Taking a closer look at Cedric Mullins' 2024 season

Having a big season for an MLB player can be a blessing or a curse. Not really a curse, like selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees cursed the Red Sox all those years, but maybe burden is the right word. Now fans and perhaps even team management expect more of the same.

For Orioles center field Cedric Mullins, his magical 2021 season now looks like an outlier. He has not produced similar stats since. He started the All-Star game that year – his only All-Star appearance – won a Silver Slugger and finished ninth in the AL MVP race.

Over 159 games he hit .291/.360/.518/.878 and produced the first season of 30 homers and steals in O’s history with exactly 30 homers and 30 stolen bases.

Mullins’ .878 OPS that year ranked eighth-best in the American League in a season when only five players in the league topped .900. His OPS for the year topped several prominent players, a list that includes Yordan Álvarez, Marcus Semien, Teoscar Hernández, J.D. Martinez, Xander Bogaerts, Salvador Pérez and Carlos Correa.

But since 2022, his OPS numbers, while consistent, have been well behind that one great year. He was at .721 in 2022, .721 in 2023 and .710 last year, producing OPS+ totals of 107, 101 and 107 after putting up 137 for 2021.

Mullins will always have that year on his record. But since then, he will also always have that year he is chasing but can’t quite catch again.

He has sure done well via baseball’s arbitration system, as many players do, getting $4.1 million in 2023, 6.325 million last year and now set to get $8.725 million for 2025 after reaching agreement with the club yesterday to avoid an arbitration hearing. He got right about what the projections said he would.

The Orioles have seemingly always held Mullins in pretty high regard for his professionalism and quite leadership, not to mention how he can impact games with his glove, speed and bat.

I have a lot of respect for any player that can reach the big league and have a ton of respect for Mullins, a player smaller in stature that was not drafted until round 13 of 2015 that has had the career he has. He beat the odds to go from Campbell University to the top of a big league lineup.

The 2024 season saw the end of an era as the O's outfield trio of Austin Hays, Anthony Santander and Mullins was broken up. Hays and Santander remain free agents while Mullins is returning to the club that first called him to the big leagues in 2018.

This was a guy remember, that began 2019 as the starting center fielder, hit just .094 in 22 games, was sent back to the minors and actually was dropped at one point from Triple-A to Double-A. I watched him play that year in the Eastern League playoffs.

Here is a story from those playoffs about Mullins swinging it well as the year was coming to an end. Later that night he would take the field in the Double-A playoffs for the Baysox in a lineup that included Yusniel Díaz, Ryan McKenna and Ryan Ripken.

Mullins had a strong finish to last season, with an OPS of .831 in the second-half to .629 from the first half. He wanted to use the whole field better last year, he told me during spring training 2024.

“One of the main focuses (for this season) is using the whole field. I got a little pull happy. The dimensions of the field were a little scary for guys (when left field was moved back). Kind of made you adjust in certain ways that may not have benefitted certain people, me being one of them. So, continuing to stay focused on using the whole field and being disciplined at the plate. Being the table setter - that has always been my goal. I feel like when I have that focus, I can help the team in a big way," he said then.   

In 2023, Mullins used the opposite field 18.4 percent, a career low. He did improve that to 22.3 percent last season, but that was still below his 2020 to 2022 levels.

Mullins struggled to consistently square up the ball in 2024. He was in the bottom 20 percent via Statcast data in expected slugging, average exit velocity, barrel percentage and hard-hit percentage. More loud contact could go a long way to getting his number back closer to 2021 levels. 

It's possible that this coming season could be his last in the orange and black. Mullins will be a free agent next winter. 

O's add another pitcher: You may have been sleeping when the Orioles made their latest addition. Their back-end bullpen got deeper when they agreed to a deal with free agent right-hander Andrew Kittredge on a pact that pays him $9 million for 2025. The contract, first reported by Ken Rosenthal at 12:10 a.m., includes a $1 million buyout or $9 million club option for the 2026 season.

Kittredge, who turns 35 in March, pitched for Tampa Bay for seven seasons before producing a 2.80 ERA over 74 games for St. Louis last year. He led the National League and was second in MLB with 37 holds.

He further fortifies the late-inning bullpen that gets Felix Hernandez back and was the top setup man for the Cardinals in front of closer Ryan Helsley. He was an All-Star in 2021 and since that season, has pitched to an ERA of 2.48 over 162 appearances. Last year he was dominant versus righty batters with an OPS against of .538 that was .908 against left-handers.

Since mid-December, the club has added free agent pitchers Tomoyuki Sugano, Charlie Morton and Kittredge to deals that will pay them a guaranteed $38 million for this season.

FanGraphs.com now projects their 2025 payroll at $156 million.