A weird back-and-forth discussion took place online over the course of Sunday afternoon after the Baltimore Orioles announced that outfielder Austin Hays had been optioned to Triple-A Norfolk.

Hays, who lit the Grapefruit League on fire with a .351/.385/.892 line, was considered by many to be a very good candidate, if not an outright lock, to make the Opening Day roster for the Orioles.   

The strange, spirited discussion that took place was whether Hays was having his service time gamed by a team that appears likely to roll with an Opening Day outfield of Trey Mancini, Cedric Mullins and Joey Rickard. Each of those outfielders has their warts — and none of them possess the ceiling of Hays — but is looking at it that way truly painting the correct picture?

(Discuss this and more on the BSL boards here!)

One argument that sprang up was that a team should always take their best 25 players with them out of spring training. Even when adjusting for position, that’s still not a move that teams make all that often. For one, it might make sense for one of Baltimore’s top prospects to make the team over a veteran — in this case, let’s just say Ryan Mountcastle over Renato Nunez — because they’re just that gifted.

Might that be true in a vacuum?

Might that give the Orioles the best chance to win on Opening Day?

Might both of those be true, yet detrimental to development?

I’d posit that the answer to all three of those questions is a resounding yes. Let me explain.

Bringing up any hot-shot prospect is an exciting proposition no matter when it happens. Then, add in that the Orioles aren’t expected to contend this season, and with that paradigm shift, fans are left rooting for development, and seeing new faces come up and hopefully be a part of the next core of winning baseball in Baltimore.

Still, just because Mountcastle might be better than Nunez or Hays may, in fact, be better than Mullins or Rickard isn’t enough of a reason on its own. I guess my theory is this — as a talent evaluator, one has to ask “is this player the best version of himself that he can be?”

The answer to that might not always be a firm yes, but there shouldn’t be a whole lot of doubt either when thinking about big-time prospects.

Sure, Hays has dominated spring training pitching — but what kind of pitching has he faced? Baseball Reference grades his opposition at a 6.8. Their grades for spring training opposition range from 1-10, and 6.8 is just under where they place Double-A talent (7.0).

We’ve already seen Hays absolutely crush it at Double-A, when he hit .330/.367/.594 in 64 games at Bowie in 2017.  

We’ve also seen him struggle at Double-A, like he did last year when he hit .242/.271/.432.

Hays only got into 75 minor-league games last year — and none in the big leagues after playing 20 in 2017 — as he battled a stress fracture in his right ankle. It’s not fair to judge him on this basis, but all the same, it isn’t fair to let 12 spring training games against subpar competition override the fact that last year happened, either.

It’s 40 plate appearances. It’s well under 10 percent of a big-league season. It’s not even a month!

Let’s play with that a bit. How about Mark Trumbo’s 2017? The burly DH hit just .234/.289/.397 with 23 homers in a universally disappointing season. Yet in May — against big-league pitching, mind you — he hit a solid .324/.385/.514 in 122 plate appearances.

That’s three times as many plate appearances against better competition, and yet Trumbo still had a brutal season.

Sample sizes matter.

The allegation of service-time gaming quite frankly is strange as well. Granted, this is a player who was good enough to peak in the 20s on the Baseball America and MLB.com prospect lists and at No. 72 on the list from Baseball Prospectus, but that was prior to 2018.

That was after his iffy MLB cup of coffee — .217/.238/.317 in 63 plate appearances — but before his 2018 season where he combined for a .235/.266/.410 line between Aberdeen and Bowie.

That’s not a misprint — a .266 on-base percentage. That was bad enough to drop him from the top prospect lists across the board.

This isn’t the kind of talent whose service time needs to be gamed. This is a guy who needs to get his feet under him, get his swing back and then be brought up to the big leagues once he’s fully ready.

He’s not exactly a toolsy high school draft pick who needs all five years down on the farm, but he certainly seems to need a bit more time at Double-A — even if he’s going to skip over Triple-A altogether, which is a level he’s yet to appear at through 241 minor-league games.

He’ll turn 24 at midseason and has hit a definite hiccup in his development. His 40 spring training plate appearances this year shouldn’t outweigh what he did in 63 MLB plate appearances two years ago — frankly, neither matter all that much — but it would be entirely foolish if the Orioles were more worried about six years down the road, when Hays is 30 and for all we know isn’t even in the league anymore.

When Kris Bryant — the most notable of players who had their service time gamed — was jerked around by the Cubs, he was coming off an age-22 season in which he hit .325/.438/.661 between Double-A and Triple-A.

Going into the season, he was the No. 1 prospect on Baseball America’s list, the No. 2 guy on MLB.com’s and the No. 5 player on the list for Baseball Prospectus.

It takes a rare combination of talent and age for gaming service time to make any logical sense — let’s not conflate it with making sense from a humanity standpoint, because that’s never true — and that’s with can’t-miss talent in its early 20s, or younger.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. fits the bill at age 20 (as of Saturday).

Eloy Jimenez fits at age 22.

But, and this is no slight to Mr. Hays, this is not that kind of situation.

There really isn’t a compelling argument that Hays is being jerked around here. What’s disconcerting is that it’s otherwise smart baseball people making this argument on 40-something plate appearances against Double-A competition.

Again — that doesn’t outweigh what happened in his first cup of coffee.

That doesn’t outweigh what he did last year — healthy or otherwise.

There’s a very clear path to playing time for Austin Hays in the big leagues this season. Hell, maybe even in the next month. But there’s no harm in making him knock down a house of cards in the meantime.

It’s easy enough to make the switch from Rickard to Hays. It’s very difficult to make the switch from Hays, to Rickard, back to Hays while not messing with everyone involved.

Teams have done this for years without it being any sort of nefarious business practice. Save the torches and pitchforks for Chicago.

By the way, for what it’s worth, here’s the list of comparable players via Baseball Prospectus:

– Dayan Viciedo
– Josh Kroeger
– Anthony Santander (!)
– Marcell Ozuna
– Randal Grichuk
– Bryce Brentz
– Domonic Brown
– Aristides Aquino
– Yorman Rodriguez
– Adam Brett Walker

That’s quite a range there, with a small emphasis on Ozuna and maybe Grichuk as the most desirable players. Keeping him down in the minors for a little season hurts nothing in this case.

Brandon Warne
Brandon Warne

Orioles Analyst

Warne is a Minnesota Twins beat reporter for 105 The Ticket’s Cold Omaha website as well as a sportswriter for Sportradar U.S. in downtown Minneapolis. He also contributes to FanGraphs / RotoGraphs.

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