Shorebird of the Week – April 28, 2016

It’s been a custom of mine that, if a Shorebird player is named as the South Atlantic League Player of the Week and I haven’t already picked him during the season, that player gets the honor. Not that Yermin Mercedes didn’t deserve to be that player after decimating Greensboro and Kannapolis pitching to the tune of 13-for-25 in the six games, with eight of those hits going for extra bases, including a home run and 10 RBI. And perhaps it’s a sign of the 23-year-old Dominican’s maturity at the plate that, at least last Sunday at the game I witnessed, he beat the shift for two opposite-field hits, a double and a triple.

With last night’s game now in the books (I didn’t get a chance to update from this morning’s contest) Mercedes is now 19-for-39 in his last 10 games, increasing his average from .267 to .424 and moving into the league lead for batting. His OPS is a sick 1.139 because he’s leading the team in extra-base hits with 12 (out of 23 hits overall.)

Mercedes has used his bat to break into the catching rotation envisioned by the Orioles when they drafted four catchers in the first 11 rounds of the draft back in 2013. (One of those catchers, Alex Murphy, now splits his time between catching and playing first base with Delmarva, the others are further up the organization now.) Yermin is one of those guys who seemingly could roll out of bed and go 3-for-4, owning a career .297 batting average in his sixth pro season. Admittedly, that has been fattened up somewhat by playing a season in the almost absurdly hitter-friendly baseball outpost of the independent Pecos League (with its aggregate league batting average of .314 in the season he played there, 2014) but he’s hit well at almost all of his stops. You may wonder how such a hitter washed out of the Nationals’ organization after three seasons with their Dominican Summer League team.

The answer may be that his defense behind the plate is a work in progress – Mercedes has already been charged with 9 passed balls in 13 games behind the plate after eight in 53 games with Delmarva last season, (By comparison, the Orioles’ Matt Wieters has 18 passed balls in a seven-plus season MLB career.) Some of that could be the pitching, but at times Yermin struggles behind the dish. And while Mercedes has flirted with playing first base (30 games over four seasons, but just one since 2013) and third base (27 games, all but one in the Pecos League), it’s likely that the ticket for him to get to higher levels will come through improving his defense. Although it’s doubtful he can maintain a .400 average for the rest of the season, I think the Orioles would be happy if he hit .300 but kept the defensive mistakes to a minimum.