Baltimore’s Outfield Options Don’t Make Much Sense

Next week, we’re bringing back our annual Positional Power Rankings season preview, where we go through every team’s depth charts, position by position, to identify strengths and weaknesses. In preparation for the PPRs, we spend a lot of time checking over every team’s depth chart here on the site to try and make the playing time distributions as accurate as possible, and make sure we’re incorporating the most recent available information. In most cases, distributing at-bats is pretty easy, and there is a logical combination of players to fill starter/reserve or platoon roles for each team.

But then there’s the Orioles outfield. If you know how to make this group fit together, I’d love to hear it.

In center field, of course, is Adam Jones, who publicly suggested that he’d like to be flanked by some better defenders this year. I don’t think he’s going to get his wish.

The Orioles look like they’re going to run some platoons between left field, right field, and designated hitter. Hyun Soo Kim (LHB) returns after a solid offensive rookie season, but the team didn’t trust him at all against LHPs last year, and his defensive issues in left field make it likely that he’ll be ticketed for a job share with Joey Rickard (RHB) again this year. Seth Smith (LHB) was acquired over the winter, presumably to play right field against right-handed pitching, the role he played in Seattle last year.

He needs a platoon partner too, and maybe a defensive replacement, so if we attach Rickard to Kim, then the last bench spot would likely go to a right-handed OF who can run a bit, which would seemingly give veteran NRI Craig Gentry a leg up on the job, though Rule 5 pick Anthony Santander is hanging around too, with the more classic Orioles OF skill-set of decent power with questionable defense. Mark Trumbo is also around as the primary DH, but could play an OF corner against LHPs if the team wanted to get another bat into the line-up.

That basic plan doesn’t seem so weird. Two left/right platoons in the corner spots, with stronger hitters from the left side and better defenders from the right side. Okay, makes sense.

Except then last weekend, this happened.

Source confirms: Pedro Alvarez to #Orioles on minor-league deal in works. First reported: @TommyStokke. Will play OF, per @JonHeyman.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 11, 2017

Alvarez agreed to return to orioles. Deal is he will play the OF for them. Been working on it 3-4 months.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) March 11, 2017

According to Buck Showalter, the Orioles had been planting seeds about this move since last September, and Alvarez has been working out in preparation for a potential move to the outfield this winter. While Alvarez signed a minor league contract, it seems likely that he was given some indication that he was likely to get added to the big league roster if he showed he can play the outfield to any reasonable degree. And given that the Orioles consider Mark Trumbo good enough to be a part-time outfielder, the bar in Baltimore is clearly pretty low.

But it’s not particularly clear how Alvarez can really coexist with what the Orioles currently have. He’s a duplication of Smith and Kim, as they are all bat-first lefties who need to be platooned, and with Trumbo already relegated to DH against RHPs because of the presence of Chris Davis at first base, there isn’t another spot in the line-up for a left-handed OF/DH.

And there isn’t even really a bench spot for him, despite the notion that he is competing for a reserve role. Right now, the team projects to carry a four-man bench, with Rickard and Gentry/Santander joined by utility infielder Ryan Flaherty and backup catcher Caleb Joseph. If the team wanted to try and shoehorn Alvarez onto the roster even without finding regular at-bats for him — it’s safe to assume he has some kind of opt-out in his minor league deal if not added to the big league roster at some point, so for instance, if they just wanted to promote him to keep him from leaving the organizaiton — then he’d have to displace one of the two outfielders, since Flaherty and Joseph aren’t expendable.

But if you carry Alvarez instead of one of the Rickard/Gentry/Santander, then the planned platoons don’t work anymore, and you’d be forcing a poor defensive LHB into the line-up against left-handed pitching while simply carrying an extra left-handed pinch hitter for a line-up that doesn’t really have anyone to pinch-hit for. Let’s just sketch it out, for visual representation.

You can replace Gentry with Santander or Trey Mancini if you think they’re going to win the fifth OF job, but the point remains the same; giving that guy’s roster spot to Alvarez only serves to create a logjam of LH corner OFs against RHPs, and opens a hole against LHPs in the OF. Sure, you could stick Trumbo out there instead, having him effectively serve as Smith’s platoon partner, but then who is the DH against LHPs? The only right-handed hitters on the bench would be the backup catcher and the utility infielder, so getting their bat in the line-up isn’t worth pushing Trumbo to the outfield.

As far as I can figure, the Alvarez signing signals one of two options.

1. The team is looking to trade Hyun Soo Kim, who they didn’t really trust last year until he forced his way into the line-up, and would give his spot to Alvarez, shifting Smith to left field in the process.

2. They signed Alvarez as a favor to give him a chance to play outfield in front of scouts, figuring some other team will be impressed enough to trade for him before Opening Day.

The latter plan doesn’t really make much sense though, as if Alvarez just wanted somewhere to audition for an OF job, he could have at least signed with a team that doesn’t have copies of his skillset ahead of him on the depth chart. It feels like a Kim trade might be the most logical outcome here, except for the fact that the market for bat-first corner outfielders disintegrated this winter, and it’s not clear that there would be that many teams looking to trade for Kim at this point.

So, yeah, I don’t know what the Orioles are doing in the outfield. They’ve responded to Jones’ request for better athletes by stocking up on poor defensive options, and if Alvarez is actually in the plans, it seems like they have too many left-handed outfielders and not enough right-handed ones. And the right-handed ones they do have aren’t any good.

If they can flip Kim for a right-handed OF who can actually cover some ground and not embarrass himself at the plate, then maybe this all works out. Maybe Alvarez takes to the OF conversion well and allows the team to keep Trumbo at DH full-time. They have a few weeks to sort this out, and the Orioles have been good at finding value from guys who didn’t look like much when acquired.

But with a lousy pitching staff full of guys who put the ball in play a lot, this really seems like a weird plan. And without some other move coming, the current pieces just don’t really fit together.