If you’re wondering what has happened to Orioles first baseman Ryan Mountcastle, the numbers have never lied. They’ve always put his ability to control the hold he had as a major league regular in doubt.
Orioles manager Brandon Hyde says Mountcastle was not in the lineup against the Royals this past weekend due to illness, not because of the slump he has been in for several weeks. We’ll see. [Mountcastle was placed on the 10-day injured list with vertigo June 13.]
For the season, Mountcastle is batting .227/.264/.421 with 11 home runs in 261 plate appearances. He has struck out 64 times and drawn just 12 walks.
It appears that the groin injury to center fielder Cedric Mullins may have pushed Hyde to figure out a way to squeeze more offense out of his club. Mountcastle’s issues have given veteran Ryan O’Hearn an opportunity, one he has taken advantage of.
I always had my doubts about Mountcastle because of his minor league walk totals (just 101 in 2,217 minor league plate appearances). One day in spring training in 2018, former Orioles manager Buck Showalter was asked during a news conference in Sarasota about Mountcastle. Showalter shared that he had run into Mountcastle and asked him about his low walk total (17) the previous season, which caused Mountcastle to chuckle.
“Understand it’s not funny,” Showalter told him.
Well, Showalter is long gone, but the dead aim he took at a weakness in Mountcasle’s game foreshadowed the crossroads Mountcastle faces as a major leaguer. If anything, it appears as if Mountcastle is actually regressing. It seems as if he has no real sense of what he is doing wrong.
Hitting big league pitching in this day and age is harder than ever. The constant run of relievers who throw near 100 mph in the late innings puts so much pressure on hitters to succeed early in games. The word has long been out that Mountcastle is such a free swinger that a pitcher need not throw him a strike. In other words, he gets himself out.
Up here, the Orioles have O’Hearn and Anthony Santander who can pick up the slack — or should we say improve upon the slack. Former first-rounder Heston Kjerstad is moving up the ladder speedily and has picked up a first baseman’s mitt along the way. Kjerstad was just promoted from Double-A Bowie to Triple-A Norfolk and has already slugged his first homer for the Tides.
I would assume if you just read what preceded this portion of the content, you know by now which player is sizzling with a capital S.
Gunnar Henderson was the Orioles’ No. 2 draft choice in 2019, when the club chose Adley Rutschman No. 1 overall. Rutschman and Henderson might represent the two best top picks in a single draft in Orioles history. In time, we may look back upon the 2019 draft as being on par with Ozzie Newsome’s first draft with the Ravens in April 1996. He had two first-round picks and selected Pro Football Hall of Famers Jonathan Ogden and Ray Lewis.
After the pandemic left Henderson with no clear-cut way to develop during the summer of 2020, the pressure was on Henderson to accelerate his own development and he did that by splitting the 2021 season between Low-A Delmarva (35 games) and High-A Aberdeen (65).
The club was confident in Henderson to the point that they didn’t stall his rapid climb by having him start 2022 at Aberdeen, where he struggled some the year prior. He started last season at Double-A Bowie. In 47 games with the Baysox, Henderson hit .312/.452/.573 with eight homers before being bumped up to Triple-A Norfolk.
His promotion did little to slow Henderson’s meteoric rise. He hit .288/.390/.504 with 11 homers in 65 games with the Tides before getting to The Show at the age of 21. He hit .259/.349/.440 with four homers in 34 major league games last year.
This year, expectations were sky high for the wunderkind. And until maybe the past two weeks, fans were disappointed in Henderson. After action on May 14, he was hitting .178/.338/.346 with four homers. Since then, Henderson is hitting .324/.368/.620 with five homers. He is now hitting .236/.349/.455 on the season.
Clearly, it looks like Henderson appears to be in for a productive run for a long time. Oh, he’ll go through slumps, but the biggest difference between the Sizzler and the Fizzler is born in on-base percentage and how strikeout-to-walk numbers impact a player’s value.
In 91 big league games, Henderson has walked 46 times and struck out 96 times. His on-base percentage is .349. In 384 big league games, Mountcastle has walked 107 times and struck out 409 times. His on-base percentage is .307.
I learned this a long, long time ago: If it were easy to break a habit, there would be no self-improvement books. It’s hard as hell to break bad habits. Mountcastle has a bad habit of not swinging at strikes, whereas Henderson, even at his worst, does not have that habit.
From my perspective, Gunnar Henderson is ready for liftoff and Ryan Mountcastle faces a much more uncertain future.
Photo Credits: Kenya Allen/PressBox