Moving Forward: Right Field, After Markakis

The world turns, and life goes on.

The Baltimore Orioles will have a new everyday right fielder for the first time in nine years come next spring; Nick Markakis is a desirable commodity, and the Orioles were not willing to pay the same premium as Atlanta’s John Hart. And that’s fine, all things considered; sentiment aside, Markakis has nowhere near the range in RF that he used to possess, and while he doesn’t strike out a whole lot in an era where strikeouts are king, his slugging has taken a nasty hit since a wrist/forearm injury in late 2012. Moving from Heyward to Markakis in right is a downgrade everywhere except service time.

The main question is: where does Baltimore go from here in RF? Almost every other position on the diamond is tied up with an incumbent starter of some kind — Jonathan Schoop will almost assuredly get another year to grow at 2B, Chris Davis will be back at 1B, the Orioles still have one more year of team control on Matt Wieters before a decision has to be made there, Steve Pearce has more than earned 550-600 PA as LF/DH, Machado will have 3B back as soon as his knee heals (again), and Hardy and Jones are Hardy and Jones. If the Orioles want to commit resources to a right fielder — even beyond the 4 years, $40 million they supposedly offered Markakis — they should have the financial flexibility to do so. But would that be wise?

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The team will be competing next year, and should make decisions with short term weight like a competing team — the Red Sox, Jays, Rays, and Yankees are all still very flawed clubs, and the Orioles need to strike while that instability lasts, because it won’t last forever. But that doesn’t mean signing someone just to sign them; there needs to be value there. With that in mind, there are a couple broad avenues the Orioles can explore:

In-House

There’s…not much here, especially not as a one-year stopgap. Alejandro de Aza, acquired from the Chicago White Sox at the end of last year, can play a makeshift right field, maybe; he’ll be on the 25-man roster regardless unless the Orioles DFA him or make a trade, as the Orioles opted to tender him a contract. De Aza hit very well for Baltimore at the end of 2014…in 89 PA. A review of his entire career places him as a league average bat in aggregate prone to extreme streakiness, without any of the defensive steadiness Markakis brought to the table, though perhaps a bit more range in the field. It’s important to note that de Aza hasn’t played much right field — barely over 200 innings at the MLB level — and it’s quite possible his arm won’t even play there over an extended period. But after de Aza, the other options currently on the roster are Steve Pearce and Chris Davis, who are even less mobile, though no one doubts Davis has the arm for the position.

In the minors, there’s guys like Cuban signing Henry Urrutia, who hasn’t shown he’s a big league player; Dariel Alvarez, another Cuban who is more promising but probably won’t be arriving until the middle or end of the year unless Baltimore hurries him, and your depth signings like Quintin Berry who aren’t serious candidates for the position. Alvarez could be the O’s rightfielder of the future — and he’ll eventually get the look he deserves — but he probably won’t be the answer for 2015.

Free Agency

With Markakis gone, the cream of the FA crop in RF is Alex Rios, who will be looking for a deal somewhat similar to Markakis’s, though he’ll probably end up a year shorter in term and a couple million dollars a year fewer in value. Rios is a perfectly serviceable option, and if he could be had on a two year deal with a team option for the third year he’d be a good fit for Baltimore; it’s unlikely that the team will end up that fortunate, however. After Rios, former Seattle outfielders Chris Denorfia and Corey Hart, along with ex-Royal Nori Aoki, round out the top of a tepid free agent class. It’s been suggested that the Orioles could make a run at former Blue Jay CF Colby Rasmus on a one-year deal and move him to RF; I support the idea in theory, but have my doubts about whether the market will cooperate in putting it into practice. Either way, none of the current crop of free agent RF is worth a long-term contract, and if you think Alvarez is the future in RF there’s no point to overpaying in length here. If you don’t think Alvarez is the future, it’s still not worth giving any of these players, Rios included, a big contract — but either Rios or Aoki is likely preferable to a full year of de Aza in right.

Trading Block

This is where the Orioles can best address the right field situation, and where I’d hoped to make an argument for dealing Miguel Gonzalez to the Seattle Mariners for Michael Saunders — until the Blue Jays dealt JA Happ for him while I was in the middle of writing the third paragraph above. Saunders was easily the best piece openly available on the board: a guy with enough range to fake centerfield, some years of team control left, a good bat, but who had somehow earned the ire of his questionably competent front office. He’ll be a good fit in Toronto. So it goes.

Unfortunately, most of the tradeable outfielders at the moment seem to have been stockpiled by the Boston Red Sox — Yoenis Cespedes in particular would be an interesting trade target, were the team fielding him outside of the division. Trading within the division isn’t impossible — the Sox and Orioles have been infrequent trade partners over the years — but making a deal in the offseason is different from making a deal at the deadline, when one of the teams is out of it and knows it.

There’s also Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier on the Dodgers; if the Orioles can get a good deal on Kemp somehow, they should do it — but Kemp’s made no secret of his desire to continue playing centerfield, and Baltimore is full up on those at the moment. Ethier, on the other hand, is due so much money (almost $80 million over the next four years) that even if the Dodgers took the entire Jimenez contract in return it would still be an overpay on Baltimore’s side, especially considering how vulnerable Ethier is to left-handed pitching (.641 career OPS vLHP).

The most intriguing option — assuming, again, that the Orioles wish to address the RF issue now instead of waiting for Alvarez — is Cincinnati’s Jay Bruce, who is under contract at ~$12.5 million a year through 2017. The Orioles would be buying low on him, but should Bruce bounce back he would be a nice complement to an offense driven, presumably, by Jones, Davis, Pearce, and (hopefully) Machado. He’s both cheaper and less of a platoon hazard than Ethier, as well. The biggest question is what it would take to get him in an Orioles uniform — it’s nice to dream of a clean Jimenez/Bruce swap, but Cincinnati GM Walt Jocketty is a little too canny for that.

In the end, I think Duquette will opt for a moderate — some might say tepid — approach, perhaps signing someone in the tier below Denorfia et al (perhaps even ex-Oriole Nolan Reimold) to a one-year make good deal to push the other internal options, with an eye towards transitioning to Alvarez assuming he has a good camp and start to the year in AAA. But I’m always up for being surprised — and Kemp would be a pleasant, if unlikely, surprise indeed.