[Baltimore Sun] Orioles’ Jorge Mateo takes up center field in bid to ‘stay on the field’
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SARASOTA, Fla. — After two seasons of playing almost exclusively shortstop for the Orioles, Jorge Mateo is taking on a new role in 2024: super utility player.
The 28-year-old was a staple of the Orioles’ lineup in 2022 but endured an up-and-down season last year. He jumped out to a blistering start with a 1.062 OPS across March and April before tailing off as the summer went on. By the end of the year, Mateo was in and out of the lineup and coming off the bench as a defensive replacement or pinch runner.
This season, a path to playing time is even murkier. The Orioles’ candidates for Mateo’s natural position of shortstop are reigning American League Rookie of the Year Gunnar Henderson, consensus No. 1 overall prospect Jackson Holliday and former first-round draft pick Jordan Westburg. All three could end up filling out the infield alongside first basemen Ryan Mountcastle and Ryan O’Hearn, leaving Mateo as the odd man out.
Baltimore’s coaching staff saw this traffic jam coming and approached Mateo this offseason, gauging his interest in working out at center field. The Orioles are deep in the outfield, too, but his ability to rotate between several positions would allow manager Brandon Hyde to take advantage of Mateo’s 99th percentile sprint speed more often.
“It’s another way for me to stay on the field, get more at-bats and ultimately be a part of the team’s decisions and whatever they ask me to do,” Mateo said through team interpreter Brandon Quinones in the clubhouse Tuesday.
“That’s a decision that ultimately came from the team and I’m just trying to work as hard as possible to comply with those requirements.”
Mateo does have some experience in center. He’s logged 94 innings at the position in the major leagues and another 341 in the minors. The Orioles tried him out there briefly last season and they hope he can get comfortable enough in center to be a true super utility player by opening day.
“You definitely want to be able to cover center and left at our place,” Hyde said of Camden Yards on Feb. 21. “For me, that’s why Mateo is a little bit of an X-factor for us. We’re going to see. I really don’t know at this point if we’re going to carry four or five [outfielders], how that’s going to look … We’ll see how our infield looks at that point, too. It’s way too early to tell how many guys we’re going to carry both on the infield and outfield.”
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Though he’s played shortstop in each of his three Grapefruit League games so far, Mateo said the plan is for him to see some game action in center over the next week. His biggest point of emphasis when taking reps at the position on the back fields has been making reads and getting more comfortable in the spacious outfield grass.
The power he displayed in April never revealed itself again in 2023, but Mateo did manage to get on base at a .359 clip in September. His 67 stolen bases over the past two seasons are the most of any Oriole and the team’s request for him to play center is evidence of its belief in his ability to hold down a valuable role this year.
“I felt really good, obviously got off to a really good start, then dipped a little bit during the season,” Mateo said of his 2023 campaign. “It’s just stuff that happens over the course of a season but if you notice I did finish off the season really well. So, I’m just focused coming into this year to make sure I have a much better year this year.”
Baltimore Sun reporter Jacob Calvin Meyer contributed to this article.
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