Orioles trade reunites Craig Albernaz with familiar outfielder from the Guardians

The Baltimore Orioles were active in the trade market on Sunday afternoon, snagging a pair of recently DFA'd players to reinforce the 40-man roster. The second of the two trades netted the Orioles outfielder Johnathan Rodriguez, who had spent the past two seasons bouncing up and down between the Majors and Triple-A with the Cleveland Guardians. With the addition of Rodriguez, the Orioles have now acquired multiple members of manager Craig Albernaz's former squad in Cleveland.

Albernaz has gone out of his way to say that he wants to let Mike Elias cook and not interfere with the team-building part of the organization, but with the Orioles having to trade something to get Rodriguez, it seems likely that there would have been at least one call between Elias and Albernaz where Albernaz gave the thumbs up on Rodriguez.

Orioles continue to stockpile intriguing bats to reinforce their minor league depth

Rodriguez was never a top prospect in the Guardians system, but he was in the system for what feels like an impossibly long time for a player who just turned 26. Since reaching Triple-A for the first time in 2023, Rodriguez has terrorized that level of pitching. Over the past three seasons, he's slashed .301/.390/.535 in 252 games. That's a large sample of success.

Unfortunately for Rodriguez, that success has not yet translated to the majors, where he's slashed .176/.282/.304 in 44 career games.

Rodriguez has some tools that make him an enticing pickup for the Orioles. He has elite bat speed, and when he makes contact, he puts up impressive exit velocity numbers, and he even walks a decent amount for such a big swinger. The issue is that he doesn't make contact enough. Coming up through the minors, Rodriguez got away with having a K% over 30% by doing crazy damage in the at-bats where he wasn't striking out. In the big leagues, that's a hard profile to pull off.

If you look at Rodriguez's plate discipline stats, what jumps out as the big difference between his minor league profile and his major league profile is that his in-zone contact rate drops dramatically in the big leagues from from around 85% to below 75%. That's a big drop for a hitter already operating with a thin margin for error.

If Rodriguez could get his MLB in-zone contact numbers to look like the minor league numbers, he'd quickly become a very interesting bat to have. The Guardians decided he was a lost cause, but the Orioles hope their coaching staff can make the magic adjustment with Rodriguez. He'll join a host of interesting but flawed hitters on the Norfolk Tides. The Orioles are hoping that one of Rodriguez, Bryan Ramos, or Jhonkensy Noel turns into their next development success story.

Rodriguez won't be the last free-swinging hitter the Orioles take a chance on this year. As the season goes on and more intriguing bats get DFA'd, the Orioles will remain active, making the peripheral moves necessary to give their MLB team sufficient depth to contend for the AL East.