MASN’s Roch Kubatko reported the news after Thursday’s loss
(extreme Baltimore accent) COBY MAYO, HON!
The Orioles are doing the thing and promoting another one of their top prospects to try to help the team down the stretch in the 2024 season. MASN’s Roch Kubatko reported on Thursday night that Mayo, a consensus top 15-20 prospect in the game, is headed to join the team. Other local reporters offered their own confirmation of this report. It’s happening.
Mayo was removed early from the Norfolk game in Charlotte on Thursday night, an 18-10 donnybrook that saw him rack up four hits in six at-bats before being removed. That could have easily turned out to just be, get him a little extra rest in a blowout. Instead, it seems to have turned out to be, get him to Cleveland.
At Triple-A this season, Mayo has batted .301/.375/.586 over 77 games, with 20 home runs. Only a fractured rib that cost him more than a month has kept him from hitting more homers. Maybe we’d have even seen him in the majors before this if not for that injury. Going back to last season, Mayo has played basically a full season of games at the level (139 games) and he’s hit 32 homers. At 22, it seems like he’s ready for MLB.
A variety of questions immediately present themselves, with answers that won’t be clear until later. Are the Orioles calling up Mayo with the idea that he’s going to play a lot of third base? Who will he be replacing on the roster? Is the notion that this could be the “for good” promotion? Why did the team wait until the next day after they already did a big roster shuffle to make one more move?
These are all unsettled questions after the trade deadline activity got Orioles fans thinking that Mayo would probably not be promoted until September, in order to preserve his possibility of competing for the Rookie of the Year award next year and thus garnering the O’s a bonus draft pick in 2026. The choice to add struggling veteran right-handers to the lineup mix rather than promote the prospect is quickly reversed. Everyone who thought there’s no way that the O’s would simultaneously break in Jackson Holliday and Mayo is looking to be incorrect.
Are we talking a one-day stay for either Eloy Jiménez or (more likely) Austin Slater? That would be weird and kind of rude to do that to them, not that there’s any rule against it. It would also be weird and pointless to have acquired that player if the Orioles were strongly considering promoting Mayo on August 2.
Maybe there’s an injury that we don’t know about, like Ryan Mountcastle turning out to have tweaked an oblique, or I suppose it’s possible that the latest defensive miscue by Ramón Urías, which helped contribute to a disastrous first start for Trevor Rogers, has the team finally soured on the former Gold Glover. Not that there’s any guarantee Mayo would be better at third base.
I don’t know about that. What I do know is Roch and everyone else says it’s happening, and I’m pumped. The Orioles aren’t done taking big swings on the 2024 season even if they didn’t acquire the top-end starting pitcher that many people wanted. As the gamers are fond of saying: Let’s go!