O's are counting on big improvement from some of their youngest players

The trend for O’s young players and some of the top prospects in the last year or two has been to come to the big leagues and struggle initially. It doesn’t happen every time, but it has happened a lot of the time.

Right-hander Grayson Rodriguez and outfielder Colton Cowser are two prime examples. In his first 10 MLB starts during the 2023 season, Rodriguez went 2-2 with a 7.35 ERA and .956 OPS against. It got better for him. During that same ’23 season, over 77 plate appearances (yes, a small sample) Cowser hit. 115 with an OPS of .433.

Rodriguez, as was Cowser, was sent back to the minors after those initial struggles in 2023. In July of that year he came back a different pitcher. In fact, in his last 33 games, he has gone 18-6 with a 3.35 ERA and 1.18 WHIP. He has 18 quality starts allowing a .237 batting average and .664 OPS. His groundball rate is 45.7 and that helped him keep the ball in the park allowing 0.84 homers per nine since that July 2023 date.

Cowser just posted a second-place finish for the AL Rookie of the Year, losing out to Yankees right-hander Luis Gil after a strong first full season in the majors.

Watching Rodriguez go from pitching to a 7.35 ERA to pitching like a No. 1 or No. 2 starter and watching Cowser go from hitting .115 to getting Rookie of the Year votes, reminds us it can take a while for young players to reach their potential or to trend up on the stat sheet.

As always patience is needed.

Now can players like Jackson Holliday and Coby Mayo go from initial struggles to becoming MLB regulars that put up good numbers?

Sure they can.

In a recent interview with MLB Network Radio, O’s executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias cited the improvement of young players as being important to the 2025 Orioles.

“I think the way we’re looking at it is, we’ve got a team that is by and large coming back, that is by and large young enough to where you’re expecting a lot of improvement from a lot of the young players,” he said.

He didn’t say hoping for improvement, he said expecting it.

It was less than a year ago, in fact last Jan. 17, that Holliday was ranked the No. 1 prospect in their top 100 by Baseball America. That gave the Orioles a first – in 35 years ranking top 100 prospects since 1990, no team had the No. 1 player three straight years in the initial Baseball America poll release. For the O’s, it was Adley Rutschman in 2022 and Gunnar Henderson in 2023.

Holliday moving to No. 1 was a special achievement for the O’s player development operation. BA pointed out last January that only four teams have had three No. 1 ranked players at any point since 1990, their first ranking, much less doing it three straight years. Only nine organizations have had two No. 1 rated players. There are 13 clubs that have never had a No. 1 player. The O’s had the last three.

“It’s hard to imagine we are going to see this again anytime soon,” Baseball America's JJ Cooper told me last January.

But then Holliday got 208 big league plate appearances and hit just .189/.255/.311/.565. He fanned 69 times in 190 at-bats. So yeah, there is room for improvement here. The team is expecting it clearly.

Some fans have gotten down on Holliday. They wanted to see him hit the ground running like an All-Star in the majors. Delayed maybe, but maybe not denied, former O’s skipper Buck Showalter might say.

There is almost nowhere to go but up for 22-year-old Mayo, who hit .098 and fanned 22 times in 41 at-bats with the Orioles.

So touted were Holliday and Mayo, they were so good on the O’s farm and then so not when they hit the majors.

Yes, it was a bit of a fan buzzkill.

But if Cowser could go from hitting .115 to nearly Rookie of the Year, then Holliday and Mayo could take big steps forward next year also.

Cross him off: Late Tuesday night it was reported that lefty Blake Snell has agreed to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers for five years and $182 million. Snell, who had to wait until March to sign last offseason, is among the first to strike it big this time around.

The World Series champions got better. They get a two-time Cy Young winner who pitched to an ERA of 1.23 his last 14 starts of last season. They also could add Roki Sasaki on the mound.

With this deal, Snell did better than several outlets had projected. FanGraphs.com projected he would sign for three years and $105 million. ESPN had it four years and $124 million and MLBTradeRumors.com, listing Snell as the No. 4 available free agent, had him getting five years for $160 million.

The Orioles are said to be in the market for top-end pitching. When it comes to that, one less pitcher is now out there. 

After the agreement came out last night, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com tweeted this: "The Yankees, Red Sox and Orioles were all in on Blake Snell before he signed with the Dodgers, per source. Expect those three to remain active on the pitching market, with names like Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Jack Flaherty among the top arms available."