554 OPS in 13 games with the Keys entering Sunday.
Grenier left behind do-it-all infield partner Adam Hall with the Shorebirds, and he might be the most promising infield prospect in the system. He’s batting. 306 with 21 doubles and 24 steals while playing good defense up the middle.
This year’s draft added Gunnar Henderson, Joey Ortiz and Darrell Hernaiz as early-round shortstops. Toby Welk joined a third base depth chart full of major question marks such as Jomar Reyes and JC Encarnacion.
It’s a group that needed addressing from the moment executive vice president/ general manager Mike Elias took over, which is why the Orioles went out and got Alberto, Jack Reinheimer, Christopher Bostick and Zach Vincej to fill out some depth on the infield in the offseason.
This draft goes a long way to addressing the bottom of those depth charts, and so will the team’s dedication to signing international amateur prospects from Latin America.
As with everything else going on, however, those who are looking only at the major league team don’t have a lot to read into as they try and envision the next version of a winning Orioles team at Camden Yards.
What’s to come?
Manager Brandon Hyde has often said that the way teams like the Orioles get better is to play against good teams, so in theory he should be looking forward to three games against the New York Yankees and three against the Houston Astros.
In practice, however, there is not much to smile about considering the Orioles have 10 games in 10 days (counting the four in three days beginning next Monday in New York) against teams that are far and away the best teams in the American League.
At the very least, it creates a situation in which anything good the Orioles do feels doubly so, and all of the bad can be excused by the idea that they were expected to lose anyway.
What was good?
All that hard contact in the past couple weeks for outfielder Anthony Santander hasn’t been an illusion. Since the All-Star break, Santander had the seventh-highest average exit velocity in the league (93 mph) among players with 50 batted ball events through Sunday’s games.
Some of his early success wasn’t exactly backed up by hard contact, as his average exit velocity for the season is 89.8 mph, according to MLB’s Statcast data via Baseball Savant.
But Santander’s success since he came up in early June has been one of the bright spots of the Orioles season. That it’s coming on much better contact of late is a good sign for him being able to sustain it.
What wasn’t?
Jace Peterson tore up Triple-ANorfolk to earn himself a call-up to the big leagues late last month, but has struggled to replicate any of that minor league success since he joined the team in Anaheim.
Peterson looped a single to left-field to drive in a run Sunday, but is just 7-for-38 (.184) with a .389 OPS in 10 games. He’s proven valuable defensively, taking time at second base, third base and left field, but his spot in the lineup is creating expectations for his plate production that he hasn’t hit quite yet.
On the farm
Perhaps being among the game’s best prospects at the MLB All-Star Futures Game was just what top Orioles pitching prospect DL Hall needed to get himself on track.
Since pitching in that showcase July 7 in Cleveland, Hall has allowed five runs on 11 hits with 41 strikeouts against nine walks in 211⁄ innings for High-A Frederick. He lowered his ERA from 3.86 to 3.36 in that span, striking out a career-high 10 batters and competing six innings in his most recent start Thursday in Myrtle Beach.