The Next Big Thing: Mayo Masters Minors, Now for the…

Coby Mayo started the 2024 season ranked as the number three prospect in the Orioles minor league system, just behind Jackson Holliday and Samuel Basallo. At age 22, young for triple-A, he went on to have an outstanding season at the plate and get his first major league call up. When the season ended, Mayo sat at the top of the prospect list and was named as the Orioles minor league player of the year. It was a very good year for the young man.

Throughout the summer, if you checked in with Twitter or the comments section of this website, you saw call after call to promote Coby Mayo to the Orioles. As the big league team struggled to score runs, Mayo was down at triple-A Norfolk just mashing. So the pleas made sense.

After an excellent 2023 season, Mayo started 2024 in Norfolk with the expectation being that he’d be promoted sometime during the year. He got off to a very fast start offensively and on May 16th he was hitting .291/.359/.605 through his first 42 games. He had 13 home runs and 11 doubles. Things were going great.

But in that game on May 16th, Mayo fell into the dugout attempting to catch a foul ball. He did not catch the ball. He did, however, break a rib. He landed on the Injured List for about a month. It was a shame for him to miss the time because he was playing so well, but he picked up right where he left off after his monthlong injury. He was activated to the Tides on June 18th and racked up 16 hits in 11 games to close out the month.

July was Mayo’s final full month with the Tides and also his worst. He had a solid first half of the month but his hitting fell off the table the final few weeks. Those few weeks happened to coincide with him getting regular playing time at a new position, first base. Mayo had played first here and there during the season, but never in back-to-back games, much less on a regular basis.

But part of Mayo’s roadblock to a major league promotion was his defense. He is a natural third baseman with a heck of an arm to go with it, but there have been concerns about his defense and if he can stick at the position. The accepted line has always been that he’ll hit, but where will he play?

Based on accounts from the team, they were happy with Mayo’s improvement on defense at third base. But even with that being the case, the major league team had a roster full of pretty good infielders. With Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Jordan Westburg, and Ramón Urías on the roster, there wasn’t much room for Mayo. It was a tough infield to crack, even with Jorge Mateo out for the season with injury. So they were trying him at first base, because why not? It ended up not really mattering, at least not this year.

When a hit-by-pitch on July 31st sidelined Westburg for what ended up being about two months, Mayo got his chance. There was suddenly a vacancy in the infield and Mayo was called up on August 2nd to fill in. It did not go smoothly. He started at third base for three straight games, but went hitless. After a few more games and some time on the bench, Mayo was demoted on August 15th in favor of the lefty hitting Liván Soto. He did at least get his first hit before his demotion, a single the day before against the Nationals.

It was a head scratcher to send down one of the best hitters in all of the minor leagues after just seven games over the span of 12 days. Even with his struggling, he had the pedigree and it would have been nice to see him given the chance to work his way out of it. But the Orioles’ position was also understandable. They were trying to win their division and didn’t have time for another struggling rookie. And if they couldn’t keep the rookie in the lineup, didn’t it make more sense to have him playing every day in the minors? Soto could warm the bench just as well with fewer expectations for the future.

So Mayo went back to triple-A, but just for 10 games as it turned out. Because on August 31st, Urías sprained his ankle and it was his turn for an IL stint. But Mayo wasn’t back to be the team’s third baseman. He sat on the bench mostly, getting into just 10 games in nearly three weeks worth of play. He was then optioned again and did not finish the season with the team.

It was a disappointing way to end the year for such an exciting prospect, but Mayo’s star is still bright and there is no reason to think that his very small sample size of at-bats in the majors are indicative of how he’ll perform going forward. In 93 minor league games, Mayo hit .293/.372/.592 with 54 extra base hits. He did strike out 25% of the time, which is not ideal. But if he can get on base at a similar clip going forward, the strikeouts will matter less.

The biggest question on Mayo next year is the same as it was this year: where will he play? It stands to reason that Henderson, Westburg, and Holliday will be regulars in the infield in 2025. And then there is Urías, who is easy to overlook but who was one of the team’s best hitters in the second half. The Orioles have a weakness at first base, where Ryan Mountcastle spent most of the year. If Mayo can play serviceably there, it could be an option.