Elias explains roster decisions on Hays, Santander and Carroll

SARASOTA, Fla. - The message delivered by the Orioles this spring regarding the importance of camp competitions and fighting for available jobs clashed this morning with a round of roster cuts that included outfielders Austin Hays and Anthony Santander and reliever Cody Carroll.

Executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias explained the decisions and more while meeting with the media for about 10 minutes inside the home dugout at Ed Smith Stadium.

"I don't think competition in the sense of the word is limited to, 'Let's everyone have 40 at-bats and see who puts up the best stats in spring training,' " Elias said. "We have an organization, we have a roster, we're trying to maximize the amount of talent in the organization and keep that talent in the organization. There's constructs surrounding 40-man rosters and rules and all kinds of things that go into those considerations.

"Ryan Mountcastle came up and had a great spring statistically and he was sent down last week. We're going the right thing for these guys' careers. They're going to be a big part of what we're doing here, what we're trying to do, and in no way do we want to jeopardize any part of their development just to have a pure tryout based on spring training at-bats."

Elias stressed that service time wasn't a consideration with Hays and Santander being optioned to Triple-a Norfolk.

Asked how much these hurdles factored into the decisions, Elias replied, "Zero. It's just a development decision.

"It's not even relevant right now. These guys have already debuted."

Hays has seemed to create the biggest uproar among fans on social media after batting .351/.385/.892 in 12 games with three doubles, a triple, five home runs, 13 RBIs and 10 runs scored. He also ran and fielded exceptionally well, but had to back his bags this morning.

"We're very excited about how he looked," Elias said. "His health was a question mark coming into this camp, for him and for us. He looks terrific, his tools have returned and obviously he had a very productive camp, so this is exactly what we were hoping for.

"In terms of the decision surrounding Austin, look at his body of work. He has not spent much time at the Double-A level. He spent zero time at the Triple-A level. And he had a bad year last year due to injury. We felt it was important to get him a baseline of production, get his feet under him literally and then see what we have and go from there. We'll make the right determination around his career development rather than reacting to the fact that he's had statistically probably the best camp here.

"Spring training is spring training and him looking good is more important than him hitting five homers or him hitting .350 or whatever it was. Couldn't be more excited about him and he understands the reasons why we're doing what we're doing and I think he knows it's the best thing for him in his long-term career."

Elias later described the "very erratic career path" of Santander, the former Rule 5 pick who batted .333/.389/.697 in 18 games with six doubles, two home runs and seven RBIs.

"He was playing in the big leagues at, I don't know, 21, coming off of A ball," he said. "Obviously that's tough, and then he gets hurt the next year. He hasn't really had a normal good year in like two years, so he's another guy we want to get a baseline of performance from him. But as soon as we feel that they're ready and they have their development behind them in the minor leagues and they're ready to contribute and most importantly to stick up here, because I don't want to see these guys come up and then struggle and fail and have to go back down, we'll have them on the team."

Hays has mostly been a center fielder and right fielder, but he also can shift to left. His future might be in the middle.

"I hope he can do both for us, but center field is more valuable to a major league roster," Elias said. "He has the speed and the athleticism to play center field at the major league level. He really hasn't played it much in his life relatively speaking. He was primarily a right fielder at Jacksonville University, so he still has work to do on polishing his reads and routes, but the part you can't teach is the speed and the athleticism, which he has.

"I would love to see him play center field up here. Even if he doesn't, I think there's going to be enough bat for right field. But we would really love to have him be a fixture in center field for us."

Future considerations will be made regarding players coming off the 40-man roster in order to create room for non-roster invites. The camp roster still includes infielders Alcides Escobar and Jack Reinheimer, catchers Jesús Sucre, Carlos Pérez and Andrew Susac, and outfielder Eric Young Jr.

"I don't want to take anyone off the 40-man," Elias said. "We like all these players that are remaining on the roster, but it's part of the game and it happens. Certainly some of the veterans that we brought into camp on NRIs are knocking on the door to come help this club.

"On top of that, I also anticipate that other teams will be taking guys off their rosters and putting them on waivers that might be attractive to us. So some of the most difficult decisions that we're doing right now are determining who we might have to take off the roster if we're going to be adding somebody, which we probably will."

Rule 5 pick Drew Jackson's ability to play the outfield can factor into some of these roster decisions.

"I think it's helpful," Elias said. "We'll see what happens when we get to the finish line, but he's looked good. The Rule 5 players by their nature have a little bit of an inside edge to breaking with the team just because you can't option them or they're going to go back to their host organizations. We want to maximize out looks at those guys.

"It's a little bit tougher decision to send them out of camp because you just flat-out lose them from the organization. But we do think he can play center and he can move around and certainly that's attractive in terms of roster construction, so we'll see how it goes here in the last week."

Carroll was optioned today despite registering his third save yesterday and allowing two runs and five hits with one walk and nine strikeouts over seven innings this spring.

"He looked great," Elias said. "He's got two plus pitches in the fastball and breaking ball. He's still young. He's another guy who, while I'm very excited about how looked in camp and how well he did statistically in camp, I learned and the evidence bears out that real full-season minor league statistics have a little more predictive information to them than spring training statistics.

"Looking at his career to date, what he did in the majors last year, his age, what he did in the minors, I think it will behoove him to start down there. But I think he's extremely likely to pitch for the Orioles in 2019."

Cedric Mullins, starting in center field today, has outlasted Hays in camp despite batting .139 in 42 plate appearances. It isn't just the good spring statistics that need to be kept in their proper context.

"They work in the other direction, too," Elias said. "Cedric has the body of work in the minors, he had a pretty good debut in Baltimore last year, he's young. We have projections that we can look at that show he's got a good shot to be a good major league player this year, and he's shown that he can play center field for us, so we want to keep giving him an opportunity.

"Obviously, the camp's not over and nothing is 100 percent determined, but we want to respect the work that he's put in this organization before the fact that his spring training batting average is a little low or whatever."

The Orioles kept all five of their catchers, with Austin Wynns still unable to play due to a sore left oblique.

"I think it's been one of the pleasant surprises of this camp," Elias said. "We lost Caleb Joseph, who was a big fixture of this team for a long time and a steady defender and kind of a linchpin on the roster and one of the worries was, are we going to have enough quality defensive options to catch? So we signed Carlos Pérez, we signed Jesús Sucre, we brought up a couple of guys from the minors with Susac and (Martin) Cervenka. We have (Chance) Sisco and Wynns here, both of whom are on the roster. And honestly, they've all looked good. They all look like legitimate average or better defensive options.

"I think it's going to be a tough decision, but in a good way."

A game must be played later this afternoon, with the Yankees coming to Sarasota, but the cuts are garnering most of the attention. Everything else comes across as secondary.

"We're nearing the end of camp and we've got to get this roster down to 25 players," Elias said. "Today was significant. A lot of very talented players sent out today. We sent eight guys out, some of whom had spectacular camps, huge parts of our future. You look at the list from today and I would expect perhaps all eight of these players will play for the Orioles this year. At least that's our hope.

"But for me, it's important to prioritize the individual development, especially with players that are going to be centerpieces of our future here, and we're going to err on what is right for the particular players rather than experimenting or trying to get them on the roster early and see what happens. We've got a good club here remaining. There's still a lot of competition remaining in this camp and by no means are the guys that were sent out today off the radar screen."