The Orioles have promoted catcher Adley Rutschman from Double-A to Triple-A Norfolk, the team announced last night. (MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubtako first reported he’d be moving up a level.) Rutschman, who now ranks as the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball at Baseball America and MLB.com following Wander Franco’s graduation from the list, opened the year at the Double-A level and posted a .271/.392/.508 batting line with 18 home runs, 16 doubles and nearly as many walks (15.4 percent) as strikeouts (15.9 percent). That slash was good for a whopping 144 wRC+ in the a very pitcher-friendly Double-A setting — the tenth-best mark of any qualified hitter in Double-A this season.
While he’s now technically just one step from the big leagues, it’s hard to imagine Rutschman would be summoned to the Majors before season’s end. The Orioles have just a 38-72 record on the season, and they’d gain another year of control over Rutschman by waiting until the third week of the 2022 season to promote him to the big leagues, barring any changes to service time structure in collective bargaining talks between MLB and the MLB Players Association. The current CBA expires on Dec. 1, and service time issues such as this are widely expected to be a talking point.
Some more notes out of Baltimore…
- While Rutschman is the hopeful future at catcher for the Orioles, it’s been Pedro Severino there more often than anyone else over the past couple of seasons. The 28-year-old has batted .245/.316/.400 over the past three seasons in Baltimore (94 wRC+), but his bat has dipped slightly in 2021. Kubatko suggests that Severino, who’ll be a due a raise on this year’s $1.825MM salary in arbitration over the winter, is likely to instead be non-tendered by the O’s. Severino has been a solid bat relative to other catchers around the league, but defensively, he’s had his share of struggles. He’s been roughly average in terms of caught-stealing rate over the past few years, but Severino draws poor pitch-blocking ratings at Baseball Prospectus, sub-par framing marks and checked in at -19 Defensive Runs Saved since coming to the O’s in 2019.
- The Orioles are open to eventually playing Jorge Mateo in the outfield, writes Nathan Ruiz of the Baltimore Sun, but manager Brandon Hyde also added that the team’s hope is to get the recently claimed speedster comfortable playing in the middle infield. Baltimore claimed the 26-year-old Mateo off waivers from the Padres just four days ago — a move that could finally give the former top prospect a path to regular playing time in the big leagues. Mateo originally signed with the Yankees but was traded to Oakland in the Sonny Gray swap and then to the Padres for a player to be named later. Mateo is 3-for-11 with a double, a triple and a pair of steals to begin his Orioles tenure. The Padres acquired Mateo on June 30, 2020, but on a win-now club with a crowded roster, he never had much of an avenue to playing time. He appeared in 79 games with San Diego from 2020-21 but only recorded a combined 121 plate appearances in that time.
The Washington Generals of the American League East
The Generals at least brought humor.
Honestly though, this Orioles team is super entertaining. We suck, but it’s always fun to watch their games. Mateo only adds to the shenanigans.
It is super fun watching a team grow up. Hopefully it pays off for them. And real fans, not the “I’ve been a fan my whole life (in a brand new shirt and hat),” you get to get great seats for cheap. Can’t tell you how many games I went to when Houston was terrible. Then they got good and all those “fans” started coming back.
Scott,fry,tate and valdez. Now there is humor!!!
Chris Davis contract is pretty funny.
Sad but true.
The Orioles have made some good moves recently. They are about two years behind where Detroit is now. They unfortunately have to go thru some growing pains, but Duquette had left them in bad shape.
You say that now, because it’s easy to take shots at them. But the O’s are just two Paul Fry implosions away from having TWO teams with worse records then them.
Is that impressive? The Orioles current team is absolutely terrible. It’s going to take a lot more than Adley Rutschman to change that.
You can keep your rose colored glasses on forever or you can face facts. The Jays are young and their system is strong. The Rays are very good and their system is loaded. The Yanks are the Yanks and the Sox are the Sox.
The Orioles have an uphill battle in front of them.
You mean the dominance of Rutschman and Grayson in their leagues? Or Mullins breakout since ditching the RHB? A promising outfield and developing starting pitching depth? If anyone breaks out in the bullpen then that will help.
What promising SP depth? John means?
Because our pitching has been a huge disappointment. Akin and Kremer have been terrible. Wells and Lowther didn’t impress in their short sample size. Watkins has been serviceable but he’s hardly a prospect and we’ll see how that goes after the league gets a couple more looks at him. Zim may be a serviceable #5. We’ll see how he looks when he comes back.
But there’s really nothing outside of Means to get amped up about with our major league pitching. It’s been horrible. Tanner Scott can be dominant but he doesn’t throw strikes consistently. That’s been the book on him forever. Tyler Wells was a good pickup but we’re talking about a middle reliever here.
The O’s have a long way to go. The rebuild is moving in the right direction. But you’re insane if you think this is a guarantee. The division is so far ahead of the Orioles and their systems are not weak either. Or in the case of the Sox and Yankees—they also have 100 million plus more dollars to spend annually.
I hope Mateo becomes a star with the Orioles. Root for the Padres and root for the ex-Padres*, even if it makes management look bad.
* unless they are playing the Padres
I’ve seen very little of him so far but his speed around the bases during his triple the other night was a sight to see!
1. Why do you keep changing your username and the team you claim to be a fan of?
2. Preller 100% would have still traded for Tatis if he hadn’t traded Trea Turner away.
I’m surprised they haven’t DFA’d Severino or non-tendered him last year
Not much viable depth at the position (beyond) Adley. Severino is truly (from having watched him) awful at blocking and framing. He’s also a professional so he provides that value on a rebuilding team.
Just what the Pirates need.
No one to replace him with. although Id be happy to bring back Caleb Joseph tonight and DFA Severino who apparently has forgotten the proper technique to catch a thrown ball.
Kelenic has been a disappointment. Unfortunate to see his career comps show up as a platoon player now like Joc Pederson. It’s clear that he isn’t ready and will probably be a part-timer at his peak. I thought Franco would be RAKING by now, but he’s been a disappointment so far too. You would have thought with the Wander Franco fetish everybody had that he would be destroying the ball. They need to invent a sabermetric that helps predict players who are actually READY or not. First piece of data… Kelenic is not ready.
You have ridiculously high standards for what a guy should be doing when he first hits the big leagues. Three to four months is an extremely small sample size and even hall of fame players struggled to adjust to MLB pitching in the beginnings of their careers. I’m not implying that Franco or Kelenic are HOF’s either, just stating that your expectation of READY isn’t realistic. Give these kids some time to adjust to the speed of the MLB game and they’re going to be a lot better than what you’re projecting.
Jackie Robinson comes to mind, he sucked early on, before going on a tear to win RotY.
As does Koufax but he never won RotY but ofc those CYs
Can’t compare to Robinson. No one went through what he did. The guy had the weight of the world on his shoulders and the hatred he endured. Bad comp.
No, Joe. My low impulse control demands 21 year olds are complete players despite the fact that I’m a middle aged old man with no personal accomplishments to speak of!
I don’t disagree with the notion that patience is required with these young guys, but we also continue to listen to agents complain about these guys being left in the minors only due to service time manipulation. Kelenic was declared more than ready by his agent, yet it has become obvious he was not and still is not ready for the big show. So, should we not believe them now when they say they are simply victims of service time?
I’ll admit to judging him a little bit harshly (although with the burden of proof and his lack of performance, I’ve yet to be proven wrong).
However, the thing that bothered me the most was just about every “analyst” and “writer” complaining that he was being held down earlier this season as “service time manipulation”. Although I usually support the players against ownership, it’s clear he WASN’T (and it can be argued isn’t) ready, so… it’s obvious that it wasn’t due to service time manipulation.
He’s a young player, but nobody realizes he absolutely HAD to rake when he came up to prove that service time manipulation argument wrong, which would have nailed that argument for the MLBPA in this offseason’s round of negotiations; however, he failed (and still has) so that really hurts them in negotiations, because due to his lack of success so far, the owners have been proven right.
He’s not ready… yet.
He could be ready now. Has over an .830 OPS+ the last two weeks, SLG .500. Small sample size, but the quality of his ABs have greatly improved, also illustrated by his lower K rate. He’s clearly becoming more comfortable, not pressing.
That aside, I agree with your overall premise.
Oh 7734 I’m gonna enjoy this
“ I’ll admit to judging him a little bit harshly (although with the burden of proof and his lack of performance, I’ve yet to be proven wrong).
”
1. You have been proven wrong. by every young player who came up to the majors, struggled, then put it together later. Trout is the best example. But how about Vladdy Guerrero? He was proclaimed a flop here by some because of his first year. Those people look like idiots now. You’re proclaiming Kelenic is a flop after half a season. How’s that make you look?
“ Although I usually support the players against ownership, it’s clear he WASN’T (and it can be argued isn’t) ready, so… it’s obvious that it wasn’t due to service time manipulation.”
Holy hell I hope you didn’t reproduce. You can’t say “welp something happened completely different than how it was anticipated, therefore the team knew it would happen differently and really weren’t manipulating his time by calling him up Kris Bryant style.”
The ONLY way you can claim his struggles show the Mariners Were not tying to mess with his service time is if you could prove the Mariners planned for him to struggle in 2021. Good luck with that
He didn’t have to do Jack to prove anything to you. The result doesn’t matter. It’s the ACTION by the team of holding a guy down until the day after he’s expected to be a free agent an entire year later than he should. The team has no idea if he’s gonna win ROY or slump. They’re still manipulating his service time either way. How is that hard?
All your admission says is that you got caught up in the agent’s hype that baseball media decided was a story. Whenever Scott Boras speaks, baseball fans are “Boras must be lying again, I can hear his voice”. Why don’t we feel the same way about ALL agents?
If you’ve paid attention at all he has clearly been playing better and keeps progressing. The k rate is down, the walk rate is up and he’s not swinging at every horrible pitch like he was when he first came up. He’s making actual progress. I agree with the fact that he was not ready. He still may not be ready but he also may be ready because he is showing progression. My guess is he’s up for good now. We’ll see.
He’s 22 and played very little at Double-A or Triple-A, and was thrown directly into the major leagues.
Kelenic and Franco both got off to slow starts but have actually been playing pretty well lately. They’re young guys who are dealing with adapting to the big leagues and also shaking off some rust that came from not playing last year. I’d bet on both of them to put it together and have strong careers
Then there’s Ke’Bryan Hayes in Pittsburgh who tore up the league when he came up last September. Adjustments have been made by other teams and he has definatelt come back to Earth.
7734
Kelenic has been a disappointment.
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Not at all, and imho, you’re not close to being correct. I hate when posters say some kid needs to get promoted on April 1st, killing their service time, and ofttimes are not ready.
Kelenic is ready. What you need to look for in any rookie is the ability to take walks. That probably precedes any other factor in their success.
In Kelenic’s case, he has a 16/8 K/W in his last 55 ABs. For a rookie, with little more than one season’s worth of minor league ABs, he is doing really well. And there is very little in his resume (maybe Ks, but the BB are good) that suggests that he won’t be a very good player, if not an AS.
Franco’s last 8 games: .313/.353/.563 with just 4 K’s.
Kelenic better lately as well.
From your comments I assume you are not watching Wander at the plate. He has already improved immensely, is learning the MLB strike zone (did you see the walk yesterday???), is on a twelve-game on base streak, and his line drive and exit velocity numbers are better than MLB average. Oh, and he is twenty, having played about a third of a season above AA.
As for Kelenic, take a breath. You have already resigned him to platoon status and the dude has not even played a half season!
You are either not watching, or you are completely clueless. But please, try to watch players before you, ahem, “analyze” them.
The media should take slot of blame. It’s easier for the sports talk radio guys to say this star player should be in the big leagues when, they aren’t the gm. For every example of service time manipulation there’s 10 examples of the guy being rushed because people crying about service time.
service time needs an overall reset if anything. that wolnt be solved in one meeting.
Reserve clause would solve it.
Lol very realistic idea
Adley Rutchman is one of those prospects that probably would have gotten a mid-season call-up already if there was a minor league season last year.
Doubtful based on how terrible the orioles are.
No way. Nor should they. No one knows what the future is going to look like with regard to service time given the upcoming negotiations of the CBA.
There’s literally no way a team that is going to lose well over 100 games is going to promote the #1 prospect in all of baseball into that environment when there is no clear understanding of the impact on his service time.
Rutschman is something special. I have not seen this in a long, long time.
still a good prospect, but overrated in an era of good catchers.
era of good catchers ?? ummmmm there’s a solid 15-20catchers batting aro8ns .200 with sky high K rates…
well there are less of them then there were a few years ago, but overall recently there have been a decent number of good catchers.
DarkSide830
but overall recently there have been a decent number of good catchers.
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Over the past three years, Vazquez is #3 in fWAR, with 5.2. Even as a RS fan, and I like Vaquez, but he is, at best, a marginal AS.
The current crop of catchers seems pretty weak.
A great test for anyone who has been around. What cather in the past 10 years is a hall of famer? Only one i believe is Molina and he has a lot of doubters. Go back to 60s 70s 80s 90s. You could at anytime name a few without thinking about it.
I must’ve missed your scouting resume and scouting report on Adley. Care to share?
osfandan
I must’ve missed your scouting resume and scouting report on Adley.
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I had looked at his minor league stats and was going to say something, but passed. But now that you brought it up, I might as well jump in.
I looked at the Fangraphs report, and his minor league stats. While almost anyone could fail to make the final jump, Rutschman’s resume is about as good as I have ever seen. With 18 HRs in 295 ABs (~37/600 ABs), he has excellent power. With a 57/55 K/W, he has great contact tools. FG has him graded as a 60/70 fielder. He’s a legitimate switchhitter.
I don’t see a single flaw in his resume. And I mean nothing. So perhaps Darkside will enlighten us on what his weaknesses are?
I don’t think he’s a bad prospect, just never thought acting like he was some generational talent coming out was a safe idea. he looks like he is going to be great, but the expectations some have feel a bit too high in my opinion.
*overrated in an era of good catchers.
* I don’t think he’s a bad prospect,
*he looks like he is going to be great,
*but the expectations some have feel a bit too high
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IMHO, you are all over the place. You went from ‘overrated’ to ‘great’.
And then you said some of the expectations are too high, but I don’t recall anyone talking about his expectations, just his status as a prospect.
Your definition of a “good catcher” seems to be different than mine.
We have seen a couple good catchers come up recently.
Garver in Minnesota. Will Smith in LA. Murphy in Oakland. I think Stephenson in Cincy is going to be a good one.
But Rutschman can be much better than all of those guys. It’d be shocking if he isn’t that good. About as safe as a prospect gets. He has that Buster Posey kind of ceiling as a star catcher in this league.
Are they going to run Adley out there as an everyday catcher or protect his bat and give him the Buster/Mauer late-career treatment filling in at 1B?
Would be an interesting swap trading Cedric Mullins to SF for a package or including Joey Bart and having Bart and Adley split C/1B duties, preserving both their bats.
As a RS fan, I feel pretty comfortable in predicting that I will come to hate Mullins. Please trade him.
As a Yankee fan, I want to do the baseball equivalent of reaching across the aisle and support your notion of coming to dislike Mullins. He’s been an annoyingly good player on both sides of the ball.
DH exists for a reason.
It’ll take a lot more than Bart to get Mullins at this point.
Mullins isn’t going anywhere.
I saw Rutschman crush a line drive home run off the rehabbing Luis Severino last week at Somerset. Serverino looked shocked. It is up on YouTube if you want to see it.
LOL Madrigal literally had a cup of coffee in minors,this Rauschman has been toiling in minors for yrs for no reason.What team you get drafted by matters.
2021 is literally Adley’s second season in the minors. Madrigal had 700 plate appearances in the minors. Adley is around 500. What are you talking about?
CWS were ready to compete. As you probably noticed the Orioles are not. Says nothing about Adley.
Toiling for years??? Adley was drafted in 2019, so he played little. The minors were shut down in 2020. This is his first full year in the minors. O’s fans would love to see him in the majors because he is the best catcher in the system, but this is the right approach assuming we have baseball in 2022..
Bi Soxual
Rauschman has been toiling in minors for yrs
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Rutschman has 425 minor league ABs, you nimrod. That’s the equivalent of 2/3rds of one regular season.
Thats crazy!!! Def didn’t seem like Nick was @ the show far from his draft night.Should of probably checked lol
Madrigal had the potential to help the White Sox win now. Rutchman could be Tony Gwynn with Ohtani power and Bench’s catching skills and still not help the O’s out of last place.
The problem with promoting Adley to the O’s is just like the problem promoting Witt to the Royals; and Witt might have been the better pick (two years younger, Bobby’s already raking at AAA). There’s a legit chance of a labor stoppage/strike in 2022, and since neither needs to be on the 40-man, they won’t lose any time if that happens. As it is, they’ve both already lost a year of development time to COVID; they don’t need to miss another one, or even a portion of one.
I watch my share of minor league ball; Rutchman’s the real thing. If nothing else, his defense and pitcher-handling is already outstanding. And the offense looks for real. (Again, was he the BEST pick? Time will tell). But they’re probably better off to wait and see exactly what the parameters for arbitration and free agency are, with a new CBA; they both could easily change.
I think this Witt Jr might be a generational talent if he stays healthy.Besided the 5 tools,has great ab approach.
Ya, the defense isn’t what you’d want for a generational SS, but there’s enough to become a 3B. The bat to ball is extraordinary, in a Tatis kind of way, maybe even with more power.
Just as I was going to buy tickets to see Rutschman in nearby Bowie. Now I’ll have to make the trek to Norfolk.
Seems to me Matt Wieters got hype similar to that of Rutschman when he was in the minors. Wieters turned out to be a good but not great catcher. It would be interesting to compare the minors league stats of both. And none of it matters unless the O’s can properly identify and develop pitching talent, which has seemed beyond their capabilities for a lot of years now ( with not much evidence of that changing ).
people very quickly forget this, which is why Adley gives me pause when I hear the whole “generational” tag being thrown around. fwiw, if he becomes a healthier version of Wieters you take that – Matt actually had a pretty strong run in Baltimore.
I don’t see anyone saying generational. He is a great prospect. There’s a reason he went 1/1. You’re being pessimistic for the sake of being pessimistic.
As far as a minor league prospect goes he’s about as complete of a player as they come. After the way Wieters tore up minor league pitching it was always interesting to see him not become more in the majors. Blame that on injuries, less than stellar coaching or a guy who just didn’t have it to make that next jump. Whatever you want. But guys who hit like that in the minors typically become very good major leaguers.
Rutschman has done absolutely nothing to kill the hype. He can hit, field, and a call a ball game. If you’re being pessimistic that’s just because you want to be. If you are then do the same thing to Wander Franco and Bobby Witt. Because there’s no factual basis for it. AR draws walks, hits for pop, and plays the most physically demanding position very well.
IMVHO, Darkside simply made a mistake, and would rather dance around it, rather than admit it. FG has him rated as a 65 FV, and I am not sure they have more than a couple rated like that, Witt being only a 60.
And I’ve looked at the numbers. Once in a while, I’ll try to think like an amateur scout. I’ll downgrade a guy on lack of power, K/W, Strikeouts in general, fielding. But there is nothing in this guy’s resume that isn’t elite. To me, this is like someone saying that Wander Franco is a ‘meh’ candidate. There is nothing there.
That said, I welcome Darkside to share is analysis with us as to why Rutschman is overrated. But using statistics and stuff. Saying Rutschman is overrated because Weiters had a decent career, is an observation, not an analysis.