The Orioles Must Commit To Playing Holliday, Mayo And Cowser, Or Trade Them

From a developmental standpoint – and eight years into a never-ending rebuild the Orioles are still desperate for MLB player development – there is one logical path for this franchise to take the rest of the season.

The Orioles need to give struggling former prospects Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo and Colton Cowser a runway to play every day. In Mayo’s case, hit every day, with his glove at third base clearly still a big issue and him blocked at first base and the Orioles resisting the most logical move for years now with hit potent arm and never giving him any reps in right field.

They need to play. Pretty much all the time. All three of them.

Or they need to be dealt.

Would be great if they played under a coaching staff and front office that had a damn clue how to help them prepare, but alas it is what it is. But for a team that hasn’t been .500 basically all season and now 100 games in, and with three of their best bats on the Injured List in Blaze Alexander Samuel Basallo and Adley Rutschman, if these players can’t get a real run now, they might as well trade them.

This is basically now or never time, especially with the 2027 season under an ominous labor cloud. It shouldn’t be this difficult. But it is.

If It’s Not Go Time Now, It Never Will Be

With Holliday and Cowser, we’re already past the 1000 plate appearance threshold. It seems as if the Orioles have made up their minds about what these three have to offer, but to never give Holliday a chance to follow up om a four-hit breakout performance and not let him face lefties almost at all, at age 22, seems pretty backwards. Having Cowser come off a month-long tear to post a .330 OPS with 0 RBIs over his next 22 games is simply failure.

Orioles Hall of Famer Mike Bordick railed against it on his latest appearance on “The Daily Flock Show,” this week. Holliday finally gets away from pullside “turn and burn,” as Bordy puts it and then gets benched. Cowser doesn’t appear as if he can hit enough to sustain a regular run in centerfield but also doesn’t get to see lefties much and the Orioles seem incapable of helping him against offspeed pitches.

This regime has been seemingly looking to pigeonhole prospects into platoons because they think playing match-ups makes them look smart. But it’s hurting their allegedly “core players” in the field and at the plate.

“They think the match-ups can play all the time,” Bordy told me, “whether you’re a righty or a lefty, just do it. Whether it's reverse splits – I guess they read into all of that stuff. But it’s pretty standard now.

“And it’s unfortunate because baseball for so long we’ve hears about managers have great gut instincts. Well, is it really a gut instinct if a guy has gone four-for-four one day you’d think he’d be in the lineup the next day? Or a guy who has gotten three hits in a row with three home runs, why would you pinch hit for that guy? …

“But none of these guys have any track record at all to say you’re going to flip the card over – lefty/righty match-up stuff. It doesn’t make sense to me. And how are these guys ever going to learn?”

Even amid what has been a largely lost season, with no wave of prospects coming up from below to force these players out, and no money spent on an everyday bat outside the organization except for Pete Alonso, and with so many players currently hurt, to not provide these three with a runway now seems like gross incompetence for this front office.

But then again, that’s what they specialize in.

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