Orioles Go Fishing For Their Own Trout

Mike Trout has been the best player in baseball since being called up by the Los Angeles Angels, and he revitalized his team's season. The Baltimore Orioles are hoping that calling up their own 20-year-old future star might have a similar impact.

Baltimore selected Manny Machado in the 2010 draft, two picks after Bryce Harper went #1 overall. The young shortstop draws [unfair] comparisons to Alex Rodriguez and ranks as one of the three best positional prospects in minor league baseball. And the O's surprised everyone by calling him up to the majors before Thursday's game, far earlier than anyone reasonably expected.

However, he's not yet comparable to the likes of Harper and Trout. Those two phenoms performed well in the high minors before earning their major league promotions. Machado, on the other hand, is completely skipping over Triple-A and jumping into the major league fray just two years out of high school. On top of that, the Orioles already have a shortstop in J.J. Hardy, so they'll be asking Machado to play third, which he's hardly ever done before. It's asking a lot of a youngster who clearly isn't ready for Major League Baseball yet.

Yet here's the thing: he doesn't have to be as good as Mike Trout, or even that good at all, to be valuable. The Orioles, in the thick of an intense wild card chase, are desperate for every possible upgrade to make the postseason for the first time since the twentieth century. And Machado doesn't have to be Cal Ripken to be an upgrade at an important position. Current Orioles third basemen Wilson Betemit and Mark Reynolds are butchers in the field; Machado should be a defensive improvement there despite his inexperience. He'll also get plenty of at-bats against left-handers, whom he clobbered at Double-A and against whom Wilson Betemit is even more terrible than one might expect. As a defender and a platoon bat, Machado makes the Orioles a little better, and every edge the team can find could prove the difference in a tight playoff race.

And who knows--maybe he gets hot and the O's catch lightning in a bottle for six weeks. This is a gamble easily worth taking. His promise was on full display on Friday: in his second major league game, Machado hit the first two home runs of his career.* A sign of greater things to come? The Orioles certainly hope so.

* (Then again, Machado hit the home runs against the Royals, so that actually might not tell us anything meaningful. We already knew he could hit Double-A pitching.)