The Orioles’ best two players in 2022 were their worst hitters against left-handed pitchers.
Adley Rutschman and Cedric Mullins, two players who had hit lefties well in the past, struggled mightily when facing them last year. While their performance in other areas made them Baltimore’s two most valuable players, they headlined a lineup that didn’t hit well against southpaws.
Rutschman and Mullins have both reverted to their pre-2022 selves when facing left-handed pitchers this season, and most of the Orioles’ lineup has followed suit as Baltimore ranks as one of the best teams in the major leagues versus lefties.
The Orioles, who face Los Angeles Angels left-hander Tyler Anderson on Thursday, are 12-5 against lefty starters — averaging 5.53 runs in those games — compared with 16-10 and 4.65 runs versus right-handers. And a year after posting a .297 on-base percentage and a .663 OPS off lefties, Baltimore is slashing .270/.353/.453 against them. Their .806 OPS ranks fifth in the majors — compared with 24th in 2022 — and is 17% better than the average big league team.
“That’s huge for us,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “We had a tough time against left-handed starters last year.”
While Rutschman and Mullins had similar difficulties against lefties in 2022 — posting an OPS of .552 and .579, respectively — the way they did so was different, given that Rutschman is a switch-hitter and Mullins only hit from the left side after abandoning switch-hitting before the 2021 season. Rutschman, in just 115 plate appearances, hit .174 with little power with his right-handed swing, while Mullins hit .209 with limited pop in his 197 left-on-left matchups.
In 2023, Rutschman and Mullins have been two of the Orioles’ best hitters off lefties — a group that also includes Ryan Mountcastle (1.034 OPS), Ryan McKenna (.367 batting average) and Anthony Santander (.524 slugging percentage).
Rutschman’s .812 OPS when facing other-handed pitchers is just 55 points worse than versus righties, whereas that difference in 2022 was 337 points. Mullins, meanwhile, has rarely hit in the leadoff spot when Baltimore has faced a lefty this season, but he’s actually posted reverse splits through the first one-fourth of the season. He’s slashing .298/.400/.553 off lefties for an OPS of .953 — nearly 200 points better than off righties and 374 points better than how he hit southpaws last year.
“He’s staying in there,” Hyde said about Mullins. “He’s done a great job against lefties this year. Really happy with the adjustments he’s made by staying on the baseball a little bit longer against left-handed pitching this year.”
Rutschman didn’t go into his offseason with a plan to fix his right-handed swing, trusting the results he put up against lefties throughout college and in the minors.
“My right-handed swing has always felt pretty good. It’s why I hit right-handed,” Rutschman said. “My splits against righties/lefties since college, right-handed has always been right there with my left-handed swing. It was never an issue until last year.”
Rutschman also said it’s possible that the right triceps injury that kept him absent for the beginning of the 2022 season, delaying his MLB debut until May 21, could have played a factor.
“I guess having the injury, too, at the beginning of last season on my right arm might’ve negatively affected my right-handed swing more than my left-handed one,” he said. “But it was just trusting the process this offseason.”
Mullins, meanwhile, said he put in extra work this offseason on picking up the ball out of a left-handed arm slot — one of the main reasons same-handed matchups are tough on hitters — off a pitching machine.
“I was overexaggerating it and putting it at an arm slot that you’ll probably never see,” he said. “Being able to adjust from that to a more natural slot makes it easier.”
In his breakout 2021 season, Mullins was equally good against both arms and hit .277 off lefties as he posted the first 30 home run-30 stolen base season in Orioles history. But his OPS versus left-handers dropped a little more than 200 points last season before jumping back up this year. The yo-yo against lefties, Mullins said, is part of the natural ebb and flow of professional baseball as he continues to learn to hit southpaws with his left-handed swing.
“This is my third year [not switch-hitting],” Mullins said. “I had success my first year and then pitchers made adjustments with me being more comfortable in the box and naturally I’m making those adjustments back. Experience is definitely going hand-in-hand with the success I’m having now.”
While Rutschman and Mullins have been integral to the Orioles’ improvements versus southpaws, it’s not just them. In addition to Mountcastle, McKenna and Santander, right-handed hitters Jorge Mateo and Ramón Urías have hit better off left-handers than they did in 2022. Mountcastle, for example, is crushing lefties compared with his .693 OPS off them last year, as 10 of his 57 at-bats this year have resulted in extra-base hits.
“Our righties need to do the damage against left-handed starters,” Hyde said. “We had trouble with that last year.”
Of course, there are important caveats to these numbers. It’s still early. Splits versus lefties can be fickle because of small sample sizes. Rutschman’s struggles last year were in just 115 plate appearances, but his success in 2023 is in only 68 trips to the plate. As a team, the Orioles have 542 plate appearances off left-handers compared with 1,710 in 2022.
And while they’ve jumped on southpaws including Boston’s Chris Sale (twice) and Atlanta’s Max Fried, they’ve still been shut down by left-handers like Detroit’s Eduardo Rodriguez and Tampa Bay’s Shane McClanahan.
But, overall, Baltimore’s performance against lefties is just another way in which the 2023 Orioles are better so far than the 2022 club.
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