2 Orioles who have cooled down after a hot start to spring training

Is there a better time to have a hot streak at the plate than the first two weeks of spring training? Everyone is starved for baseball, and your .580 OPS last season is but a distant memory. A couple of well-struck balls in late February and a player on the fringe of the roster can make headlines.

As good as a hot start to spring training is for getting a player on the radar of fans gearing up for the season, if it's not sustained, the early overreactions subside, and the hype dissipates. The Baltimore Orioles have seen a couple of their fast starters fizzle out already this spring training.

A hot start to spring training won't be enough to keep Heston Kjerstad and Sam Huff on the roster

Heston Kjerstad

Kjerstad showed up to camp after missing most of last season with a mysterious illness/injury the Orioles labelled as fatigue. When his bat caught fire early in spring training, it gave hope to the idea that his MLB struggles over the last couple of seasons had been due to this "fatigue" and that now that he was fully healthy, he could continue his trajectory as a top prospect. Some fans began to question whether Kjerstad was playing himself onto the Opening Day roster in place of Dylan Beavers, who was slumping to start the spring.

Through two weeks of spring training, Kjerstad was slashing .429/.467/.714, and even when he was getting out there, there was a lot of hard contact. In the two weeks since, Kjerstad has two total hits, and his OPS has fallen from 1.181 to .605. Many of his outs are strikeouts and weak opposite-field fly balls.

Any hope of Kjerstad sneaking onto the roster is now gone, and if he carries this poor performance into the Triple-A season, then there will begin to be questions about how much longer of a leash the Orioles will give him before he loses his spot on the 40-man roster.

Sam Huff

The Orioles brought in Huff to compete for the third-string catcher role, and he got out to an early lead, hitting two homers and a double in the first couple of spring training games he got into. Since then, he's cooled off substantially and looked a lot more like the guy that the Giants DFA'd last year. He has 1 total hit in the last two weeks. The early extra base hits are holding up his slugging percentage, but his OBP is down to .240, and that's with plenty of late-game at-bats vs minor league caliber pitching.

Maverick Handley hasn't exactly run him down, so it's possible that Huff is still the Orioles' third-string catcher, but his spring training slump puts an end to the chance of the Orioles rostering three catchers to bed.