Coby Mayo now holds surprising levels of importance in Orioles' 2026 outlook

Two months ago, when the Baltimore Orioles signed Pete Alonso on Coby Mayo's birthday, it seemed like that marked the end of Mayo's tenure with the Orioles. Over the past few weeks, there have been numerous reports that the Orioles were looking for a trade partner to move Mayo, but an unfortunate injury to Jordan Westburg has put those trade talks to rest, and instead, it appears Mayo could be set to see significant playing time at third base.

Before last season, Mayo had been primarily a third baseman all through the minors. Of his 423 minor league starts, 307 of them were at third compared to just 73 at first. So Mayo is familiar with the position.

Part of the reason that Mayo was moved to first was that Westburg and Holliday graduated before him and settled in at second and third base, leaving little room for Mayo. That's only part of the reason, though; the other part is that Mayo is just not very good at playing third base.

If Mayo can play good enough defense at third, his bat could make him a plus at the hot corner

His defense was shaky in the minors, but the Orioles kept him there, hoping his defensive ability would catch up to his offensive ability. There was/is reason to believe Mayo could be a good defender. He is a good athlete, and he has a strong arm, but when Mayo reached the majors, it was clear he wasn't ready to play third at that level.

It was hard for the Orioles to justify letting him flounder at third while he also struggled at the plate, so they worked on converting him to a less demanding position at first base. Mayo really applied himself to learning first base and showed a lot of improvement over the course of 2025. By the end of the season, he was maybe even a slightly above-average defender at first.

Now that Mayo will be pressed into service at his old position, it will be interesting to see how he adapts. So far in spring training, he has worked out almost exclusively at third (a move that seemed like an attempt to boost his trade value but now appears to be because the team might have been aware that Westburg was going to miss serious time).

Early reports out of camp have said that Mayo looks fine at third base, which is nice, but before today, his reps were not under much scrutiny. With the rumors of Westburg's injury floating around, all eyes will turn to Coby Mayo's daily workouts at third. Videos of grounders bouncing off his glove and throws yanked wide right of first base will get thousands more views than they would have a week ago.

The Orioles will be looking to get Mayo as many game reps at third as they can get him this spring training. The most likely outcome is that he plays well enough that the Orioles give him a shot to enter the season as the starting third baseman. However, if he looks over his skis defensively in spring training games, the Mayo back to third experiment might be over before it begins.

Assuming that Mayo handles himself at third during spring training and the Orioles give him the keys to third base, it is fascinating to think about what a full Coby Mayo at third season could look like.

The 100th-percentile outcome is that Mayo keeps up his offensive momentum from last September, becomes the middle-of-the-order slugger that he promised to be as a prospect, all while playing league-average defense at third. That's obviously not a likely scenario, but it's in the cards, and having a potentially high ceiling outcome for a position like third base after an injury to an important player like Westburg is a plus.

Safer options like Blaze Alexander, Jeremiah Jackson, or even a reunion with Ramon Urias don't provide that same ceiling. If the Orioles went with one of those players instead of Mayo at third, they would be basically surrendering the possibility of having an impactful player at third in 2026.

There is also the possibility that Mayo's bat regresses, and his defense is so bad that he's unplayable at third. In which case, Alexander would have to take over that position, and the Orioles would have to accept that they're not going to get much offensive production from the third base position and try to be ok with that.

For Mayo's sake and the sake of the Orioles season, hopefully, he can produce at the plate so that the Orioles can stomach some poor defense at the hot corner. If not, he's going to end up riding the bench or back in triple-A, and the Orioles will have an offensive black hole at a position where they were expecting top-of-the-lineup offensive production from Jordan Westburg.