{"id":577589,"date":"2026-02-17T14:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T14:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/577589\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T14:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T14:28:13","slug":"baltimore-orioles-why-trading-mountcastle-or-mayo-could-be-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/577589\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore Orioles: Why trading Mountcastle or Mayo could be bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current buzz out of Sarasota has seemingly shifted from which players the Orioles may add to the roster to who may soon be heading out the door. MLB Insider Ken Rosenthal recently reported<\/a> that, after further fortifying the pitching rotation with veteran Chris Bassitt, the O\u2019s have now turned their attention to potential trades for Ryan Mountcastle and Coby Mayo.<\/p>\n

On the surface, it\u2019s easy to see the logic behind shipping out one or both of Mayo and Mountcastle. Their ability to coexist on the 2026 Orioles roster always seemed tenuous at best. Both are big, right-handed power bats who offer some positional flexibility, but really fit best at 1B. Getting both of them enough at-bats in Baltimore, while also planning for Samuel Basallo to play some first, was always going to be a tough thing to achieve.<\/p>\n

And that was before the front office made the biggest move of their offseason and signed Pete Alonso. The Orioles now have 155 million reasons to justify why Alonso will be their everyday 1B going forward. Over his last four seasons with the Mets, the Polar Bear has averaged 40 HRs per season and steps into the Orioles lineup as Baltimore\u2019s biggest run-producing threat. And sure, he\u2019ll probably see some time at DH this season, but not enough to facilitate significant playing time at first for Mounty, Mayo and Basallo.<\/p>\n

With the injury to Jackson Holliday, it\u2019s currently possible to keep all three on the roster without things getting too awkward. The likely Opening Day infield will see Alonso at first, some combination of Blaze Alexander and Jordan Westburg at second and third, with Gunnar Henderson manning short. That leaves Mayo as the backup third baseman and Mountcastle in the Ryan O\u2019Hearn, sometimes 1B\/sometimes RF, position. It\u2019s far from a perfectly balanced roster, considering the O\u2019s will also likely carry five outfielders and only three middle infielders.<\/p>\n

However, just because keeping Mountcastle and Mayo presents a roster construction problem, it doesn\u2019t mean trading them before the season starts makes the most sense for this team. Mountcastle is coming off the worst season of his MLB career. A hamstring injury limited him to 89 games, and by the time he came back in early August, the Orioles\u2019 season was already lost. Right after coming off the injured list, it looked like Mounty was back to his best self\u2014slashing .305\/.348\/.463 over 21 games in August. That production completely dried up in September, though, as RMC\u2019s average dropped to .190, his OPS dipped to .522, and he ultimately ceded a lot of his playing time to Mayo.<\/p>\n

Trading Mountcastle now seems unlikely to return something that would actually make the Orioles better right now. As someone coming off a down season in the last year of his contract, Mounty is not exactly at the peak of his trade value. The soon-to-be 29-year-old wouldn\u2019t command a starting pitcher better than Dean Kremer, Zach Eflin, or Chris Bassitt. It seems unlikely that he could even get the Orioles back a reliever who would significantly improve their bullpen.<\/p>\n

Mountcastle\u2019s biggest asset has always been his ability to mash left-handed pitching. He\u2019s a career .282 hitter against lefties, with a .813 OPS and a 116 OPS+. That production was nowhere to be found in 2025, though. In his limited game time last year, his OPS against lefties dropped to .598 and he failed to register a homer against LHPs for the first time since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.<\/p>\n

Even with Alonso, Taylor Ward and Tyler O\u2019Neill on the roster, Mounty should still see plenty of opportunities in lineups against LHPs. If he can do damage against southpaws again, he\u2019ll either prove himself valuable enough to stay an Oriole or valuable enough to trade at the deadline for a player that can make a difference in 2026.<\/p>\n

With Mayo, much of his value is based on potential rather than actual production. His scouting profile and minor league production show a player with an Alonso-like ceiling. No, he\u2019ll never come close to competing for a batting title, and he\u2019ll always probably strike out more than you\u2019d like, but there\u2019s real 30+\/year power in the 24-year-old\u2019s bat as we glimpsed at the end of last season.<\/p>\n

In his first meaningful taste of big league action, we got a tale of two Mayo\u2019s in 2025. In 79 ABs before the All-Star break, we saw a player clearly struggling to adapt to the majors while coping with the inconsistent nature of his playing time\u2014all of which culminated in a .203 average, .563 OPS and a 28% strikeout rate.<\/p>\n

But as his playing time grew, so did his confidence and production. Mayo got 184 ABs after the break, and turned that opportunity into a .223 average, a .740 OPS and 10 HRs. Strikeouts were still a big problem, as his K rate grew to an alarming 34%, but the signs of a real, Major League contributor were there.<\/p>\n

The South Florida native has plenty of things working in his favor that make him a more valuable trade chip than Mountcastle. He\u2019s five years younger, with a higher ceiling and five additional years of team control. That alone could make him attractive to teams who are looking to build for the future, but do those teams really have players who would make the Orioles better right now?<\/p>\n

Many have suggested the idea of trading Mayo to his hometown Marlinsto bring back pitching. However, with the recent struggles of Sandy Alcantara and the Miami unlikely to entertain a trade for Eury P\u00e9rez, it seems unlikely that Mayo would bring back a pitcher who actually makes Baltimore\u2019s rotation better. The same could be said for teams like the Pirates or Rockies, who could certainly hold interest in Mayo but lack the pitchers to make it worth the Orioles\u2019 while.<\/p>\n

For years, we\u2019ve all clamored for Mike Elias & Co. to be more aggressive in using trades to make immediate improvements to the Orioles roster. And now, it seems they have the perfect opportunity with a clear surplus in one position and needs elsewhere on the roster. And yet, if finding the ideal, \u201cwin-now\u201d trade partner for Mountcastle or Mayo was so easy, they\u2019d be on other teams by now. Instead, their best place (for now) is still in Baltimore, where they\u2019ll look to carve out a role in one of the AL\u2019s most intriguing lineups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The current buzz out of Sarasota has seemingly shifted from which players the Orioles may add to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[143,47,3357,2538,5,4,125],"class_list":["post-577589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baltimore-orioles","tag-baltimore","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-baltimore-orioles-analysis","tag-baltimoreorioles","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-orioles"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116086446990492409","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}