Jordan Westburg’s Injury Tests Baltimore’s Infield Depth
For the second time since the opening of spring training, the Baltimore Orioles lost one of their starting infielders to injury. On Friday, Baltimore announced that third baseman Jordan Westburg would miss significant time due to a partially torn UCL in his throwing elbow. Westburg received a platelet-rich plasma injection, commonly used for soft tissue and joint injuries, and will be out at least until the end of April, according to team president Mike Elias.
Jordan Westburg has a partial UCL tear in his right elbow and will be getting a PRP injection today, per Orioles POBO/GM Mike Elias.
Westburg will be out for all of April. Timeline TBD after that.
— Jake Rill (@JakeDRill) February 20, 2026
While there’s never an ideal time for an injury, the Orioles were already without second baseman Jackson Holliday, out with a broken hamate bone in his right hand. That puts half of their infield out of commission for Opening Day. Before Holliday and Westburg went down, there had been some turnover among the role players in Baltimore’s infield, adding to the uncertainty of what these injuries will mean for the team this spring and beyond.
Ramón Urías and Jorge Mateo were fixtures for the last several years, both having extended stints as starters as the young Orioles infielders progressed through the minors. Mateo had a 2.8 WAR as the starting shortstop in 2022 — before yielding the job to Gunnar Henderson the following season. Meanwhile, also in 2022, Urías won a Gold Glove at third base, and he has filled in at third during Westburg’s prior injuries. Both saw their use decline in 2025, with Mateo struggling to hit and then having his season ruined by elbow and hamstring injuries, while Urías batted just .241/.292/.384, for a career-worst 87 wRC+. Urías signed a one-year, $2 million deal with the Cardinals on Saturday, and Mateo joined the Braves on a one-year contract worth $1 million last month. Terrin Vavra, who made cameo appearances for the O’s in a utility role, is also gone, a free agent after being designated for assignment last season; he’s now playing for Czechia in this year’s World Baseball Classic.
So the Orioles have had to turn to new additions to fill the longtime roles of Urías and Mateo. The first is Jeremiah Jackson, a former second-rounder for the Angels who signed with the O’s as a minor league free agent before last season. After putting up a combined .313/.343/.537 line at Double-A and Triple-A, Jackson earned a look in the majors on merit. By the time he debuted on August 1, Baltimore’s season was all but over and Urías had been traded Houston, allowing Jackson to get an extended big league audition. He comfortably exceeded expectations, hitting .276/.328/.447 while starting in right field and third base down the stretch. None of the projection systems envision Jackson repeating his wRC+ of 117 with the Orioles, but they all peg him as a highly competent role player with just enough oomph to be an adequate starter. ZiPS projects 1.6 WAR for him given 514 plate appearances, and Steamer/600 has him at 1.5 WAR in 600 plate appearances. OOPSY feels similarly, though THE BAT is not quite as bullish.
What’s bad timing for Westburg and Holliday may be good timing for Blaze Alexander, acquired by the Orioles for three prospects a few weeks ago. Alexander put up a 99 wRC+ for the Diamondbacks in 2025 while getting starts at second and third base, shortstop, and in center field. ZiPS gave him an even stronger projection than Jackson, with 2.1 WAR over 459 projected plate appearances. Alexander’s biggest problem in Arizona was a lack of opportunity, as few mortals are going to grab a full-time middle infield job on a team that employs both Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte. When push comes to shove, it was unlikely that Arizona would’ve prioritized getting Alexander playing time over Jordan Lawlar or, in the medium term, Tommy Troy.
Westburg’s injury also opens up an opportunity at third base for Coby Mayo, who is coming off a disastrous 2025 campaign. Getting his first extended shot in the majors, Mayo hit just .217/.299/.388. That would’ve been fine if he were projected to be a glove-first utilityman, but Mayo was a 50-FV prospect whose carrying tool was his 70-grade raw power. He ranked 52nd overall on our 2025 Top 100 Prospects list, with his defense — and doubts about whether he could handle third base in the majors — curbing his projected value. Also troubling was Mayo’s inability to hit in the minors; his 2024 Triple-A wRC+ of 138 Wile E. Coyote’d off the cliff to a 103 last year. He had too much playing time to appear on the 2026 prospects lists, but if I had included him in the ZiPS Top 100, he would have plummeted from 11th entering last year to no. 146 after just a single season. All that being said, Mayo is only 24, so if there’s a comeback story in him, this would be the Inspirational Sports Movie© time to find it.
Ideally, the O’s would be quite happy with an infield of Pete Alonso at first, Holliday at second, Henderson at short, and Westburg at third, but until Westburg shows he can stay healthy for a full season, and Holliday either improves against lefties or cleans up his defense, backup infielders remain vital to this team.
From an overall team perspective, the consequences of the Westburg and Holliday injuries do not appear dire to the projections. ZiPS had already factored in Westburg’s injury risk into Baltimore’s projections, and it was being cautious in regards to a possible Holliday breakout, so the team is now projected to lose less than a win from its pre-injury forecast. That’s assuming these injuries don’t drag out longer than expected, which, of course, injuries are wont to do, but that’s a problem for Future Dan to worry about.
Losing Westburg for more than a month is an unwelcome sight, but things could be much worse for the Orioles. If, instead, a member of their starting rotation went down with a UCL injury, this would be a completely different story.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Glad to see Blaze Alexander finally get an opportunity to play. He’s a perfectly competent fielder at both second and third and with a bat that should be in the 90-95 wRC+ range. Maybe he even gets better with reps? Probably not, but he’s likely good enough to play everyday even if the strikeouts are scary.
I am a little surprised they didn’t want to reunite with Urias though. Losing both Westburg and Holliday hurts a lot more than just losing one because I don’t have any faith in Jeremiah Jackson.
Urias made sense for a bunch of teams I was surprised he was still out there til a few days ago. I’d rather have him than Bryan Ramos , Alexander and Jeremiah Jackson ans infield options amongst others. Colby Mayo at third base might put Mark Vientos’ glove to shame.
An infield defense that was already projected to be terrible will be apocalyptic if Mayo is the primary replacement for Westburg. His September performance at least gives some hope for him at the plate, but I’m still highly skeptical.
I’ve seen this sentiment is several places (particularly when they were rumored to be in on Framber) and I *think* I disagree. I don’t think the defense is a positive, to be clear, but the idea that it will be terrible doesn’t seem quite right either. Going around the horn and looking at the last ~3 years of stats:
1B: Alonso is admittedly bad by all the advance stats. Looks like ~2-5 runs per year below average, perhaps closer to 6-8 if you want to index more on the last two years – somewhere between regular below average and terrible. However, it’s easy to see Alonso getting some DH time, and the fill-ins (Mountcastle, Mayo, and Basallo) figure to be better. This is likely still a negative overall though – if the whole infield looked like this, apocalyptic would be dead on.
2B: Holliday was a mess there last year, but was +1 runs there by FRV in 2024. He was also generally pegged as being able to stay at SS as a prospect, so it would be strange to me if he was truly a disaster long-term at 2B. Meanwhile, Blaze has been above average in small samples in the big leagues at 2B and 3B. For what it’s worth, Westburg looked ~average at 2B last year. It doesn’t seem crazy to think they could end up with close to average defense here in the aggregate. I’d peg this around -3ish runs as my baseline expectation, with large error bars depending on how long Holliday is out and whether he can improve in the field in Y3.
SS: Across systems, Gunnar was somewhere between average and great in 2023, slightly below average to slightly above in 2024, and slightly below in 2025 while playing through a shoulder injury. I can see a story where he’s already sizing out of shortstop, but I think it’s also reasonable to see him as a slightly above avg SS who played through injury last year.
3B: Westburg has been slightly better than average by OAA every year while being slightly below average by DRS (although one should probably shade down on him a bit given the injury news). Meanwhile, if Westburg is out, I agree that Mayo is likely a negative. However, Alexander still likely gets significant 3B time in this timeline (particularly if Mayo looks like a total butcher), raising the floor here.
So if Westburg is healthy, 1B presents a problem but there’s a reasonable enough case to be made for average defense in the aggregate across the other 3 positions (Holliday a bit below avg, Gunnar and Westburg at or slightly above). I’d call this alignment below average, but not dreadful. If they end up at ~5-9 runs below average, that would have put them ~19th-23rd in the league in infield defense last year per FRV or ~15th-20th per DRS.
Meanwhile, if Mayo has to play third every day, I agree that the corners are a problem, but apocalyptic still seems a bit harsher than I would go – they probably end up in the ~10-18 runs below avg range, ~24th-27th in the league per FRV or 21st-25th per DRS.
I guess I’m not differing that harshly overall other than word choices and there could be some rose-colored glasses here, but I’m guessing our main differences are that I’d bet more than you on positive regression to the mean on Holliday and Henderson boosting the infield to playable levels.
Pete Alonso was the worst fielding first baseman in the majors last season by DRS (-9) and second worst by OAA (-9).
Not by me, he wasn’t, as I have been saying since 2023 that I did not expect him to stay at shortstop. He has well below average arm strength, very poor fielding technique, and below average range. Jackson is a waist bender who tips over to scoop the ball rather than bend his knees and crouch to receive it. That makes his hands hard, causing bobbles and errors.
Holliday was the sixth worst fielding second baseman in the majors last season by DRS (-10) and the third worst by OAA (-8).
Henderson is nowhere near as bad at his position as Alonso or Holliday are at theirs, but he is still slightly below average. His hands and arm are solid but his range has consistently been below average.
Westburg has excellent range for a third baseman but a noodle arm, which explains the OAA / DRS discrepancy given that OAA is more a measurement of what balls a player gets to. Unfortunately, he is highly likely to miss the entire season. The PRP injection is a last ditch hope that he might avoid surgery, but according to leaks from within the organization, he is very likely to need an internal brace if not a full UCL repair.
If Mayo ends up being the primary replacement for Westburg at third base, which seems likely given that Blaze will be needed at second while Holliday is out and is the only other backup for Henderson, then the Orioles would have three of their four infield spots manned by players you would expect to rank in the bottom five for their positions. That looks apocalyptic to me.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of your arguments here, but it seems that our main difference is that you are indexing very heavily to last year’s performance, whereas I am looking at the last 3ish years to get a sense for baselines. Alonso, Holliday, and Gunnar were all worse last year (to varying degrees) than their baseline from prior seasons (admittedly a small sample baseline in the case of Holliday, which is why I also mentioned the prospect scouting reports – and I respect that yours may have varied from the consensus!).
If they regress towards their means, I think this defense looks more bad than apocalyptic even with Mayo out there. Yes, I recognize this is damning with faint praise.
However, if Holliday turns out to be as bad defensively as he was last year (which he may, for the reasons you bring up) and Mayo handles the bulk of the innings at 3B as shabbily as feared, I agree this infield defense will be extremely rough. We shall see!
Would love to know where you are hearing this – this seems like the base case given the MRI diagnosis, but I hadn’t seen any of these leaks, so would love to learn more!
If those players were good in 2024 then I would be less pessimistic regarding the poor numbers in 2025, but you have to go back to 2023 for significantly better fielding metrics out of Alonso and Henderson. When assessing potential regression, you put the most weight by far on the prior season, some weight on the season before that, and then less weight on the season before that. Holliday is the one that actually could get better if he actually listens to coaching and improves his technique, but I’ve been pointing out the need for those changes over the last three seasons and they still haven’t happened.
As far as Westburg is concerned, the Tommy John rumors were posted in various Orioles communities on February 18th, two days before Elias made an official announcement. Some people online have connections within the organization who provided them with that information. Hopefully that’s an overreaction and he really can come back this season, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
I don’t think we’re likely to see a truly “apocalyptic” infield defense even with Mayo at third, but it’s a possibility and I’m always excited to see a really extreme situation in baseball.
I think the last time we have seen a truly apocalyptic infield defense is the post-Xander Red Sox where they kept trying to convert their excellent-fielding center fielder to shortstop.
From 2023 to 2024 there were only four infielders with a positive FRV with more than 150 innings. Trevor Story, Yu Chang, David Hamilton, and Dominic Smith combined for approximately 15 FRV in approximately 1500 innings.
And then we get some truly astounding numbers. Enmanuel Valdez had a -10 FRV in 825 innings, Vaughn Grissom had -2 in 245, and Luis Urias was at -2 in 209. And that’s just second base!
At shortstop David Hamilton was -5 in 522 innings, Cedanne Rafaela is at -5 in 692 innings, and Enrique Hernandez had an astoundingly bad -11 in 484 innings.
Devers was arguably the least problematic player in that infield with -10 FRV in 2431 innings, that’s what Casas did in 1549 innings.
I don’t think we’ve seen anything like that since the early to mid 2000s all-offense no-defense Yankees team where they proved that running out a a team with impossibly bad defenders everywhere was. But only if your team wRC+ is between 112 and 120 and your rotation has Mike Mussina, David Wells, and a couple of not-actually-future Hall of Famers who have pumped themselves full of steroids to defeat the aging curve and stay on the field