The start of spring training is set for later in the month, but the likelihood of it happening on time is dwindling with each passing day.
A right-handed reliever, Isaac Mattson was the first of the four Orioles pitchers the team obtained when they traded Dylan Bundy in December 2019 to the Los Angeles Angels to make it to the majors.
In 2021, he spent only a few days there.
According to FanGraphs, Mattson’s groundball rate in the majors was 33.3%, with five of the fifteen balls he faced being grounded out.
His line-drive and flyball rates were higher in Triple-A, where the percentage was even lower at 30.6%.
This is significant because he had groundball rates of at least 38.9 percent at each of the Angels’ minor league trips and never allowed more flyballs than groundballs.
Mattson’s excellent strikeout numbers as a minor leaguer for the Los Angeles Dodgers were one of the reasons the Orioles wanted him in the Bundy package and added him to their 40-man roster a year later.
It didn’t matter how many wins he had in that system, he still had the ability to knock out opponents.
To be fair, Mattson only struck out 29.6% of the batters he saw in Triple-A, a significant drop from the excellent 37.7% strikeout rate he recorded across three levels of the minor leagues last year.
How Tall is Isaac Mattson?
Isaac Mattson is 1.88 m tall