More appreciation for Mullins, plus other notes

We gained another reason to admire Orioles center fielder Cedric Mullins this week. We learned that he produced a Most Valuable Oriole season, becoming the first player in club history with 30 or more homers and steals in one year, while battling the effects of Chron's disease.

This did not keep Mullins from continuing his impressive rise from player demoted back to Double-A in 2019 to American League All-Star and All-Star game starter in 2021. He also won a Silver Slugger in November - the O's first since 2016.

In spring of 2020, Mullins thought he had food poisoning, but pain persisted. He played that year while undergoing tests and taking antibiotics. But his condition was worse by the end of that season.

"They said I had gotten to the point where I should have been keeled over in pain and surgery was kind of a must at that point," Mullins said via the MLB Players Media Twitter account.

Mullins batted .291/.360/.518/ with 37 doubles, five triples, 30 homers, 30 steals, 91 runs and 59 RBIs. He was durable and dependable for the '21 Orioles, playing in 159 games and taking 675 plate appearances as he was the unanimous choice as MVO.

Quite the year, which as we know now, was more challenging than we knew.

Meet the new coach: Also this week, I wrote this blog introducing fans to the new O's co-hitting coach Matt Borgschulte. A video interview is included with Borgschulte, 31 who will join Ryan Fuller, also 31, as co-hitting coaches next season.

Borgschulte has been coaching in the Twins organization since the 2018 season and last year was at Triple-A St. Paul, where his hitters ranked fourth in a 20-team league in runs scored.

Now he looks forward to joining Fuller with the Orioles.

"Yeah, I think it's going to be a perfect situation for us because the ultimate goal is to help the player perform to their best," Borgschulte said from Florida. "And in the end, it doesn't matter whether it's something Ryan said to him or I said to him; if we can get the message across and they can perform to their best, then we are doing our jobs. Then we will have success in terms of collaborating," he said.

This lefty could help the rotation: In this entry we looked at O's left-hander Bruce Zimmermann, a 2022 rotation candidate in our continuing series looking at possible starters for next season.

Zimmermann pitched well last spring and when the club broke north he emerged to start Game No. 3 of the season. He recorded back-to-back quality starts to begin his year. He went 4-5 with a 5.04 ERA in 14 games overall and the Orioles went 4-9 in his 13 starts.

But he dealt with left biceps tendinitis and later an ankle sprain as he went more than three months between big league starts - making one June 13 and not another until Sept. 28.