The Orioles have been one of the sport's best teams. They've won two-thirds of their games and trail only the Phillies and Yankees in overall record. A lot has gone right -- from an MVP-caliber performance out of Gunnar Henderson to a Jordan Westburg breakout and quietly excellent performances from Ryan Mountcastle and Ryan O'Hearn (the latter of whom MLBTR's Steve Adams will spotlight later this week).
No team is perfect, though, and the O's go into deadline season with a couple questions. Their rotation depth has taken hits with the losses of John Means and Tyler Wells. The back end of the bullpen could be a bit shaky, especially if Danny Coulombe misses time with an elbow injury. Most surprisingly, the Orioles have had one of the least productive center field situations in the majors. Cedric Mullins was a top ten finisher in MVP voting a couple years back. He's now arguably the only question mark in one of the game's deepest lineups.
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Show Ced some love. Extend him. Pressure to perform at the plate with all these young guns nipping at his heels has gotta be immense. Let him know you got his back. Ditto Santander.
Why on Earth would we extend Mullins, who has been absolutely AWFUL at the plate since mid-2023 and whose biggest tool, his speed, is rapidly evaporating?
Like most O’s fans, I have really enjoyed Ced’s tenure as an Oriole, but the guy is much closer to a non-tender candidate than an extension candidate at this juncture.
Extend him for his defense. That said, was not aware he lost a step. Visually, to me, looks like Ced out there patrolling CF. But also, giving him that vote of confidence helps him mentally at the plate. IE helps make the bat feel like a toothpick in his hands, not a sledgehammer.
His speed has been steadily declining over the last few years and is down to the 67th percentile in MLB (it was 92nd percentile in 2020), and his defense in CF may not even be much better than Cowser’s at this point. His surface level offensive stats and all of his underlying metrics (except whiff rate) are downright ABYSMAL and have been for a year now, and honestly, “abysmal” might not even fully convey just how bad he has actually been for the last year. We’re talking very low single digit percentiles here for his xwOBA, xBA, and xSLG. In other words, one of the very worst offensive profiles in all of MLB.
So I’m sorry dude, but extending him would be completely insane. I hope he turns it around somehow, obviously, but there is a very real chance that he is simply toast.
I love Ced, but only enough to give him time, not an extension. Sign him for 2026, when you know that Cowser, Beavers, Bradfield and Fabian will be options? No.
The idea that the Os NEED an OF in 2024 is crazy. There may be opportunities at the right price with Stowers, Santander. Hays, Mateo, Cowser and even O’Hearn and Norby to cover OF ABs, but there’s no need.
Cedric will probably come around to his 2022-23 level, but that makes him a trade piece, not a 2025 candidate.
Agree to disagree fellows. He was the starting CF on a 101 win team last year and doing so playing 2/3rds of the season with a nagging groin injury. I’m thinking he’s still not 100% this year from that injury. A stellar gold glove caliber defender. Extend him now while you can get him cheap because of his temporary hitting woes. And keep putting him out there for this current team that is 20+ plus games above 500.
Get healthy Ced. Os need you but don’t ask me , quiz the pitching staff what they think of him.
He is no longer a stellar defender in CF by any commonly used or accepted metric (though not bad either, just pretty average) and he has been one of the worst hitters in MLB for a year now, with absolutely nothing in his underlying metrics to suggest a massive offensive rebound is coming. His speed is cratering and he turns 30 the day the playoffs start this year (October 1st).
No sane GM would extend a player with this kind of profile, man. It’s legitimately something that not even the Rockies would do.
Now, with all of that said, hopefully Ced rams an entire server’s platter of crow down my throat lol.
It is not virtuous to pay veteran players for likely diminished returns as a “thank you”. O’s can use the money not spent on him toward part of extending younger players or for taking on a mid-season trade acquisition.
Business is business both ways where club and players use their leverage.
Virtuous? He’s the starting CF on a team with a 2 plus year run of winning baseball. Smart GM will take advantage of this dip in play and extend him. There’s a lot of career left in CM’s legs. I suspect he’s not nearly at 100%. Get him on the cheap now.
Business is business because you want to win. The Os win with Mullins in CF
Jeff – I don’t understand that logic. Mullins had his 30/30 season in 2021 when the Orioles went 52-110, so by the logic is that the Orioles lost with Mullins in CF and he therefore had no value.
Sure let’s extend another guy who stopped hitting while still paying for Chris Davis.
Agree with this. I think Mullins will regress to 2023ish numbers soon. But the real problem is splits. When we face a righty the OF offensive production becomes a big problem
Change title to “MLB Needs More Out of Center Field”
To that point, Baseball Reference has a WAR by position metric and the Os are 24th even with Cedric’s struggles. The 6 teams behind them include Arizona, the Dodgers, the Rays, Texas and the Cards. The Phillies, KC, CLE and ATL are only marginally better. Let them chase Robert with prospects.
MLB Now mentioned that the center field position is the lightest hitting out of all positions and the lightest ever of all center fields of any year.
CBS had a similar ranking the other day and had Mullins 30th.
Bring back Brady Anderson!!!
Brady on this team would be sweet
Paul Blair!
Him and Hays have been here through the thick and thin and get no love anymore. Tony too. Tough to manage. I want them to succeed and be a factor when the games matter most. You know there is pressure when it’s top 100 guy after top 100 guy breathing down your neck. I’m too emotional when it comes to veterans though. I’ll defend ced and Hays til they retire though
We’d all like them to succeed, but both Mullins and Hays have basically been black holes in the lineup since the middle of last year and their underlying metrics paint a pretty bleak picture for their prospects of rebounding to their previous forms. Hays is still hitting lefties well though, so that provides some value at least. Mullins, OTOH, isn’t hitting anyone at all, righty or lefty.
They can have Ian Happ for no more than 10lbs of crab cakes. They don’t even have to be fresh, ok?
Excuse me for chiming in as a person that actually watches Orioles games…..
Mullins has been hitting the ball hard recently, and looks like himself.
Last year Ryan Mountcastle was going badly and people jumped all over him, talking about who the O’s should trade for. Later it came out that he had vertigo. As he began to hit later in the year he pointed out that it was a lot easier to hit one baseball in the batter box then figure out which one of the 3 he saw was the one he should have tried to make contact with.
Wouldn’t surprise me to find that Cedrick has been playing through an injury.
My thoughts exactly. He had an amazing diving catch a month back. Since then he has really struggled. I think it’s fear that if he goes on DL that his spot will gone when he gets back.
Ced battles with chrons too. Always wonder how much that takes a toll on him
This is different. With Mountcastle it was always “he is what he is” in my mind. But his walk rate was starting to improve prior to the vertigo episode last year. Power was down (thanks wall) but after he’s come back the walk rate continues to be better, the whiff rate is down a little. He’s always going to be streaky and he could be down in the .240s or up in the .290s. Could they spend $30M a year for a bit better? Sure. But that margin isn’t as big as the gap between an above average hitting CF and a guy hitting .180.
Thornton Mellon;
I don’t know what it is about statically-oriented fans, but they panic every time a player hits a speedbump.
Both Mullins and Mateo can break down opposing teams defenses with their speed and force them into mistakes which take them out games – as happened with the Braves last night.
Fortunately it appears that Elias and company understand their value. I’m sure if a team will overpay them the FO will let them go. But if their salary requests are reasonable I expect they’ll be kept on.
P.S. Aren’t you the guy that was arguing with me for the last 2+ years when I said their pitching would be fine and you said it had no chance of being?
44 and 22 – silly piece
Astros need to trade Chas McCormick (track record but awful so far this year) and/or Jake Meyers.
They just don’t realize it lol
Harrison Bader for a lottery ticket?
Last 2 years he has been a 4WAR Per 162g type play. If he gets straightened out and chips in 2.5 the rest of the year I’ll take it.
4 for 11 with a double and a steal last 3 games. .363/.363/.454 .817 for those scoring it at home.
Absolutely do not extend him.
At one point the Orioles broke it off with Mark Belanger, a glove first guy who could never hit. They ended up with Cal Ripken Jr. To a lesser extent, they dropped no-hit Cesar Izturis for JJ Hardy and a Deivi Cruz-led underperforming platoon for Miguel Cabrera. That’s just at one position (SS). Each time, the good defender was hyped as highly valued but the team improved once the change was made.
In this case, Mullins has stopped hitting. We’re not talking about a one month slump, or even 2 months. Eddie Murray was hitting .234 with 4 HR for the first 54 games of the 1988 season. Then he hit .312 thereafter with 24 HR for the last 2/3 of that season before they ran him out of town. But Mullins hasn’t hit for four-plus months and shows no sign of emerging.
Do they really want to go down that rabbit hole.of throwing more money at a guy who stopped hitting just a few years after Glenn Davis? They need to take him out for a couple weeks to let him figure it out and then give him the rest of the season to prove it, but at this point even if he does I would say 1 year with incentives, given the glut of OF talent. I don’t think teams are standing in line for a .180 hitter.
“But Mullins hasn’t hit for four-plus months and shows no sign of emerging.”
Have you watched the last 3 games?
He appears to be healthy again.
Does this article talk about what Baltimore can do to address CF via trade or other transaction? Or is it just some paragraphs talking about how Mullins has been bad? Because that’s not worth paying for.