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Former Orioles All-Star has heated up just in time to make his former team pay

The Orioles are going to try to escape him
Credit: Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images
Credit: Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images | Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images

Despite Cedric Mullins surviving the Baltimore Orioles rebuild and becoming one of the team's most popular players, the front office clearly never intended to keep him around long-term. Early in the 2025 season, Mullins expressed in an interview that he would have loved to stay in Baltimore, but the team never approached him about any sort of extension.

The Orioles ended up trading Mullins at the 2025 deadline, and with how Mullins performed post-trade deadline, it looked like they had been smart to do so. In New York, his production took a nose dive to the point where he'll be infamous in Queens for the rest of his career. In the offseason, he signed with the Rays on a one-year deal, and through the first month of the 2026 season, he was statistically the worst hitter in baseball. Any time this season that a baseball show or podcast wanted to talk about a hitter going through a brutal slump, they would have to say, "Through x days, he's been the worst hitter in the league besides Cedric Mullins."

The Orioles won't be able to escape Cedric Mullins this week

That might be starting to change, though. Over Mullins' last nine games heading into the Rays series against the Orioles, he's slashing .367/.441/.467 with a homer, four stolen bases, three walks, and just four strikeouts.

Mullins has been getting it done in a variety of ways. He's bunting a lot both as a sacrifice and for hits. He's flashed his pull power to the power field, and he's walking and stealing bases. He looks like the exact kind of bottom-of-the-order hitter that has terrorized the Orioles for the past few years. If you close your eyes, you can see him bunting his way on base, stealing second, and then scoring on a weak ground ball that sneaks through the infield to give the Rays a 1-0 lead in the second inning.

Seeing Mullins this week will be bittersweet for both Orioles fans and the players on the team. What Mullins did in 2021 for a tanking Orioles team earned him a lot of respect, even if he was never able to repeat that exact performance. Nobody liked seeing him at the bottom of the league rankings in OPS. Fans of the Orioles and respecters of Mullins will have to hope that the Orioles can hold him down for a couple of days, and then he can resume his comeback against the Yankees this weekend.

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