Baltimore’s Shortstop Is Making Strides

Jorge Mateo was once one of the top prospects in baseball. An international signing of the Yankees out of the Dominican Republic in 2012, he showed obvious natural talent with blazing speed that allowed him to be valuable on the basepaths and on defense. In 2015, between Single-A and High-A, he stole 82 bases in 111 games. He only hit two home runs in that time but ran up a .278 batting average. His bat was generally considered the least polished part of his game, but he seemed to have a chance at being an all-around contributor in the future. Baseball America ranked him the #1 prospect in the Yankees’ system going into 2016 and #26 in the entire league.

In the years to come, however, his stock would fade as the approach at the plate didn’t seem to develop as hoped. He returned to High-A in 2016 and hit eight home runs but his batting average slipped to .254. Since he only walked in 6.5% of his plate appearances, his on-base percentage was a meager .306. In 2017, at High-A yet again, his walk rate dipped to 5.4% and his strikeout rate climbed from a decent 21.3% to a concerning 26.6%. That helped his batting average drop to .240 and his OBP to .288. He finally got bumped to Double-A and showed some positive strides, walking at a 10.7% clip in 30 games there, leading to a .300 batting average and .381 OBP. The Yanks then included him as one one of the three youngsters they sent to the Athletics in the deadline deal that brought Sonny Gray to the Bronx, alongside Dustin Fowler and James Kaprielian.

Though Mateo finished 2017 strong with his new organization, the concerns about his offense would be renewed the following year. Moved to Triple-A in 2018, he drew free passes in just 5.7% of his plate appearances while getting punched out in 27.3% of them. His .230/.280/.353 batting line led to a wRC+ of just 62. Back to Triple-A in 2019, he had a power breakout when he launched 19 home runs in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, but he still walked at just a 5.1% clip and struck out 25.6% of the time.

Going into 2020, Mateo was out of options and still hadn’t made his major league debut. The A’s seemingly had little interest in giving him an active roster spot at that time. Transactions were frozen in March of 2020 when the pandemic put everything on pause, but once the freeze was lifted in June, the very first transaction in the league was Mateo getting flipped to the Padres for a player to be named later. That player was later reported to be…