In November, the Orioles hired co-hitting coaches, a pair of 31-year-olds in Matt Borgschulte and Ryan Fuller. 

Borgschulte had spent the previous four seasons in the Twins organization, making his way to their Triple-A affiliate in St. Paul before landing in Baltimore. Fuller, on the other hand, was an internal promotion. 

Fuller joined the O’s in 2019, brought on as the hitting coach for the Low-A Delmarva Shorebirds. From there, he was promoted to Bowie in 2021 before earning a trip to Baltimore this year. 

Coming up through Baltimore’s farm system, Fuller understands the importance of keeping hitting philosophies consistent, no matter what level of the organization you may be at. 

Ryan McKenna, recently promoted from Triple-A Norfolk, says that its been helping his development this season. 

DETROIT — Like hitting and offense? Boy, do I not have a game for you.

The Orioles, without the prominent bats of Austin Hays and Ryan Mountcastle, fell to the Tigers 3-0 this afternoon. The two teams combined to ground into six double plays. 

"Obviously they're two huge losses, incredible hitters and guys that you want in your lineup, but at the same time, guys go down on every team," said Trey Mancini. "You have to fill the void and try to keep the line moving."

Baltimore hit the ball hard, but right at defenders. Baseball, am I right? 

According to Statcast, eight balls off the bat of Orioles had an exit velocity of at least 100 mph. Despite gathering just four hits in the ballgame, the O’s had four outs on balls in play that had an expected batting average over .500. That includes two Trey Mancini flyouts to right field, which had an xBA of .840 and .770 respectively. Don’t let Trey buy your lottery ticket this year. 

Jorge Mateo bounced around for his entire career. 

In 2016, Mateo was ranked the 30th best prospect in baseball as a member of the New York Yankees organization. The speedster was traded to Oakland in 2017, and was traded once again to San Diego in 2020. 

That year, the shortstop finally made his debut for the Padres. Except, that season, he didn’t play a single game at the position he came up playing through the minor leagues. Mateo played seven games in the outfield, five games at second base, and spent four games as a designated hitter. 

The 2021 season was no different. Mateo spent most of his time in center field for the Padres, and upon being claimed by the Orioles, played mostly second base.

This year, however, Mateo finally got his chance. The pieces fell into place for Mateo to be an every day starter at just one position; shorstop. And so far, the 26-year-old has taken full advantage of that opportunity. 

After a bullpen game on Thursday, pitching was not the issue in Friday night's 4-2 loss to the Tigers. 

Brandon Hyde needed starting pitcher Jordan Lyles to eat some innings tonight against the Tigers. In Thursday’s series-deciding victory over the Cardinals, Hyde turned to six relievers to get the job done; Bryan Baker, Keegan Akin, Dillon Tate, Cionel Pérez, Joey Krehbiel and Félix Bautista. 

A long outing from Lyles would give those bullpen arms a much needed rest. The stars were all aligning for that scenario to play out, and for the most part, it did. None of those names appeared in tonight's game. 

"It was great to be able to rest some guys in the back of the 'pen today, coming off a day where we threw a lot of guys for multiple innings," said manager Brandon Hyde. 

In the first, Javier Báez grounded into a double play, approximately the 1,000th double play that the Orioles have turned this year. OK, fine, it was the 41st. That’s still a lot of double plays. Most in the American League, in fact. 

After a canceled 2020 minor league season, surely 2021 would be the year that Rylan Bannon made his major league debut. 

In 2019, Bannon flashed every tool the Orioles had hoped to see when they acquired the infielder from the Dodgers in 2018. At just 23, Bannon thrived in 20 games at Triple-A Norfolk. The Xavier product flaunted a .317/.344/.549 slash line, good for an .893 OPS. Defensively, Bannon was versatile, getting reps at both second and third base throughout the year. 

When the 2021 season rolled around, it didn’t appear that Bannon would have to wait long to get a call to the bigs. Demonstrate the same promise at Triple-A that the 2019 season showed, and the promotion would come sooner rather than later. 

Things didn’t work out that way. 

“It was definitely not exactly how I would’ve drawn it up,” Bannon joked.

Cedric Mullins' 2021 season was one of the best by an Orioles hitter in recent memory. Mullins, who won a Silver Slugger Award and finished ninth in the American League Most Valuable Player voting, failed to reach base 64 percent of the time and did not record a hit in 71 percent of his at-bats. Pretty great, right? It's easy to forget just how often the best hitters in the game fail to record a hit. That was the outcome in 63.4 percent of the at-bats of Ty Cobb, the all-time leader in career...

In search of a way to fill the void generated by an especially slow offseason, the "MASN All Access Podcast" had to get creative. Joined by Connor Newcomb of the "Locked On Orioles Podcast," Brendan Mortensen and I created the All-Camden Yards Draft with the simple goal of drafting three teams whose rosters are filled with the greatest Orioles players to have ever played at "the ballpark that forever changed baseball." And who better to judge the results than Orioles fans? These were the...