The Orioles Are Now Gunnaring for a Wild Card Spot

The Orioles showed mercy to minor league pitchers this week, officially calling up infielder Gunnar Henderson, relieving those hurlers of the terrible burden of having to pitch to him. The team’s top prospect wasted little time making his impact felt, hitting his first major league home run in his second time up at the plate, a long drive off Cleveland starter Triston McKenzie. And if the ZiPS projections are to be believed, adding Henderson down the stretch is about as valuable an offensive boost as anyone made this summer, with the obvious exception of a certain southern California team sporting mustard-and-brown colors.

So just how good is Henderson? That’s a question that has shifted notably over the course of the minor league season. If you go back to the winter, he was considered an excellent prospect, ranking 66th in the FanGraphs Top 100 list and 53rd in the ZiPS Top 100. We weren’t outliers, either; among others, Keith Law at The Athletic and Baseball Prospectus also put him in their top 100s.

Henderson’s stock wasn’t poorly valued, but it shot up so quickly this year that you might think that it was a Reddit meme stonk like GameStop and AMC. Minor league translation printer goes brrr! Before the season, ZiPS only projected Henderson to amass 1.5 WAR in 2023 with a wRC+ of 87. We’ll get to that updated 2023 projection in a minute; let’s just say for now that it’s better.

The improvements made by Henderson in the minors this year were across the board, from power to plate discipline to defense. Combining his performances for Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk, you get an overall line of .297/.416/.531 with 19 homers and 22 stolen bases in 112 games. That would be enough to make him the best first base prospect in baseball, considering he didn’t turn 21 until late June, but as a player who can legitimately play shortstop, that’s the kind of performance that puts you in the ultra-elite category.

ZiPS translates Henderson’s 2022 overall at .266/.361/.468. How rare are numbers like that? Let’s dip into the database and look at the other (non-1B) infielders throughout minor league history (back to 1950) and find the top minor league seasons by translated OPS+ in seasons of 300 plate appearances or more:

That’s quite a list of names, including some players you might not immediately associate with playing the infield, like Raines and Yastrzemski. Only two players in this top 30 played shortstop most frequently in their year: Henderson and Bregman. So naturally, Henderson looks even more imposing if we limit it to just shortstops!

Now, ZiPS isn’t starting to carve Henderson’s Hall of Fame plaque or anything, but this represents a wonderful minor league season, no matter what position you consider him to be. So it’s hardly surprising to see him shoot up all the prospect lists very quickly this season; ZiPS would rank him as the best prospect in baseball today.

Those are meatier projections than Adley Rutschman’s at this time last year, and that’s certainly not damning with faint praise!

It’s the kind of performance that makes you wonder if the O’s would have been better off calling Henderson up a month ago rather than yesterday. As of this moment, ZiPS projects the Orioles with a 14.5% chance of making the playoffs. Adding 0.7 wins, the amount ZiPS estimates he’d have added if he had been promoted after the All-Star break, doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but it’s enough to bump them to 19.1%. An extra win is always important in a pennant race, but the O’s need to win more games than their competition because of the tiebreak scenarios. They already lose on tiebreakers to the Mariners and Rays. Baltimore also loses a tie to the Twins, and while beating the Guardians tonight would tie them up at 3–3, Cleveland is 4 1/2 games ahead of the O’s in intradivision record, the second tiebreaker. The O’s only have secured a tiebreak with the White Sox and need to go better than 4-6 or better to get it on the Jays. [This has been edited as Dan flipped the O’s/Jays record initially -DS]

Regardless of where the Orioles end up in the standings, 2022 has been a successful season for them. By calling up Henderson, it’s been made even better.